A man and woman jailed for roles in a "sordid and degrading" head-shaving attack on an unconscious victim have won appeals against their sentences.
Senior judges in Belfast ruled that the original five-year term imposed in January this year on Paul Joshua Balmer for scalping the woman was excessive.
Balmer, 42, will now serve four years, half in custody and half on licence.
Paula Wilson, 22, had her sentence reduced from 32 months to 24 months, half of which will be spent in prison.
Both were part of a gang involved in the incident at a flat in Ballymena, County Antrim, in May 2013.
Filmed
The court of appeal heard how the victim, a woman in her 30s, passed out after drinking two bottles of vodka.
When she woke, her eyebrows and half of the hair on her head had been shaved off.
She passed out again, later discovering she was completely bald.
Police later seized a mobile phone belonging to Wilson, formerly of Main Street in Cullybackey, County Antrim. She had filmed the attack on the device.
The footage revealed three men laughing and joking as they dry-shaved the victim.
At one point in the video, Balmer, with a previous address at Crosshill View in Kells, County Antrim, was heard to say: "There's no point in going easy on her."
An attempt was later made to set fire to the remainder of the victim's hair.
Wilson's phone contained images of the men posing beside the victim, the court heard.
Consideration
Balmer had denied involvement but was convicted at trial of two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and a further common assault.
The judge said the video showed Balmer had played a leading role in the attack.
But after "anxious consideration" the court allowed the appeal and imposed a new four-year term.
Wilson had admitted two counts of aiding and abetting assault occasioning actual bodily harm and aiding and abetting common assault.
The judge, sitting with two others, said Wilson had led a "purposeless and unstructured existence" fuelled by drink and drugs since leaving school.
He added that there was little doubt that the footage was to be shared on social media, "thereby reinforcing the degree of degradation" of the victim.
But the judges found a prospect of personal and social rehabilitation based on Wilson's youth and guilty plea.
Allowing her appeal, the court imposed a new two-year sentence, with half spent on licence.
- Published7 January 2015
