This Is Guernsey

EX-Serviceman David Martin was sent to prison for two months for slapping a teenage youth he suspected of having attacked him weeks earlier. The 36-year-old admitted assaulting the 15-year-old when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court.

His advocate, David Domaille, said that Martin, of 21, Place Cerises, Le Grand Bouet, St Peter Port, was suffering from Gulf War syndrome and post-traumatic stress following service in the Gulf and Northern Ireland.

He said that he had asked to be referred to the Castel Hospital for help.

The assault was committed on 14 December.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was with friends outside Martin’s home.

The defendant came out carrying what the prosecution described as a wooden bat. He identified his victim and poked him in the chest with it.

Martin handed the bat to another of the youths and slapped the 15-year-old.

There were no visible injuries.

Advocate Domaille said that his client had prodded the boy twice with a stick that had broken away from a piece of fencing in his garden.

He added that Martin had ‘clipped the young lad around the ear’ because of an incident some weeks earlier in which his client had been knocked to the ground unconscious.

He said that the defendant believed that this boy was responsible for kicking him while he was on the ground.

Martin also admitted causing criminal damage to a cell door, for which he received a concurrent two-week sentence.

The court heard that he had done that on 15 October when he was in custody for an unrelated matter.

He had scratched some words on the door using a metal clip.

Assistant-Magistrate Philip Robey said that Martin, who has previous convictions, could not use his illness in mitigation each time he committed an offence.

He said that whatever he had suffered at the hands of the youth did not justify his taking the law into his own hands.

‘It’s simply the bullying of a 15-year-old boy by an adult,’ he said.

Mr Robey noted that Martin had missed appointments with the Probation Service and had unpaid fines. He said that because of that the court could not trust him to comply with any order.

In addition to the prison sentence, Martin was ordered to pay £51 compensation for the cell door.

A further charge of harassment was dismissed when the prosecution offered no evidence.