A grandmother was hauled out of a comedy show and arrested on the orders of a family court judge
The Mirror Reports: An elderly gran faces jail after she was ordered out a Ken Dodd theatre show to be arrested – for hugging her teenage granddaughter.
Kathleen Danby previously breached an injunction to stay away from the ‘vulnerable’ 19-year-old by meeting her at an annual model railway exhibition in February.
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The pensioner was jailed for three months in April by the secretive Court of Protection but she failed to turn up.
But the 72-year-old was tracked down to the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on Sunday evening where she was watching a performance by comedy legend Ken Dodd.
Officers from Merseyside Police, acting on behalf of West Midlands, summonsed Danby from her seat by an usher, bringing her to waiting cops in the foyer who arrested her.
The gran, held in custody for the last two days, appears at Birmingham County Court on Wednesday after being convicted of contempt and could be locked up for three months.
A report in the Mail Online states: under a draconian judgment kept secret from the public, Mrs Danby was banned from making contact with the girl, who has learning difficulties, apart from a monthly telephone call monitored by social services.
They add that in February she was accused of disobeying court orders after social workers discovered that she had met her granddaughter at a model railway exhibition, and was caught on CCTV four days later giving her a hug outside a pub.
Speaking to the Mail from her home in Kirkwall, Orkney, in June, she insisted that her granddaughter wanted to have a relationship with both her and her son, and revealed that she had run away from care more than 170 times.
She added: ‘My granddaughter behaves like a younger child, but she is lucid in what she wants. She can decide for herself what she wants to do.’
However Judge Martin Cardinal said the teenager, named in court only as B, finds it hard to control her anger and has self-harmed.
He explained that 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 for contempt and issued the warrant for her arrest.
