Breastfeeding lie mum avoids jail

A BREAST- feeding mother who lied about a Primark security guard snatching her baby has avoided jail ‘by a whisker’.

Caroline Starmer, 28, claimed she was left in ‘ excruciating pain’ after an Asian security guard ‘ripped’ ninemonth-old Paige from her chest at a branch in Leicester earlier this year.

But yesterday Leicester Crown Court heard that a thorough trawl of the store’s CCTV system established that the mother-of-four (pictured), from Woodgate, had invented the exchange. She pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice at an earlier hearing.

Handing Starmer an eight-month sentence suspended for two years, Judge Simon Hammond told her: ‘By a whisker, you have avoided going to prison today.’

Her guilty plea and lack of previous convictions contributed to the decision.

The judge added she had done a ‘gross disservice’ to breast-feeding mothers.