Garden Batter

 

Police have banged to rights a crazed loon who battered a young boy in Devon. Joseph Love, 54, was a recluse who never left his home, the kind of person who kept his giro payment dates post-it noted on the fridge. Incidentally, he is in receipt of Employment Support Allowance and has been for well over a decade, since he lost his job as professional paint drying watcher (this is a real vacancy which supervises painted rooms). He had a stained duvet nailed to the inside of his front living room window. Although it’s hard to believe, he has a previous conviction for suffocating rabbits in a DVD player loading tray. Not to mention his conviction for causing actual bodily harm by throwing biscuits. The judge described Love’s heart as a ‘holed out star’.

            The young boy was in tears when he was getting battered by Love, reported to have happened because the boy’s football smashed the window in question. Roland Maran was only 15 years old at the time of beating.

            Love has a habit of battering young boys. He escaped court on a technicality last time after someone retrieving a ball from his garden crushed his flowers. He lives on a corner house by a park and sees a lot of ‘ball activity’.

            The first victim got leathered, wasted and pasted before he got battered. His dad, who hadn’t been tall enough to lean over the fence and witness proceedings, shouted above the howls of pain: “Take your stinking paws off of my son!” The lad had been so traumatised that he developed a speech impediment, started wetting his own undies, refused to answer his phone, and didn’t want to play out anymore. The father insists it has ruined his son’s childhood, and that he can give evidence of past history against Love for Mr. Maran Senior.

            Love’s strange wife was charged with complicity for holding down the young boy as Love battered him. She possessed a cricket bat and a sharpened iron file. It is noted that Lizabeth Love (without the E) often laid booby traps in the garden for kids who were looking for balls to fall prey to. One neighbour said that one night, glinting in the moonlight, she perceived a giant man-sized mousetrap, a lasso hanging from a tree, and a hole in the earth covered up with tarpaulin.

The couple have both been detained in the same mixed prison. Lizabeth has gone on record saying that she is ‘ecstatic’ at this close connection to her husband, saying that now she doesn’t have to write long distance letters to communicate with the felon.

“I might even bump into him in the chapel,” she adds. “Then we will be free to talk as man and wife without getting persecuted by the British press for doing nothing more than reacting to horrible little nippers who keep trespassing on our property. They don’t listen to conventional means and there’s only one way to deal with them: Batter, batter, and batter.”

Length of detention: 2 years 6 months

© The Anonymous Journalist 2023