Katie Price, the 90s icon, reality TV star and former model, has avoided jail after admitting breaching a restraining order against her ex-husband’s fiancée.
Katie, 44, has been handed an 18-month community order to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work, with an additional 20 hours for breach of a suspended sentence for driving matters.
The mum of five, who was declared bankrupt in 2019 after failing to pay a £3.2m debt, has also been ordered to pay £1,500 court costs.
All this started in September 2018, when Katie hurled what she later in court admitted was a ‘tirade of abuse’ at her ex-husband Kieran Hayler’s girlfriend, Michelle Penticost, across a school playground.
Half a year later in June 2019, a judge found her guilty and ordered her to pay £415, as well as serving a five-year restraining order on her forbidding her from contacting Michelle directly or indirectly.
The reality TV star and mother-of-five sent a ‘highly offensive and inflammatory’ text message to Kieran Hayler describing his fiancee as a ‘gutter s***’ and ‘c*****g w***’.
The text was apparently sent after Katie became aware of an Instagram post by Michelle about how she had been treated badly by other people and how to deal with it.
Michelle said the post was not related to Katie, according to the prosecution.
The court heard the offence was committed due to Katie’s use of the words ‘tell your’, which was an indirect attempt to communicate with Michelle.
Price previously denied the charges and asked for a crown court trial during a hearing at Crawley Magistrates' Court in April.
But Nicholas Hamblin, the lawyer representing Katie, said his client had pleaded guilty to the breach but she had been under a ‘misunderstanding’ that the restraining order ‘worked both ways’.
He added that there was an element of ‘provocation’ and she had been ‘over-reacting as she felt she was being criticised’.
‘She has shown signs of remorse, she accepts an indirect breach,’ he said.
The whole affair came to a head last month, before the end of proceedings, when the judge warned Katie that she was ‘in very grave danger of going to prison.’
Judge Stephen Mooney told Katie today: ‘In my judgement, this offence was committed out of anger.
‘The words you used were highly offensive and inflammatory so the breach cannot be considered minor.’
Katie, who’s bankruptcy hearing has been kicked on until 2023, was handed a 16-week suspended jail term after flipping her car in a drink-driving incident in Partridge Green, West Sussex, on 28 September. Dressed in a flowy green top and dark glasses, the businessman and former glamour star left the court with her fiancé, flashing the court a brief smile.