Anti-abortion activist given community service for harassing Belfast clinic boss

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/17/anti-abortion-activist-belfast-clinic

Version 0 of 1.

One of Ireland’s most famous anti-abortion activists has been sentenced to 100 hours of community service for harassing the director of the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast.

Bernadette Smyth must also pay £2,000 compensation to her victim, the former Northern Ireland assembly member Dawn Purvis.

Smyth is not allowed to go within 20 yards of the clinic on Belfast’s Great Victoria Street and had a five-year exclusion order imposed on her for “pestering” Purvis.

The 52-year-old leader of the Precious Life movement will appeal against the sentence, her solicitor said after the hearing in Belfast’s magistrates court.

She has led frequent anti-abortion protests outside the Marie Stopes clinic since the premises opened two years ago.

The judge, Chris Holmes, said: “The behaviour of stopping people, questioning them about why they were going into the premises, was a direct harassment of Dawn Purvis.”

Just before the hearing 200 supporters of Smyth held a prayer service for her. She later said through her solicitor that the sentencing would be “a disappointment for Christians worldwide”.

During the case last month, Smyth denied harassing Purvis on two occasions this year.

When Purvis asked protesters to stop harassing her during one incident, Smyth was said to have responded in an exaggerated drawl: “You ain’t seen harassment yet, darling.”

Smyth originally denied to police having used the word harassment, but on viewing CCTV footage of the incident accepted it had been said as a joke.

In another incident, Smyth was described as “cackling like a witch” at Purvis and other staff.

Convicting Smyth, Holmes said anti-abortion campaigners outside the clinic had been forcing women of child-bearing age to identify their reasons for entering. He said Smyth had worked tirelessly to shut down the Marie Stopes Clinic.

When she left court after sentencing, her supporters clapped and cheered, and then formed a prayer circle around her.