A BUSINESSMAN who battered a friend he suspected of making sexual advances to his 15-year-old daughter was jailed for 28 days yesterday.

The teenager told her father, Neil Hoare, that Paul Brown, 29, targeted her and her friends when they were babysitting at his home.

Hoare punched and kicked him outside a Teesside nightclub, leaving him with a broken jaw and cheekbone, and his left eye misplaced, Ian West, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court.

Hoare, whose firm rents out skips, told police that he lost control when Mr Brown smirked at him, and asked: "What's it got to do with you?"

Police spoke to Mr Brown who denied that anything inappropriate happened, said Mr West.

Hoare, the founder chairman of the Hardwick Youth Football Club in Stockton, always accepted full responsibility for what he had done, the court heard. Ken Gillance, defending, said: "He knows and fears what the negative effect of prison would be on his family and his business."

Hoare, of Roseworth Avenue, Roseworth, Stockton, pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm on November 20 last year.

The judge Recorder Peter Benson told him he had an instinctive sympathy with Hoare's position, but the violence of his attack left him no choice but to send him to prison.

Hoare was also ordered to pay £1,000 compensation to Mr Brown.