- Caroline Starmer, 28, posted on Facebook1 that guard took baby daughter
- Primark checked its CCTV and found no such incident took place, and Starmer was charged with perverting the course of justice
- She has today been spared jail and give eight month suspended sentence
- Judge said ‘has done gross disservice to mothers who are breastfeeding’
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Caroline Starmer who falsely claimed a Primark security guard snatched her baby from her while she was breastfeeding has been spared jail
A mother who falsely claimed a Primark security guard snatched her baby from her while she was breastfeeding has been spared jail.
Caroline Starmer, 28, posted on Facebook that the guard snatched her nine-month-old daughter Paige from her on July 13 at the store in Humberstone Gate, Leicester.
The 28-year-old, of Woodgate, Leicester, claimed she was left in excruciating pain after her daughter was ‘pulled’ from her breast.
In a post on Facebook, Starmer also wrongly alleged that the guard at the Primark store walked away with her daughter saying: ‘If you want your baby back, follow me’.
Starmer wrote: ‘My confidence is shot, and my poor daughter hasn’t been herself all afternoon.’
But after the shop checked its CCTV and found no such incident took place, the matter was passed to police and Starmer was charged with perverting the course of justice.
The court heard Starmer has had 17 miscarriages and suffers from mental health issues.
Sentencing her to eight months in prison suspended for two years, Judge Simon Hammond told Leicester Crown Court she had avoided jail ‘by a whisker’.
He said: ‘She has done a gross disservice to the many mothers who are breastfeeding and rely on shops and other public facilities to allow them to breastfeed their babies in privacy and dignity.
‘By a whisker, you have avoided going to prison today.
‘This is a very serious case of perverting the course of justice . What the defendant did was carefully planned and orchestrated for financial gain.’
The court heard that Starmer visited the Primark store on July 13 with her twins, then aged nine months.
She went to the children’s clothing section where she sat and started to breastfeed one baby, paid for her shopping and left the store.
That same day, Starmer phoned her husband and said that while she had been feeding, a security guard had told her to stop and ‘ripped the baby from her breast’.
In a statement issued at the time, Primark said CCTV footage reviewed by store management showed no evidence that Starmer was approached by anyone.
In a police interview on July 14, stay-at-home mother Starmer repeated the allegations against the security guard and told officers he was Asian.
The court heard there was only one Asian security guard, Mahomad Ismial, working that day and it was five days before he was cleared of any involvement in the
She repeated the allegation on a Facebook site called Free To Feed.
Speaking at the time, Starmer said the incident was ‘horrific’.
She wrote on Facebook: ‘My 9.5 month old daughter started crying, needing a feed and the queues were pretty long, so to save my daughter the upset, and the other customers too, I decided to find a quiet spot out the way of others and feed her discreetly.
Starmer posed for interviews about the fabricated incident with her young daughter .
Speaking at the time, Starmer said the incident was ‘horrific’
But after the shop checked its CCTV and found no such incident took place, the matter was passed to police and Starmer was charged with perverting the course of justice
‘Within five minutes of doing so, I was approached by a security guard who asked me to vacate the premises to feed my daughter.
‘I stood my ground and stated my rights, that I can legally feed where I want. . Just for the security officer to physically remove my daughter from my breast and walk down the store with her, saying if I wanted my daughter, then I was to come and get her.
‘My confidence is shot, and my poor daughter hasn’t been herself all afternoon.’
The story was then widely reported and in interviews she claimed a male security guard grabbed the child from her.
The story was shared more than 5,000 times on Facebook and featured in news bulletins as far afield as Japan and New Zealand, prosecutor Tina Dempster told the court.
In a statement security guard Mr Ismial said his life ‘could have been torn apart’, and felt the fact his managers asked him to look through CCTV footage with them meant they ‘didn’t believe him’.
He added his daughter contacted him at 1.30am in the morning after seeing Starmer’s allegation on Facebook, and asked if he was involved.
In his statement, Mr Ismial said: ‘For he next three nights my whole family worried, and I felt they doubted me.
‘Even on the bus I felt people were looking at me, and at work people walked past the security guard station and said, “Baby snatcher”‘.
Starmer, 28, posted on Facebook that the guard snatched her nine-month-old daughter Paige from her on July 13 at the store in Humberstone Gate, Leicester (pictured)
‘It was putting strain on us . It has upset me, and I could have lost my job if it hadn’t been for the CCTV.
‘I have nothing against breastfeeding .
It is natural and I would never stop anyone doing it.’
Miss Dempster QC said Starmer told officers her motive in making up the story was financial.
She said: ‘A friend of hers asked her to concoct the story to see how much money they could make.
‘She had not been threatened by this person, but she wanted this person to be her friend.
‘She did not realise it was a criminal offence to sign a false witness statement.’
Ms Dempster added the money from selling the story would have gone to the friend and Starmer felt ‘ashamed and embarrassed’ of her actions.
But mitigating, Justine Robinson said: ‘She had no option but to take the action she did for money that was never going to go to her.’
Judge Hammond said: ‘She had several opportunities to bail out and abandon the enterprise, she had no need to put a false story on Facebook or.. .
to sell her false story or to make a false statement to police.
‘If she was put under pressure, she could have abandoned the scheme several times, but she did not do so and only admitted her wrongdoing when confronted with the CCTV evidence.’
Starmer did not make any comment as she left the court.
After the sentencing, a Primark spokesman said: ‘We are pleased to have the opportunity to confirm that Primark will continue to work hard to ensure that all of our customers have a comfortable and enjoyable experience in our stores.
‘This of course includes breastfeeding mothers, who remain welcome, as ever, at Primark.’
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References
The post Caroline Starmer who lied about Primark security snatching her baby is spared jail appeared first on News4Security.