Jealous Huddersfield man bit off part of girlfriend’s ear

Michael David Missin, 48 of Eldon Road, Marsh, Huddersfield was unanimously found guilty by a jury at Leeds Crown Court today of causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Jane Hamilton on April 18.

He was also convicted of a common assault on her friend Kelly Pearson.

The court heard a domestic violence prevention order had been made against Missin after previous allegations of violence at Miss Hamilton’s home in Lindley.

Jailing Missin after the verdicts, Judge Robert Bartfield said on the day concerned he had ignored that order and continued his relationship with Miss Hamilton, the two of them going out drinking together.

By early evening Missin was “drunk and aggressive” but the trouble was sparked in a pub “by the fact that a man paid a compliment to Jane Hamilton which you resented.”

Missin left the public house and went back to her home alone. “You told her son she had been cheating on you and that in my judgment is a reference to what had happened in the public house. She hadn’t been cheating on you but you resented the compliment paid to her.”

The judge said Missin threatened he was going to stab and shoot her. When she did return about an hour later the “worse for drink” with her friend Kelly “you were still angry and you bodily threw Kelly out of the house, literally into the road outside.”

He said Missin claimed at trial he had only escorted her out by agreement “but the jury rejected that.”

“Once alone in the house with Jane you carried out a savage assault on her which was by way of punishment for her temerity receiving a compliment from a man in a public house.”

“You began it by dragging her around the room by her hair, pulling her hair out. Then you stamped on her, breaking her arm and then, probably in the long term most serious of all in my judgment you took the deliberate decision to disfigure her by biting her ear.

“That’s when I am satisfied you bit off a piece of her ear so men wouldn’t compliment her again, to teach her a lesson.”

He said when the police arrived Missin had “feigned concern for her cradling her and wishing her better.”

“Your defence to the jury of never having laid a finger on her, that she must have fallen over or somebody else must have done this was ridiculous and understandably rejected by the jury.”

Judge Bartfield said it was a cowardly attack and that Missin was cowardly for not owning up to what he had done. He had also shown no remorse for what was a “repeated and sustained assault.”

He said Miss Hamilton was hoping for plastic surgery on her ear but that was not guaranteed.

There had to be a significant sentence, he said, adding: “You decided you were going to do this and waited for her and you used your teeth as a weapon to tear her ear.”

In addition to the 10-year jail sentence for the offence on Miss Hamilton he imposed a four month concurrent sentence for the assault on her friend and ordered Missin to pay the £1200 criminal courts charge.