A THUG who repeatedly hit a defenceless York woman with a hammer during a night-time attack in her own bedroom and also burgled a home where children were alone has had his total sentence cut on appeal.

Helen Godfrey, 55, was sleeping in her upstairs bedroom when she awoke to see Liam Green, 21, near her bed, London’s Appeal Court was told.

She leapt out of bed to tackle him, and in the struggle that followed, Green hit her three times on the head with a hammer.

As she lay on the floor with her head and face bleeding, he rummaged through her bedroom drawers, ran downstairs and searched there for a while before running off with her purse, laptop and other items.

She was taken to hospital by ambulance and found to have deep cuts to her head and face, including one laceration which had to be stapled shut.

In a statement, she said the attack had left her in “extreme terror”

and her confidence had been severely affected by the burglary.

Green, of Frederick Street, Bishop Auckland, who also raided a County Durham home where two children were alone, was handed a total of 11 years’ detention at York Crown Court last December last year after admitting aggravated burglary and burglary.

But now three senior judges at the Appeal Court have upheld a sentence challenge, cutting his total sentence to nine-and-a-half years in a young offenders’ institution by reducing his sentence for the County Durham burglary from two and a half years to one year.

However Judge Rook, sitting with Lady Justice Sharp and Mr Justice Blake, said: “It must be made clear, however, that nothing we have said diminishes in any way the seriousness of the aggravated burglary and indeed the eight-and-a-half year sentence in respect of that matter remains.”