Gran, 72, arrested for hugging granddaughter in cells for third night as judge cannot be found
THE grandmother arrested and held by police for hugging her granddaughter has spent a third night in the cells because a judge could not be found to hear her case.
Kathleen Danby, who is 72 and needs medication for a liver disease, will appear before a judge today in the secretive Court of Protection over her embrace with the vulnerable teenager.
But there is growing fury over her treatment, with MPs saying it was ‘appalling’ that the grandmother had been held for three nights in a jail 600 miles from her home without being given a hearing in court.
Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael said her case broke a ‘fundamental principle of our justice system’ and said he would be demanding an explanation from the Ministry of Justice.
Mrs Danby’s son has no idea where she is being held and has not been able to speak to her since Sunday, when she was arrested as she sat down to watch Ken Dodd at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall.
The 37-year- old handyman said his mother was ‘lost in the system’ after his repeated attempts to trace her were met with bureaucratic shrugs.
It took the intervention of John Hemming MP, a campaigner against secret justice, to discover she had been transferred from Merseyside Police to a prison run by security company G4S in the Midlands.
Last night the Liberal Democrat MP said: ‘She is over 70 years old and our judicial system is happy to lose her and not know what is happening. That’s appalling.’
Mrs Danby was sentenced in her absence to three months in jail in April for hugging her granddaughter, in breach of an order made by the Court of Appeal. But police were unable to arrest her to make her start her jail term because she was living in Orkney, which was out of their jurisdiction.
However Derbyshire County Council, which is responsible for her granddaughter’s care, learnt that Mrs Danby would be attending the Ken Dodd concert and Derbyshire Police then asked Merseyside Police to make the arrest.
Mr Carmichael, Mrs Danby’s local MP, reacted with fury at her treatment. The Lib Dem minister said: ‘For someone to be convicted and sentenced in their absence is inexcusable. It breaks one of the most fundamental principles of our justice system.
‘I shall expect to speak to the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling about this early in the New Year.’
The Daily Mail finally established that Mrs Danby will appear before Her Honour Judge Dowding in the Court of Protection in Birmingham today. Her son said: ‘I have spent two days trying to get hold of my mother but she just seems lost in the system.’
According to Mrs Danby, her granddaughter went into care in Derbyshire in 2007 when she was 11, a year after being taken away from her father in Orkney on what she called a ‘spurious excuse’.
Mrs Danby was banned from making contact with the girl, who has learning difficulties.
But in February she was accused of disobeying court orders after she had met her granddaughter and was caught on CCTV four days later giving her a hug outside a pub.
Judge Martin Cardinal said the teenager, named in court only as B, finds it hard to control her anger and said social workers think her distress increases after contact with her father or grandmother, adding: ‘I am sure this grandmother needs restraint.’
Judge Cardinal ordered Mrs Danby to be jailed for three months f or contempt and i ssued the warrant for her arrest.
A spokesman for Merseyside Police said the force had ‘done its job by delivering the individual to the correct location’.
Derbyshire County Council and G4S declined to comment.