Jury finds priest did not tell ‘gospel truth’ over blue badge

A PRIEST who used a dead parishioner’s blue badge to park in a disabled bay claimed he was telling the “gospel truth”, even after he was found guilty.

Father Bill Haymaker was convicted of stealing the badge that had belonged to a woman who had died two months earlier and of using it in his own car.

At his sentencing yesterday he was spared jail but ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and to pay £3,700 in court costs.

The priest, of St Paul’s Anglican Parish in Bexhill, East Sussex, was caught by a traffic warden parking in a disabled bay.

The 64-year-old claimed he had agreed to hand the dead woman’s badge to the council as part of registering her death but had forgotten.

Haymaker, a father of two, claimed to provide pastoral care for the terminally ill and for poorly parishioners, which included running errands for them and driving them to hospital and doctor’s appointments.

He 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.

The priest 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 look similar.

However, a jury took just 45 minutes to unanimously find him guilty of possessing an article for use in fraud.

He described it as one of those “oh shoot” moments and said he was telling the “gospel truth”. Haymaker was prosecuted by East Sussex council for the offence which took place in Bexhill in Dec 2015.

Sentencing for the offence had to be postponed after Gareth Jones, the council’s solicitor advocate, said another alleged disabled blue badge offence had come to light.

Haymaker was acquitted of that charge after a hearing in Hastings magistrates’ court.

Mark Jobling, the council’s enforcement officer who caught Haymaker in the act, 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.”