A DRINKER who smashed a glass over the head of a terminally-ill cancer patient has escaped a jail sentence.

Lisa Jane Casey, who herself has had breast cancer and recovered, hit Donald Fraser after an incident between them in the Dick Turpin pub in Moorcroft Road, Woodthorpe, a court heard.

Casey said that the elderly man had groped her after she offered to help him with paperwork relating to his illness. After hearing evidence from her and other witnesses, Judge Jim Spencer QC gave her a community order with 12 months' supervision at Doncaster Crown Court.

Casey, 36, of Middleton Road, Acomb, had admitted causing Mr Fraser actual bodily harm at an earlier hearing.

Judge Spencer said the prosecution could not prove that Casey had not been groped. He sentenced her on the basis that she had been touched sexually and had believed at the time it was deliberate.

Mr Fraser did not give evidence. At a hearing last month, before York Crown Court, prosecutor Rob Galley said Mr Fraser was terminally ill with cancer and had not given a police statement.

The pub's landlord, John Reid, said Casey had gone to his pub in Moorcroft, Woodthorpe, on March 27.

He had stopped serving her alcohol after she had had two or three vodkas with cokes because he thought she was drunk.

Shortly after she left the pub, Casey had come "storming" back and had been very angry. She poked Mr Fraser in the chest and walked out. Four minutes later, she returned, again very angry and punched him six times.

Another customer, Susan Gibson, restrained her, but Casey grabbed Mr Fraser's glass and "smashed" it over his head.

She was taken outside and screamed she had been sexually attacked. Casey, who conquered breast cancer seven years earlier, said from the witness box that she had been wearing a hoodie, not a blouse. She and Mr Fraser had been talking about cancer.

She had been drinking cider and lager mixes and denied that she was drunk. She said she had been crying in the ladies' toilets because she was "skint".

As she put her arm round Mr Fraser to say goodbye, he groped her, she said.

She said she told him: "What gives you the right to touch me like that?"