A father who slapped a teenage boy outside school gates after accusing him of bullying his daughter has avoided an immediate prison sentence.
Nathan O’Mara, 38, confronted the boy outside a school in Penarth, South Wales. He told the court he did not intend to assault the teenager but wanted to send “some sort of message.” However, he said the situation escalated when the boy “squared up” to him and the “red mist” descended.
O’Mara denied assault and claimed he acted in self-defence, but a jury at Newport Crown Court found him guilty following a trial. He was sentenced to 44 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, and was also made subject to a restraining order.
Recorder Ben Blakemore told him: “You pulled up in your car, driving unnecessarily aggressively, and approached him in order to threaten him off your daughter.
“At that point I am not sure you planned to assault him. What changed was something you hadn’t anticipated, he stood up to you. He squared up and he didn’t step backwards when you stepped forwards. Matters heightened the way matters can do when machismo kicks in.
“You wanted to assert yourself and frighten him off. You struck him with an open hand to the face, that was unnecessary. That occurred because you were raising the heat in the confrontation and trying to get your message across in a different way.”
In a victim impact statement, the schoolboy said: “It’s affected my life at school, since the incident I have been isolated from friends and other students spread rumours. They portrayed me to be something I’m not.”
Defence counsel David Pinnell said O’Mara, of Sully near Cardiff, had a positive relationship with his daughter.
Passing sentence, Recorder Blakemore criticised O’Mara’s decision to take matters into his own hands. “You went about things entirely the wrong way. Rather than using channels available to you through school or the police if needed, you decided you’d deal with things yourself and in your own way,” he said.
