A 45-year-old woman who bit off part of her ex-lover’s ear during a ‘psychotic episode’ during a pagan wedding reception in Herefordshire has been found guilty at Worcester Crown Court of unlawful wounding.
Judge Patrick Thomas QC told Gaile Stevens that he would was more likely to impose supervision by the probation service through a community order than to send her to prison, as he adjourned the case for psychiatric reports.
Stevens, of Kirbymoorside, near Pickering, West Yorkshire, had denied the allegation during a two-day trial but was found guilty by a jury of eight men and women after a retirement of just over an hour.
The prosecution alleged that she had invaded the wedding ceremony being hosted by Peter Lees at his home in Wellington Heath, near Ledbury, on September 23 last year.
The pair had split amicably a few weeks before she turned up at the wedding.
He said she was acting bizarrely, dressed as a comedy cleaning woman with rubber gloves and a broom. After the ceremony, he visited her van and found she had a tattoo on her face and she was howling and hissing. It was as though she was possessed by the devil, he said.
He was concerned she was having mental health problems so called police and an ambulance. But she ran off cackling into woods and threatened to return later. When she came back, she beckoned him for an embrace and sunk her teeth into his ear as he bent towards her. The missing part of the ear was never found.
Stevens told the court that the bite was an accident and that Mr Lees was unhappy to see her because he had heard about her relationship with another man. He had lunged towards her in an aggressive manner when she went to confront him. The people at the wedding were not the type she would normally associate with so she had decided not to socialise with them and walked off into the woods.
Julian Harris, defending, said Stevens was suffering from mental health problems but recent psychiatric reports showed an improvement. Prosecutor James Dunstan said Mr Lees had been opposed to the case being brought to court.
Judge Thomas said medical evidence showed that Stevens was suffering from psychotic episodes but this was no defence in law to the wounding allegation. Releasing her on bail for a psychiatric report, he adjourned sentencing until September in Birmingham. Her behaviour would be monitored and he added: “We don’t send mentally ill people to prison unless we can avoid it.”