A MOTHER today described the terror when armed raiders clubbed their way into her farmhouse and brutally assaulted her and her boyfriend.

The two attackers smashed a window and broke down a door at Crabtree Hurst Farm, Lench Road, Waterfoot, Rossendale.

One of the men hit Helen Kenyon on the head and arm with a baseball bat while the other struck her boyfriend Michael Ragnar with an iron wheelbrace.

It was the second armed attack on the farmhouse within three months.

In April two men with baseball bats left Helen's 16-year-old daughter Rebecca and her boyfriend in a pool of blood. This time Rebecca called the police from her bedroom before barricading herself in.

The raid on the isolated farmhouse is the latest in a series of incidents going back more than two years.

Helen believes someone wants her out of the farmhouse which she has rented since 1993.

But today the defiant mother said: "I am not going. If I left it would mean they had won."

Helen was discharged from Bury General Hospital after treatment for broken fingers, cracked ribs, cuts and bruises. Mr Ragnar, 43, was transferred to Royal Preston Hospital with head and leg injuries and was "stable" today.

Helen said she has lived in fear of a second attack since April.

Rebecca stayed with friends for a while after the attack because she was too afraid to live in the farmhouse.

Her mother said: "Even now she won't be on her own and doesn't like to be in the house unless the door is locked and bolted."

The latest attack began after a white Volkswagen Golf reversed into the farmyard.

"The next thing I knew there was one man coming at me with a bat,' said Helen.

"The other man went for Michael. Becky tried to come downstairs to help but I told her to go back to her bedroom.

"I had the phone in my hand and I threw it at him. I don't even remember the first blow.

"Michael was at the other side of the room. He threw the ironing board at them.

"I remember him shouting 'Not my head. Not my head.'

"I think I must have passed out at one point. But it was all over in about two minutes."

Helen described a catalogue of incidents which began in 1995 when she received an anonymous death threat through the letter box. Since then power lines, phone lines, television aerials and the water supply have been cut.

Things have been stolen from the farm and animals let out.

"Looking back you can see a pattern," she said. "But there is no way I am moving out of here. All we want to do is lead a nice peaceful life."

She said the incidents had escalated since last August.

The gas main has been cut, her nephew shot at with an air rifle and Rebecca has had stones thrown at her.

At one point a family of two adults and four children moved on to farmland in a caravan, forcing her to take out an injunction to force them to leave.

Helen said she is too afraid to spend the night there on her own and is splitting her time between the farm and a relative's house.

Police believe the Volkswagen was stolen from Burnley.

The car was later found burned out in Rochdale.

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