THE devastating effects of Class A drugs on society in Bournemouth have been outlined by a Crown Court judge.

Sentencing three violent addicts for horrific attacks, Judge Roger Jarvis said anyone who doubts the seriousness of taking drugs should hear details of the cases.

And he told the defendants: “You three have ruined your own lives through your drug abuse and you have impacted in an appalling way upon your victims.”

Bournemouth Crown Court heard how mother-of-four Andree Carter turned on a friend in a “drug-fuelled, frenzied attack”, beating him around the head and body with a chair leg in his own home. When police eventually found the 50-year-old man slumped on his bed, there was so much blood the officers thought he was dead, the court heard.

Carter, 39, of Windsor Road, Bournemouth admitted grievous bodily harm with intent following the incident at her victim's flat in Grosvenor Gardens, Boscombe, in November last year.

Co-defendant Matthew Edwards, 28, of Christchurch Road, Boscombe East admitted grievous bodily harm without intent and theft after the court heard he punched the man. He also stole the man’s television as he and Carter left him for dead.

Judge Jarvis also heard that Carter and 30-year-old mum-of-two Victoria Nunney attacked a deaf woman in an unprovoked assault in Boscombe a month earlier.

Their victim was punched around the head and body after being dragged into an alleyway and her mobile phone was stolen. Both pleaded guilty to a public order offence and Nunney admitted stealing the phone.

Sentencing for the attack on the man, Judge Jarvis told Carter: "It was a drug-fuelled, frenzied attack.”

The court heard the victim had befriended Carter and she had been living at the flat. Judge Jarvis said: “He believed that you and he were friends and this was the way he was treated.”

The judge told Edwards: “He was helpless and you calmly took his television. To say that was shabby would be generous to you.”

Of the attack on the woman, he told Carter and Nunney, who now lives in Hastings, “You bullied her, assaulted her and frightened her.”

Carter was sentenced to six years in jail and Edwards to two years and four months. Nunney received a one-year supervision order with a residence order and a drug rehabilitation requirement.