Vicar used a dead woman’s disabled badge to park free
A VICAR who used the disabled blue badge of a dead parishioner so he could park for free avoided a jail sentence yesterday.
Father Bill Haymaker, 64, took the badge from a woman who had died two months before and then used it in his own car.
He was caught red-handed by a traffic warden parking in a disabled bay.
Haymaker claimed he had agreed to hand the dead woman’s badge back to the council as part of the process of registering her death but had simply forgotten.
He later described it as one of those ‘oh shoot’ moments and ‘an honest mistake’ and claimed he was telling the ‘gospel truth’.
Yesterday he was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and to pay £3,700 in court costs after being found guilty of possessing an article for use in a fraud.
Haymaker, who was ordained in 1984, was prosecuted by East Sussex Council for the offence, which took place in Bexhill-on-Sea.
At his trial, Hove Crown Court was told that in December 2015 the vicar was parking his car in a disabled bay on the busy main road in the seaside town when he was stopped and questioned by a council traffic warden.
He claimed to provide pastoral care for terminally ill and poorly parishioners, which includes running day-to-day errands for them and driving them to hospital and doctor appointments.
But a jury took only 45 minutes to unanimously find him guilty.
Haymaker, the vicar of St Paul’s Anglican Parish in Bexhill, belongs to the Anglican Independent Communion, which is not part of the Church of England.
After his conviction, the father-oftwo said his actions had not been malicious and claimed the badge had been displayed in a mix-up because he had up to seven of the permits in his glove compartment. He said he intended to display another active badge belonging to the patient he was chauffeuring at the time but they were mixed up because they all look very similar.
Haymaker told the court he does not officiate in a church but works in the community conducting funerals and running errands for which he receives no payment.
Sentencing for the offence had to be postponed after the council’s solicitor advocate, Gareth Jones, said another alleged disabled blue badge offence had come to light.
He was acquitted of that charge after a hearing at Hastings magistrates’ court, but was sentenced yesterday for the original offence.
Yesterday Judge Christine Henson QC told him: ‘You used the disabled blue badge that did not belong to you. You used it to commit a fraud, to convince the authorities you had a legitimate parking claim.’
She described his financial situation as ‘murky’.
Haymaker also runs his own charity, Project New Life, which helps abused and neglected children in Moldova and Romania.
Mark Jobling, the council enforcement officer who caught him, said: ‘This is in no way a victimless crime. Every time someone fraudulently uses a blue badge, they are taking up spaces which are needed by people who are genuinely disabled.’