A dad has branded as a "joke" the sentence dished out to a teenage yob who threw a wooden post spiked with nails at his head.

Lout Michael Donohoe was yesterday sentenced to 60 hours community service and ordered to pay £400 compensation for the assault last year.

Dad-of-two Jonathan Wright is still suffering hearing problems six months after the attack and has a scar where he was slashed across the face with the makeshift club.

Mr Wright, 33, still needs hospital treatment for his hearing, and today told of his fury at the sentence meted out to his attacker.

The assault happened after he had tried to stop Donohoe swearing in front of his young children as he played football with them in his garden.

Donohue, who was with two other youths, picked up the 18-inch fence post and hurled it at Mr Wright gashing him across his head. His young daughter is still traumatised by seeing him being taken away by ambulance.

Yesterday, Donohoe, 19, from Woodhouse Walk, Woodhouse, Keighley, who has a history of violence, was sentenced at Bradford Crown Court for the assault after he had admitted wounding at a hearing last year when sentence was deferred.

Mr Wright said: "The sentence is a joke. I've been suffering with hearing problems ever since and he gets away with that.

"I am going back to hospital for them to look again at my ear. I have still a lot of discomfort.

"As for the compensation, that won't go a long way and how is he going to pay me?

"Sixty hours is not going to be a deterrent - it's just a slap on the wrist. He is just being told to go away and don't do it again."

The attack was sparked after Mr Wright, a construction worker, told Donohoe off for the foul language he was using in front of Mr Wright's then three-year-old daughter Chloe and younger son Thomas as they played in the garden.

But despite his disgust at the sentence, Mr Wright of Royd House Road, Long Lee, Keighley, said he would still act in the same way to protect his wife and children.

Mrs Wright, 25, said their daughter Chloe, who was now almost five, had been traumatised by the experience, especially seeing her daddy taken away in an ambulance.

"We try not to talk about it but she does call it the night that daddy died because she saw him taken in an ambulance," she said.

Her daughter had needed counselling and occasionally still burst into tears if she recalled the incident.

The original hearing in August heard how Mr Wright was playing football in the garden of his home with his children, when he heard Donohoe and two of his friends swearing close by.

Mr Wright was "shocked and disgusted" that his children had to listen to the language and when his little girl asked what one of the swear words meant, he went to confront Donohoe.

He asked them to move away but as they did, Donohoe picked up the 18-inch fence post and threw it at Mr Wright.

It hit him on the head, leaving a three-inch gash just above his left ear, which needed seven stitches.

He also suffered bleeding inside the ear canal, temporarily deafening him and had to have a clot removed.

That hearing was also told that Donohoe had three previous convictions for assault when he attacked a train conductor and assaulted two women in a club.

His solicitor, Stephen Couch, had pleaded for Donohoe's sentence to be deferred because he was planning on taking a plastering course in the September and to see how he did with a community rehabilitation order that was already in place.

Yesterday, Mr Couch said his client had not reoffended during the deferment, but had been unable to complete a plastering course after dislocating his shoulder in November.

Passing sentence, Judge Benson told Donohoe: "You have a disturbing record of violence."

The community sentence would begin once he had completed a similar sentence imposed for other matters.