Mum jailed for fleeing to Alaska with girls

A BRITISH mother who illegally took her children to live in Alaska with her new husband has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Indea Ford, 34, flouted family court orders to take her two young daughters aged four and five to the US in October 2015.

She was not allowed to take them away without her ex’s consent – and her request to emigrate had been denied the year before.

She split with the girls’ father in 2012 and the relationship turned “acrimonious”, Isleworth Crown Court in West London heard.

There were a series of court hearings in the Family Court until Ford took the girls abroad without permission.

A family judge sitting in Dartford, Kent, ruled the children would be looked after by their father on weekends and half of the summer holidays.

Prosecutor Jennifer Knight said: “Each parent informed the other if they intended to go on holiday. Sufficient notice was to be given of such a trip.” Ford met her now-husband Kenneth in the autumn of 2014 and became pregnant with their son.

Prosecutors say it was Ford’s intention to “sever the relationship” between the girls and their father.

She pleaded guilty to two counts of child abduction on the first day of her trial, yesterday.

Lauren Soertsz, defending, told the court her client was “emotionally-led” when she refused to bring them back to the UK after a two-week visit to her father in Virginia.

The defence counsel said: “She’s a good mother, but her misguided actions caused her children hardship.” Ford has not seen her two daughters or her son with her new American husband since January, the court heard.

Recorder Gibson Grenfell QC sentencing, said: “A cynic may say that the defendant has got what she set out to achieve – to keep the children in America.”