Although I trespassed, Is it ok to beat children with a shovel for walking through someone’s front garden?

Ive never told this to anyone as I felt like I did something very wrong but as Ive got older, I don’t think what happened is ok, regardless of what I did and I would like opinions please. When I was a kid in the 90’s, 12/13 years old, I lived near a park that was about a 30 minute walk from my house- or take a shortcut by squeezing under a gate at my school and walking across their field to another gate that was right across the road from the play park. It was about mid-day one Saturday and my friend and I decided to take the shortcut but found the gate on the other side was actually closed that day (it was too high to climb and we couldn’t squeeze under) Rather than walk all the way back and round. There was a big house next to the school grounds and school gate, with a huge front garden. We’d heard before about it being inhabited (and it certainly looked it) so we thought it would be fine to hop over the little fence, through the front garden to the road. Now this was a nice neighbourhood, mid-90’s and we were 2 very young, foolish girls, children basically. I know we were trespassing which was very wrong and if caught, we probably deserved something to happen but, in hindsight, what happened to us seems super harsh. We jumped over the small fence and walked about halfway through the front garden of the property which was massively overgrown with huge bushes. Basically, out of nowhere, this man (looked 40s or 50s) runs at us, arms up with a shove in his hands. We run for our lives back to the fence but he catches us and starts beating us with the head of this massive shovel. We managed to escape back over the way we came, whilst still being beaten. I fell over the fence, landed on my chest and winded myself so bad I couldn’t breathe. We were obviously really upset by what had happened and were very shaken up, crying and what not. Our backs and legs were covered in long bruises and welts from the shovel, my friend got it worse than me. Although he avoided our heads, we were badly beat up in a way I’ve never experienced, before or since. In fact, no one’s ever physically harmed me other than this man. After that, we didn’t want to go to the park, just back to my house. The following week we were very sore and had to work so hard to hide the wounds and bruises from our families. We were scared to tell them as we had done something wrong by cutting through his garden and thought we would get told off. So we never told anyone. Now I’m older, despite what we did, his actions seem like a total overreaction and I wish we had told someone. I hope my children would tell me and I would 100% be calling the police, regardless of them trespassing on his front garden. I’m aware the guy might have had something happen to him/his property before to make him so defensive and angry but a grown man surely shouldn’t go round beating children- I mean, we were very badly beaten. I just wondered what opinions might be about what he did? Is that an expected reaction for what we did? Did we deserve it?