The probation service told a court she ‘doesn’t attend appointments’ and is ‘verbally aggressive when she calls’
Luck finally ran out for a violent and aggressive young woman when she was jailed after two separate nasty attacks where she viciously “glassed” a man outside a pub and later “bottled” a woman during another pub confrontation. Blaze Jessop had earlier twice narrowly avoided prison by being given two separate suspended sentences.
In one attack, she “glassed” a man, causing a horrific and “devastating” wound to his face, in a “random and unprovoked” attack outside a pub. During a later attack, she caused serious face injuries to a woman after she badly “over-reacted” during violent scenes at a bar after midnight, Hull Crown Court heard.
Jessop, 22, of the Greatfield estate, in Hull, admitted breaching a 16-month suspended sentence imposed on June 18 last year for inflicting grievous bodily harm on a man in Bridlington on April 9, 2023. She also breached a 10-month suspended sentence, with 20 days’ rehabilitation, made on June 6 this year for an offence of wounding a woman on October 19 last year. She also admitted three offences of assaulting women.
Jane Rapin, prosecuting, said that sentence on the second matter had originally been deferred in December last year for six months, again to give Jessop a chance. Jessop admitted failing to attend for probation service appointments on July 21 and August 8 this year.
The probation service told the court: “She doesn’t attend appointments. She is verbally aggressive when she calls. She has been offered multiple appointments.
“She just lacks engagement and constantly undermines what her probation practitioner is trying to do for her. She doesn’t seem to engage at all. They have given her ample chances on both orders.”
Ben Hammersley, mitigating, said that he could not “shy away from the lack of engagement” shown by Jessop. “She does very much wish to engage,” said Mr Hammersley. “She wants to work with the probation service. She asks the court to give her what she knows would be her last chance to engage. Prison would set her 10 steps back from the progress that she has made.” Jessop had a young son.
Judge Mark Bury said: “She is not doing what she says that she wants to do. She is spurning it all. At the end of the day, she is not complying and there is, on the face of it, little more that can be tried. Everything has been tried.”
Judge Bury told Jessop: “The court – and you must appreciate this – has in the past done its best to try to rehabilitate you and keep you out of prison but you haven’t shown the commitment that you are required to show. The court and the probation service have tried their best to help you.
“The reality now is that the probation service takes the view that there is little else to be tried with you. The time has come where you must serve a sentence of imprisonment.” Jessop, who had been on bail, was jailed for one year. “You have to understand that, when the court makes an order and suspends imprisonment, on condition that there are community requirements for you to attend, you have to attend them,” said Judge Bury. “If the court just allows you to get away with it, there is no point passing suspended sentences.”
The previous hearing in June last year – when Jessop was given the first suspended sentence – was told that she viciously “glassed” the man, causing a horrific and “devastating” wound to his face, in a “random and unprovoked” attack outside a pub after midnight. She had been drinking before she suddenly shoved a glass into the victim’s face after a large group of people gathered outside the pub.
The glass smashed as it hit the victim and he was left bleeding heavily. He suffered terrible scarring on his face and the attack badly affected him and his family.
The man had been out for the evening in Bridlington. The incident happened at about midnight after he left The George pub in Prince Street. There was a large group of people outside.
Jessop hit the man on the side of his face with a glass, which smashed on impact. The victim was taken to the Accident and Emergency unit at Scarborough Hospital.
He had suffered a 12cm wound to his face and he needed 15 stitches for that and one to his left ear. The man had been left with permanent scarring. Jessop, who had been drinking, was later arrested.
The victim later said that he had been left with a scar of five to six inches down the left side of his face. Sometimes, when he was talking, he got what felt like an electric shock in his jaw.
He did not now feel comfortable in crowded areas and he feared that someone might attack him. It was a “random and unprovoked” attack and he feared a similar incident.
He was worried that, if it could happen to him, it might happen to his children. The man’s two-year-old son called the scarring “Daddy’s poorly” because the boy did not understand what it was.
The incident had a huge impact on the victim’s family and they were concerned about him being randomly attacked again. “I lost a lot of blood and was very weak for some time after,” said the man.
At a later hearing in December last year, the court was told that the second violent incident, involving the women, happened after there had been arguments earlier that night involving Jessop, her group of people and others who were on the scene in and around Hull bars. Jessop claimed that the woman who was hit with the bottle approached her first from behind and that she felt something. Jessop swung round and hit her in the face with a bottle that she had been holding.
The victim apparently did not know what she was hit with but it was believed that it was a bottle. It was thought to have smashed on impact, causing nasty cuts to the woman’s face.
Jessop “over-reacted” during the disturbance and “acted on instinct” by using the bottle to assault the other woman. She claimed that she felt she was under threat at the time. Jessop was restrained by a doorman.
Her drinking had, at the time of the latest offence, been “just ridiculous” and she had “got a temper” but she was very remorseful for what she had done.