A family were left terrified when they were burgled just hours after moving into their isolated house in Petham.

Bobbie Godleman was asleep in an annexe when she heard the garage below being broken into. She managed to alert her parents by phone.

Her father Steven Godleman told the judge in his victim impact statement: “The worst effect of the burglary was not the terror on my daughter in the middle of the night or the loss of the goods that were stolen.

“It was the loss of our sense of being secure and safe in our own home.”

During the raid in August last year two thieves cut through security lighting and locks to break into the garage, where £1,500 worth of goods were taken before they were disturbed by Mr Godleman.

He was at Canterbury Crown Court to watch Ian Lawson, 36 and Mark Parter, 38, being sent to jail. The homeowner later told police: “It was weeks before my daughter could sleep in her flat. She still closes all the windows before going to bed.

“She double locks the door every time she goes into the flat, even in the middle of the day.

“We have had to fit additional security lighting around her flat and a panic button to help her feel more secure.

“I would like to think that if the perpetrators understood the harm that they did, they would think twice about inflicting such trauma on another family in the future.”

Lawson, of Kennedy Close, Faversham and Parter, of The Street, Boughton Under Blean, both admitted the burglary.

"It was weeks before my daughter could sleep in her flat. She still closes all the windows before going to bed... She double locks the door every time she goes into the flat, even in the middle of the day" - Steven Godleman

The car they used to carry out the attack was ordered to be confiscated.

Parter and another man, Jamie Turner, 38, of Larksfield Road, Faversham, also carried out an attack on the Goods Shed Restaurant next to Canterbury West railway station in June this year.

Prosecutor Aska Fujita told how they were seen walking towards the restaurant at 1.40am by a signalman who alerted police.

After causing £900 worth of damage breaking in, they opened a safe and found just £16.

The two then fled into Orient Place where Parter swung a crowbar at a pursuing police officer.

The prosecutor said he missed the officer and had to be Tasered before being handcuffed and arrested.

She said Turner, who now works on the railways, gave himself up without a struggle and admitted his part in the botched burglary.

His lawyer Kerry Waitt asked that Turner’s wife’s £3,500 Ford car, used in the break-in, should not be confiscated – but Judge Adele Williams ordered it be taken.

She jailed Parter, who had admitted two burglaries and assault with intent, for a total of 22 months and Lawson, who also admitted taking a £400 laptop from the Newnham Court Shopping Village in Maidstone in March, for two years.

Turner was given a three-month jail sentence suspended for two years for the Goods Shed raid and told to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work for the community.

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