A MUM has spoken out after a dangerous dog bit her daughter’s face, scarring the five-year-old for life.

Molly Beresford needed 36 stitches after her face was “ripped off by the dog,” according to mum Charmaine Beresford, who said: “It was absolutely horrendous. It was awful. My daughter gets called ‘scar face’ she says ‘mummy am I still beautiful?’”

Molly, from Honeybourne, went with her parents to collect some bunk beds they had seen for sale on Facebook, from the seller’s home in Chipping Campden.

Mrs Beresford said they went upstairs: “The room was a box room, there was not much space. She (the seller) said ‘I’ll take Molly downstairs to get a drink.’ It was safe as far as me and Lee were concerned.”

Mrs Beresford did not know there was a dog in the house. She said: “She left Molly unattended.”

She said that after a few minutes they heard a scream and rushed downstairs, where she said she saw: “Molly had had her face ripped off by the dog.”

Mrs Beresford said the dog’s owner Juliet Marsh was reluctant to call for help: “Four or five times I asked her to phone the ambulance. I had to scream at her.”

Mrs Beresford said: “I wasn’t going to prosecute or anything like that. But then the surgeon who treated Molly said ‘this is a dangerous dog. You need to prosecute’.”

Marsh appeared at Cheltenham Magistrates Court on September 19 and was found guilty of being the owner of a dog dangerously out of control. The court ordered that the dog is kept under control and fitted with a muzzle in a public place and is never left alone in the company of children under 17. Marsh must carry out 60 hours of unpaid work in the next 12 months. She was fined £775 with a surcharge of £85.

Mrs Beresford said: “We were kind enough to let her keep the dog. I just want to make other people aware.

“I have got two dogs and Molly is fine with them and with family members’ dogs but if we see strangers dogs out in public she’ll cling to me like a leech. But other than that she is coping really well. We are lucky because that dog could have taken her life that night. Even though she is scarred we are lucky.”

Marsh was quoted in The Mirror as saying: “I am totally distraught and it has affected me deeply that a little girl was hurt in my home. I have taken it on board and am obeying everything the court has ordered.”