A DARWEN woman was blinded in one eye when she was attacked by her boyfriend in a hotel room, a jury was told.

The prosecution at Preston Crown Court alleges that the "catastrophic" injury may have been caused by Derek Bowes's two-inch-long thumb nail.

He is accused of violence towards Sharon Alison Yates in a room at Fleetwood's New Boston Hotel.

She did not make a complaint to police until she left Bowes over a year later.

Bowes, 41, of Spinney Close, St Helens, denies grievous bodily harm in September 2003.

At the start of the case, the prosecution said someone had blinded the victim by putting a sharp object into her left eye, rupturing the eyeball.

Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, said it was the Crown's case that Bowes had stuck a thumb nail into the eye, causing damage.

She recalled that his thumb nail was almost two inches long at the time.

Photographs of her injured eye were produced at court.

The prosecution said that for a long period after the alleged offence, for whatever reason, she remained with the defendant. She finally left him 2005 and felt able to make a complaint to the police.

It seemed she had met Bowes while living in Darwen in the summer of 2003.

(Proceeding)