Two jailed for Clifton Park gang attack

Sam Brown and Sean Scales, both aged 21, led the attack on 16-year-old Matthew Housley, who was kicked and punched in the head after being surrounded by 25 people. 

They both admitted assault occasioning actual bodily harm and were sentenced on Friday after changing their pleas on the day their trial was due to begin at Sheffield Crown Court.

Brown, who committed the assault two weeks after being released from a youth detention centre on licence, was sentenced to 27 months in prison, and Scales, of Studmoor Road, Kimberworth Park, to 21 months.

Recorder Mr Simon Batiste said: “This was a wholly unprovoked attack. 

“It was a pack attack on a young boy who had done absolutely nothing wrong.”

Ms Rachel Hughes, prosecuting, said some female friends of Mr Housley’s had been sitting at the bandstand before the assault on June 14 last year when they were subjected to some rude comments by some other men.

Mr Housley was sitting with the girls at 7pm, around two hours later, when the defendants and about 25 teeangers aged 15 to 19, both male and female, approached him.

Brown and Scales, along with around seven accomplices, wrongly accused Mr Housley of being the person who had been rude to the girls.

Mr Housley was “petrified”, Ms Hughes said, and told them: “Don’t hit me, I don’t want to fight you.”

Brown, of Scarborough Crescent, Maltby, then hit Mr Housley in the face, knocking him unconscious.

When he came round, the court heard, the teenager felt himself being pulled around by his coat before further blows rained down on him and Scales kicked him in the head. 

The attack ended when a witness called the police and the men ran off.

In a victim impact statement read to the court, Mr Housley said he still suffered from headaches and dizzy spells and the assault had greatly affected his confidence, leading to him no longer going into Rotherham alone.

Brown, who has ten convictions for 22 offences including several for violence, claimed to have little recollection of the assault because he had been drunk.

The court heard Scales, who has four convictions for four offences including burglary and public order offences, came “from a good family background and may have been led into a bad group”.