A PARTIALLY-sighted grandmother has told how she is scared to go out after being attacked in the street after a woman was jailed over her ordeal.

Dawn Penney, 55, from Bexhill, was walking with her guide dog Wallace when she was repeatedly punched in the head by Roxanne Cole in October last year.

Two months later, Cole’s mother Julia Foulds confronted the victim and yelled abuse at her.

Ms Penney had only been in Sussex for four weeks after moving from Lancashire when she was attacked in Eastbourne.

She said: “I can’t go out and do things I used to because my confidence is just shot to pieces, but I know that will come back.

“I had never felt vulnerable in my whole life.

“I used to take Wallace out for 10 miles a day, but I can’t do that anymore.”

But instead of feeling resentment towards her tormentors, she told The Argus she feels sorry for Cole and her mother.

She added: “I don’t want her to go through life feeling guilty, I just want her to take responsibility.

“I’ve never felt resentment, I was just shocked, and I was really worried about my dog – we’re a pair, we’re a team.

“I’ve thought about it a lot and I just really can’t justify why they did it to me – we have to live together in this society.

“I would never judge anyone – it’s not my job to – so I don’t understand when others do, but as long as it doesn’t happen again then I have helped.

“In the end I just felt sorry for her.

“Unfortunately, this is what happens to people, but when I hear about a lady being stabbed I think to myself it could have been a lot worse.”

When Ms Penney, 55, was initially offered restorative justice, she turned it down, but is now considering meeting her attackers face to face to ask them questions she has yet been able to answer.

She said: “It’s very difficult because I cannot explain why it has happened, but a positive has come out of it.

“I’m a mother and a grandmother myself and if I was in her position with a daughter doing that I would have been horrified, it’s just no way to go through life.”