This is just unbelievable.
Imagine if you will, a man sticks a carving knife in his girlfriend's back while drunk, and then he walks off scot free from court. Difficult to imagine isn't it, but switch genders and it's a laugh riot, well it is on TV, whenever this is reported, it's done so as if the whole situation is comical.
If genders were reversed, and the woman who was stabbed said she loves her boyfriend and wants to marry him, feminists all over the place would be saying that he manipulated her, or she was under his control.
They would most certainly say that he was an abuser, a dangerous one at that.
Quote:
When his partner caught him with his trousers down in the kitchen in a clinch with another woman, Robert Goldthorpe needed a sharp excuse.
Unfortunately, the best the tree surgeon could come up with was that he was showing her a scar from a hedge trimmer on his thigh.
An enraged Candy Lyons didn't buy it - and then grabbed a knife from a drawer and stabbed him in the back.
The 38-year- old mother of two was prosecuted for wounding.
But yesterday she walked free from court after it was revealed the pair had kissed and made up. In fact, she and Mr Goldthorpe, 35, are planning to marry.
He proposed while she was on bail, and they kissed and hugged on the steps of Lewes Crown Court after Lyons was given a suspended sentence, allowing her to return home and plan their wedding.
Mr Goldthorpe, a former soldier, said: 'We are just so relieved it is now all over and we can move on and we are all back together again.'
Miss Lyons, who lives with him in Crawley, West Sussex, said: 'I love him so much and I'm looking forward to our future together.'
The court heard she flew into a rage in March after a night drinking at home with Mr Goldthorpe, her friend Laura Plumtree, 21, and Miss Plumtree's boyfriend, who was asleep in the lounge.
Lyons went upstairs to settle her three-year-old daughter, then came back down to hear 'panting sexual noises'.
She told police that night that she found them in the kitchen having sex.
'She had her legs wrapped around him,' she said.
'I went ballistic and we all started shouting.
'He tried to say he was showing her his scar.
'I grabbed a knife and stabbed him.
'She was re-arranging herself and looked very flustered.'
Prosecutor Dale Sullivan said Lyons 'had the impression in her mind that something sexually untoward was going on between the two'.
She stabbed Mr Goldthorpe - who was wearing his boxing shorts - narrowly missing his lung.
Miss Plumtree had earlier confided in Lyons as the two of them shared a bottle of vodka that she found Mr Goldthorpe attractive and would be happy to have sex with him, the court heard.
Martha Walsh, defending, said Lyons had from the start 'made full admissions and expressed her sincere and complete remorse'.
'This was a spontaneous act following a toxic mix of alcohol,' she said.
'She found them in what appeared to be a most compromising position.
'She put two and two together and made five and what followed was a moment of madness.'
Lyons was bailed on condition that she kept away from the family home and lived with relatives near Portsmouth.
But the court heard the couple, who have been together 11 years, are reconciled and plan to wed next March, almost a year to the day of the attack.
Mr Goldthorpe told the court: 'I love Candy dearly.
'I still love her after what happened. Part of it was my fault. To go to the extent of what happened that evening, it's not like Candy at all. She is normally calm.'
Judge Michael Lawson QC gave Lyons, who admitted wounding at a previous hearing, a 12-month jail sentence suspended for two years and 200 hours' unpaid work.
He said: 'It's clear that taking a knife to another human being is an offence which justifies imprisonment. Never ever pick up a knife in anger.'
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9th-July-2009
