Police pay pro-life activist nearly $17K over wrongful arrest for silent prayer
August 20, 2024
A pro-life activist who was arrested for silently praying outside of a abortion clinic has been awarded a financial settlement from British police.
The Christian Post reports that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has received a settlement of £13,000 ($16,893) from West Midlands police as an “acknowledgement of her unjust treatment.” The U.K. religious freedom non-profit law firm ADF made the announcement on Monday.
Vaughan-Spruce said, “Silent prayer is not a crime. Nobody should be arrested merely for the thoughts they have in their heads — yet this happened to me twice at the hands of the West Midlands Police, who explicitly told me that ‘prayer is an offense.’”
She was first arrested in December 2022 for allegedly violating a Public Space Protection Order by silently praying outside of an abortion clinic in Birmingham. That order prohibits “protesting, namely engaging in any act of approval or disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means” within a certain distance of an abortion clinic.
Vaughan-Spruce was arrested after an officer asked her if she was praying while standing outside the facility. She was arrested again outside the same clinic 3 months later.
According to the Christian Post, the arresting officers claimed her silent prayers were an “offense” though the charges in connection to these two arrests were dropped last September.
Vaughan-Spruce was confronted by police for a third time in January of this year and issued a “fixed penalty notice” for standing in silence outside the clinic.
ADF UK Senior Legal Counsel Jeremiah Iggunubole stated: “The fact that the government is reportedly set to name ‘silent prayer’ as a criminal offense, brazenly contrary to their commitment to international human rights law, exposes the crisis of free speech and thought in the UK today. Law enforcers are dutybound to vigilantly protect, not prosecute, the peaceful exercise of fundamental rights.”
Photo: top, Isabel Vaughan Spruce, Credit: ADF International