Tri-Service

Jail For Woman Who Urinated On War Memorial Twice

A drunken woman who urinated on a public war memorial twice in front of horrified onlookers has been jailed for seven months.

Kelly Martin, 42, outraged public decency when she desecrated the monument in broad daylight in Grays, Essex, first in April when there were still Remembrance poppy wreaths on it.

She did so a second time while on bail in June, the day before the 100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1 1916 and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

Martin, who wore a blue vest top and had her hair in an off-centre pony tail, swore and shouted as she was led down to the cells at Basildon Crown Court on Tuesday.

Judge John Lodge, sentencing, said: "Each of these offences is so serious that only a custodial sentence is appropriate.

"The two cases of outraging public decency involve urinating on a war memorial.

Addressing Martin, he said:

"What makes your case particularly bad is having been caught doing it one time, when the nation was commemorating the worst battle of the First World War you were caught doing it again in the middle of the day."

Mother-of-five Martin, of no fixed abode, was arrested on July 2 and convicted at Basildon Magistrates' Court in August of two charges of outraging public decency and one of common assault and using abusive language against a paramedic the same day."

Martin had thrown a bottle at the paramedic, the court heard.

She was sentenced to one month in prison for the first count of outraging public decency, three months for the second to run consecutively and three months for both the assault and the abusive language, to run concurrently.

Mothers with young children were among the mortified members of the public who had witnessed Martin's unsavoury act on June 30, pictures of which surfaced online on July 1, as the nation came together to remember the fallen.

The case had been sent to Basildon Crown Court for sentencing, as district judge John Woollard told an earlier hearing at Basildon Magistrates' Court that he did not feel it was "within my sentencing powers" to deal with the case, given a slew of aggravating features - including that Martin was drunk and appeared remorseless.

In mitigation, the court heard that Martin had spent seven weeks in prison on remand and was now "clean".