A teenage girl who was left in a wheelchair after a brutal attack on the street is furious after her attacker walked free.
Nikki
Brewer, 18, was pulled back by the hair by the drunken thug and punched
so hard she was thrown into the air as she returned home from a night
out in Colchester, Essex.

Her attacker verbally abused the young woman and spat at her before calmly walking away.


Yet despite the violence being caught
on CCTV, the 31-year-old man who was arrested afterwards was never
charged because of a loophole that puts a time limit on making a
prosecution.
Ms Brewer, who now works for the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre in Colchester, suffered life-changing injuries after the incident and has been left with constant back pain.

She often has to resort to a wheelchair to get around because she tires so easily.

The charity worker has also been diagnosed with a
degenerative disease that affects her nerves, which doctors have said can be
brought on by a trauma injury. 'It is so frustrating and the law is silly,' she said.

'What was the point in making an arrest if there was no chance of prosecution?

'When I first complained to police, nothing happened and now I have run out of time to get justice.'

Ms Brewer was attacked on the high street in April 2009.

But after a series of delays to proceedings, police were forced to release the suspect without charge.

Both Essex CPS and the police denied responsibility for the failure to prosecute.

He was initially arrested on suspicion of common assault because police did not realise how serious Ms Brewer's injuries were.

An Essex Police spokesman said the force then decided to take an advice file for actual bodily harm assault to the county's Crown Prosecution Service.
He continued: 'The CPS said there was insufficient
evidence for an ABH charge and only enough for one of common assault -
but by the time we got to this point, it was too late to proceed with a
prosecution for common assault.'There
is a six-month limit to make a charge for common law offences. If the
man had been arrested on suspicion of ABH instead, there would not have
been a limit.But in another confusing twist, the CPS claim they never even saw a file from the police, and merely gave advice on the matter.

'Nothing was ever logged in our
system, so unless the police can give a date that this happened and
person who it was handed to, we have no evidence this happened,' said a
CPS spokeswoman.


'They would know the law on the time limit, so they could have decided not to submit anything at all.'

Ms Brewer - now 21 - said she has been left feeling let down by the justice system.


She added: 'It has been so frustrating to have to go through it all again only for nothing to come of it.

'Before this happened, I had never had back pain and I now spend a lot of time at pain clinics trying to help.'

Doctors have diagnosed her with defective degenerative disc and multi-level facet hypertrophy, which means her enlarged joints are now pushing on her nerves, leaving her in agony.

Inspector
Paul Butcher of Essex Police said: 'This was a very unusual and
disgraceful attack on a young woman which was totally unprovoked.'
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