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A protective mum who hit her teenage daughter for secretly letting a boyfriend into their Cardiff home has been allowed to walk free from court to spend Christmas with her.

The mother lost her temper and lashed out at the 15-year-old after reading her Facebook page but was given a suspended jail sentence following a plea for leniency from the girl herself.

The 31-year-old was said to have been upset and angry because she didn’t want the only child she has “struggled” to bring up alone to make the same mistakes.

Cardiff Crown Court heard she had dragged the girl from her bed and beat her with a shoe when she got home from her catering job, in the early hours.

Prosecutor Tony Trigg said: “She woke her, dragged her from bed, picked up a high-heel wedge shoe and began repeatedly hitting her with it.”

The girl later confided in a teacher why she had missed the following day at school and social services were called in by the head.

Police became involved but in a letter to officers, which Judge Stephen Hopkins QC described as “articulate and intelligent”, she tried to get the case dropped.

The’ pupil, who is expected to go to university, said she had only wanted to scare her mother.

“But it escalated out of my hands,” she wrote to the police who handed the letter to prosecutors.

The girl, who has been granted anonymity by the courts, meaning her mother cannot be named, was put on the child protection register after the beating came to light but was later removed from it.

Judge Hopkins said not to accept the daughter’s version of what happened would have been an affront to justice, particularly as she also told police about being slapped, hit with a belt when she was in primary school and clouted with a broom just the weekend before.