A WOMAN who repeatedly hits people trying to help her has been spared prison for the fifth time in a year.

Jack Forest Cave admitted assaulting three members of staff at a hostel where she was living.

Sarah Tyrer, prosecuting, said the 22-year-old jumped over a desk and pinned one staff member to the wall when she was told she couldn’t speak to an absent member of staff. Then she hit another two.

Fifteen minutes earlier she had been barred from the premises because of her violent behaviour there earlier that day.

Andrew Craven, defending, at York Magistrates Court, said Jack Forest Cave had been diagnosed as having an emotionally unstable personality disorder for which there was no cure or medication.

She had not taken a prescription drug to keep her calm in the hours before she attacked the three staff.

She was no longer allowed to live at the hostel and was homeless.

District judge Adrian Lower made her subject to a community order for the fifth time in 12 months.

He heard that she was given community orders in October last year for assault, on April 12 for assault, on May 14 for assault and on September 12 for breaching a criminal behaviour order that bars her from York Railway Station.

Cave, now of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to three assaults committed at the Ordnance Lane hostel for vulnerable people on October 8. She was given a 12-month community order for all the offences from October last year onwards with 30 days’ rehabilitative activities.