TWO young mums appeared in court yesterday after stealing sex toys from a town centre store.
Chantelle Stanislaus and Jodie Little blamed personal problems on their theft of the seven vibrators from the Ann Summers shop in Huddersfield.
The pair, both 22, were before Kirklees magistrates yesterday.
Vanessa Schofield, prosecuting, said that the pair entered the Piazza Centre store in the afternoon of September 18 with their two young children in tow.
She said that the they were shown on CCTV selecting the items and leaving without paying.
Police found two of the vibrators in a search of Little’s home but the rest were never recovered.
Magistrates were told that the women were initially charged with stealing £306 worth of goods including perfumes.
This was because the shop log showed that all of the items had gone missing that day.
The charge was later amended because there was no proof that they were responsible for this.
The bench was told that both women were previously before the court on September 28 for shop theft when they were given a conditional discharge.
Ian Whiteley, defending Little, of Greenlea Court in Dalton, said that she was going through some difficult family issues at the time of the theft.
He said: “She had just discovered that care proceedings were not going her way and that culminated in this offence being committed by her.”
Jonathan Slawinski represented Stanislaus, of Hall Cross Road in Lowerhouses.
He said that she was experiencing financial difficulty at the time of the offence.
Mr Slawinski said: “She’d run up a huge amount of debts with payment store BrightHouse and with utility bills and was paying debt collectors every week.
“She was struggling financially, as a result of which this offence took place.”
Mr Slawinski added that the delay in bringing the case to court had a significant impact on the single parent, who has a three-year-old child.
Mr Slawinski said that she had decided to turn her life around and had secured a job in a care home as an apprentice careworker.
However a colleague read about her appearance in court and she lost the job.
He said: “This has particularly devastated her because she’s made an effort to change her life.
“She’s extremely embarrassed about it (the theft) and she’s now back on the dole queue.”
Magistrates said that they felt the case was weakened by the delay in bringing it to court.
However they felt that the offence was aggravated because the women took children along with them.
They gave them a conditional discharge for two years to give them a chance to behave themselves.
