A PATIENT at Stockton Hall psychiatric unit assaulted staff three times, York Crown Court heard.

The patient, who calls himself Tik Tok, was angry he couldn’t use the telephone when he wanted to.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, made a hospital order with a restriction preventing him being released unless the Secretary of State for Justice decides he is not a danger to the public.

The judge said staff should be able to work without fear of injury.

Tok, 24, admitted one racially aggravated assault, six assaults, and one count of criminal damage.

He committed the first offence within days of a conditional discharge at York Crown Court last August for causing actual bodily harm and assault to staff. He admitted breaching the conditional discharge.

Helen Chapman, prosecuting, said on October 26 Tok protested about the telephone. He called the staff member racial names, punched him in the head and kicked him.

He kicked and spat at another employee who came to help. Taken to a seclusion unit, he assaulted two more staff members.

A day earlier, he vandalised two chairs. Two months earlier he assaulted three members of staff.

None was seriously injured.

There was no mitigation but the defence handed in two psychiatrists’ reports agreeing he had a mental disorder and needed confining to a secure unit.