Middlesbrough woman jailed for disfiguring reveller outside pub

Lorna Goulding was jailed at Teesside Crown Court

A "dangerous" woman who disfigured a reveller and threatened a social worker with a machete has been jailed.

Lorna Goulding, 26, slashed a woman in the face outside a Middlesbrough bar in January 2022, Teesside Crown Court heard.

Months later, the mother-of-three went to a social worker's home with the machete and challenged her to a fight.

Goulding was jailed for three years and three months after admitting wounding and possession of a bladed article.

'Random attack'

The court heard the first victim had been at The Central pub in Middlesbrough celebrating a family birthday on 22 January 2022 when she went outside for a cigarette.

She witnessed doorstaff turning away an aggressive young man and she called at him to calm him down, the court heard.

Goulding, who was with the man, lunged her hand towards the woman cutting a gash across her face, the court heard.

Goulding's barrister Jamie Adams said she had a key in her hand which caused the wound, but Judge Jonathan Carroll said the injury was "considerably more consistent with a blade", although no weapon was found.

"It was a severe wound and has left her with a permanent injury," the judge said, adding it was "just a random attack".

'Significant antipathy'

In May 2022, a social worker was working in her garden when she heard a man and two women shouting at her, the court heard.

The trio, one of whom was Goulding, walked on to the woman's driveway at which point the defendant pulled an 18in (46cm)-long machete from her sleeve and challenged the woman to a fight.

Judge Carroll said the reason for Goulding's "significant antipathy" was the woman's profession, adding Goulding blamed social workers for having her children taken off her rather than her "own failings".

In mitigation, Mr Adams said Goulding, of Rossett Walk in Middlesbrough, had had a "quite terrible" life which saw her growing up in care and starting to use drugs including heroin at a young age after being sexually abused.

He said she enjoyed a brief period of stability with a partner, but that ended in 2020 when she found him dead in their bed which "completely made her go to pieces".

Mr Adams said she had spent "the best part of the last two years" in prison for other offences which had "done her the world of good".

He said the bar attack and machete threat were committed during a drug-induced "suspended state of reality" and she was now "very shocked and shamed by the harm" she had caused the women.

Judge Carroll said he recognised Goulding had had a difficult life, but she was "beginning to build up a pattern of knife-related offences", adding she was a "dangerous" woman.