Suspended sentence for woman who could have derailed house sale

44-year-old spared jail after perverting the course of justice

An Onchan woman has narrowly avoided being sent to prison after perverting the course of justice.

Joanne Fenton, of Royal Avenue West, was told she’d committed an ‘extremely serious offence’ during sentencing at Douglas Courthouse.

The 44-year-old had threatened to pull out of a house sale if her daughter didn’t withdraw a common assault complaint which she’d made against her mother.

'I’m not going anywhere'

The court heard that Fenton, who has no previous convictions, had sent her ex-partner a number of messages on 12 June last year.

In them she told him: “I suggest you tell her (their daughter) to retract her statement and drop the charges."

She also threatened to make her own police complaint and added: “I’m not going anywhere.”

'Spur of the moment'

Fenton’s advocate told the court his client was struggling at the time to cope with the breakdown of her family unit.

He added the messages were sent ‘in the spur of the moment’ in retaliation to ‘aggressive’ messages she’d received from her former partner including one which said she was a ‘waste of air’.  

The court was told the house sale did go through.

Suspended sentence

Sentencing Fenton to three months custody, suspended for 12 months, Deemster Graeme Cook told her: “An act of this nature passes the custody threshold.

“You clearly acted without thinking but the implication of what you did could have been profound.

"You were trying to put a spanner in the works."

Fenton was also placed under a 12-month suspended sentence supervision order.