Ex-councillor bit lover on nose during drunken hotel row

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

A former councillor attacked a woman he was having an affair with during a drunken row in a hotel, a court heard. Father-of-three Damien Druce, 43, bit the victim's nose and forced his fingers down her throat, CheshireLive reports.

He received a suspended prison sentence at Inner London Crown Court on Thursday (April 28). The pair had secretly met-up during the business trip in a room at the London Central Bank Hotel on St Swithin's Lane after an evening drinking wine, the court was told.

Former Cheshire East councillor Druce, of Old Mill Lane, Macclesfield, pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting the victim causing her actual bodily harm, on December 9, 2020.

Three further counts of assaulting her at the same hotel on November 2, at NOX Hotel-Waterloo on November 25, and her Salford home on October 9 were dropped by the prosecution. Read more: MP accused of 'watching porn' in parliament QUITS - but insists actions began after 'looking at tractors' "The background on the Crown's description is this was a volatile relationship," said Judge Freya Newbery. "She was someone you had been having, to use the old-fashioned word, an affair with. "This was a work-based relationship and it was not one-way." The court heard the victim was quite capable of being volatile and they drank together 'and that never assisted that situation.' The judge added: "You were both staying in the same hotel in that working relationship and having got back after drinking wine a trivial argument started, with anger on both sides.