Oxford student who stabbed boyfriend could avoid prison because she has an ‘extraordinary’ talent

An Oxford student who slashed her boyfriend with a knife may escape jail time because the judge thinks she is too clever to go to prison.


24-year-old Lavinia Woodward is an aspiring heart surgeon and is so brilliant she has published articles in medical journals. So despite the fact that she physically abused Thomas Fairclough then stabbed him, she will most likely be given a lenient sentence.

The judge said it was "too severe" to lock up Lavina after she stabbed Thomas Fairclough in the leg with a breadknife and hurled a laptop, glass and jam jar at him. Judge Ian Pringle suggested he will waive the usual prison term when he sentences her so that her career will not get damaged. 

He said:

"It seems to me that if this was a one-off, a complete one-off. To prevent this extraordinary able young lady from not following her long-held desire to enter the profession she wishes to, would be a sentence which would be too severe. What you did will never, I know, leave you but it was pretty awful, and normally it would attract a custodial sentence, whether it is immediate or suspended.

A friend of Lavinia also agreed with the judge, revealing that her friend is really brilliant and could be on the way to winning a Nobel Prize.

"They see her as someone worth the risk of having around. She might win a Nobel Prize, she is that intelligent," the friend said.

Lavinia admitted a charge of unlawful wounding at Oxford Crown Court and immediately after the hearing, she flew to Barbados. She will be returning to Oxford’s historic Christ Church college in the next academic year.

Lavinia met her ex, a Cambridge PhD student, on Tinder. However, on the night of September 30th, the former couple had a heated quarrel. When Thomas threatened to call Lavinia's mother via Skype, she went ballistic and punched him in the face before picking up a bread knife and stabbing him in the leg. The court heard that Lavinia had a very troubled life, battling addiction and suffering abuse by her previous partner.

Though she is likely to avoid jail, she had been slapped with a restraining order and told to stay drug-free and not to re-offend. She will be sentenced on September 25. Meanwhile, on hearing he Judge's statement, Mark Brooks, of the ManKind Initiative which supports male domestic violence victims, said : 

"The judge’s comments are unacceptable. This is domestic abuse against a man and the sympathy should be for him."