Spurned reveller beat up six women who snubbed her advances

McLeod, 28, “misread the signs” she thought she was getting from the women who were innocently dancing together in a group in Loons in Victoria Road.

She walked over to two of the women, grabbed their faces and kissed them, going berserk when they pushed her away.

The six women were left beaten and bruised, feeling afraid to go out in public.

The woman had her nose burst by one of McLeod’s wild punches and her injuries developed into a condition which lasted for months.

In a victim statement the woman told Teesside magistrates: “This happened for no reason at all.

“I can’t understand how a person can have such hate inside them to physically attack other people. I had to make up reasons for my injuries.

“I am thankful for just one thing - although I suffered this horrendous attack I know that it was in no way personal against me.”

Prosecutor Lynn Dalton said the woman had felt her nose “pop and start pouring with blood” as McLeod lashed out indiscriminately.

McLeod, who lives with her same-sex partner in Hartlepool, admitted six charges of assault and two of sexual assault arising from the unwanted kisses she planted on the women.

One of her victims described how McLeod grabbed her by the head and neck and kissed her face, and she was pummelled to the floor when she struggled.

Another of the women told police: “It felt as though I had been punched by a man.”

John Relton, mitigating, said: “Due to some Dutch courage she misread the signs and was influenced into making making sexual advances which upset these ladies.

“The ladies involved took appropriate evasive action and my client knows she should have walked away, but she did not, she reacted.

“There was a coming together of these ladies’ friends, coming to help them and she hit out.”

He said that when she was working as a safety worker in the petrochemical industry she was well paid.

Chairman of the bench Martin Slimings told her she had carried out “multiple, persistent, unprovoked assaults.”

McLeod was given a 17-week prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered to pay £150 costs to each victim.