FOR nearly seven years Karen Meadows patrolled the streets of her community - because she cared.

As a volunteer special constable she gave up her own time on top of having a demanding job and raising her young family.

It was in her nature to get involved if she saw trouble brewing or intervene if she felt she could help calm a situation.

"I was interested in getting into the police force at first but I ended up loving being a special constable," she said.

"It was often the small things that were most rewarding; sorting out a teenager who just needed a good telling off from his parents, helping elderly people who were a bit vulnerable, things like that.

"I would be the first to help sort out a situation if I could see someone was in trouble."

But it was exactly that good nature that was to be Karen's undoing, her willingness to help and stand up to those who terrorised her community was her downfall.

Having given up the job she loved Karen now readily admits she is a different person from the one that stopped to help a man in trouble in August last year.

Along with giving up her volunteer job Karen, 38, has been forced to move house, has turned to anti-depressant drugs to help cope with her ordeal and has also undergone counselling.

It was her split second reaction to help a man she saw being attacked by a group of yobs that sparked a series of events that was to ultimately change her life.

It was one 17-year-old member of that group who Karen gave evidence against when the council and police applied for an antisocial behaviour order against him.

It was her decision to stand up and be counted that the teenager's friends, Alexander Dearden and Lance Baistow, took offence to.

And they made their feelings felt when they, along with a group of others, attacked her home in Weston after one of them saw Karen come out of her house by chance and recognised her.

It was a matter of days before the expected attack came. Karen was preparing for a night out when the first window was smashed. Her two boys, aged ten and six, were inside the house with her. After the attack they stayed away with friends.

She immediately cancelled her plans and instead asked some friends to come to her home. "It was frightening, I was scared, I don't mind admitting it. It was a mob of them all outside. My children didn't come back home for weeks afterwards because they were too scared."

When the mob came again later that night they came in force. Up to 20 yobs gathered outside Karen's Weston home hurling missiles of bricks and piping through the windows. When two of Karen's friends intervened they were punched and kicked to the ground.

Police were able to identify three of the mob, all of whom pleaded not guilty putting Karen, an office manager, through the trauma of giving evidence yet again in court.

Dearden, 18, and Baistow, 17, both of Barnfield Way, Weston, were found guilty of affray but cleared of taking revenge. A third 17-year-old was cleared of both charges.

Where Dearden was sentenced to ten months for his involvement Baistow was not sentenced to a single day as he was already serving four and a half years for robbery. A loophole in the law left the judge unable to do anything but pass no sentence at all.

At Southampton Crown Court Judge John Boggis QC said if he was able he would have given Baistow 20 months behind bars for the attack. He also lifted reporting restrictions allowing the Daily Echo to identify Baistow due to the seriousness of the offence.

Dearden, meanwhile, was sentenced to ten months by Judge Boggis, who told him: "I appreciate you may feel a burning sense of injustice as a result of your sentence compared with the other."

Karen said the loophole needed addressing and her MP John Denham, a former Home Office minister, has also pledged to look into the situation.

However, Mr Denham said that the overall result of the case still left the public protected as Baistow would ultimately serve the same time in prison.

As a result of her ordeal Karen lives a different kind of life now. She no longer works as a special constable and freely admits she has walked by as trouble flared on a number of occasions since the attack, for fear of getting involved and what could follow.

"A couple of times, as bad as it sounds, I have seen a situation where I could have stopped and I didn't. I just don't want to get involved, not after what I have been through. That is not me at all. I have completely changed.

"The sentencing problem sickens me, it means he has not been punished for what he did to me."

Despite her own experience she said she would still encourage others to report crime.

"I didn't want this to force me out of the job I loved but I had to. Having said that I wouldn't want people not to report crime. It is important to do that so people like Dearden and Baistow don't get away with it."

Investigating officer in the case PC Jason Osmond said: "The whole thing has had a devastating impact on the life of Karen and I, too, am frustrated, like the courts and Karen, about the sentencing problem.

"But importantly the case has ended with convictions. It is only because of Baistow's bad record that he didn't receive any addition to it.

"However, Dearden with a fairly good record, did get sent to prison for ten months.

"It is important that the public know that people are found and convicted for carrying out such attacks."