https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2585640/Racehorse-trainer-previously-jailed-approaching-daughter-bitter-custody-battle-banned-contacting-ten-year-old-three-years.htmlRacehorse trainer previously jailed for approaching her daughter during bitter custody battle now banned from contacting the ten-year-old for three years
Vicky Haigh falsely called partner David Tune 'paedophile' in custody battle
Court banned her from daughter but jailed her when she breached ruling
Released after two years three months, re-jailed after breached again
Now banned for three years and cannot challenge ruling for three years
By Mia De Graaf
Published: 22:52, 20 March 2014 | Updated: 16:31, 4 April 2014
A former jockey and racehorse trainer has been banned from going near her daughter for three years and cannot challenge the ruling until 2017, a High Court judge ruled. Vicky Haigh, 43, was first barred from the ten-year-old girl in 2011 after she falsely accusing her former boyfriend, the father of her child, of being a paedophile during a bitter custody battle. She was then jailed for three years when, weeks later, she approached the child in a petrol station. Today, Family Division judge Mrs Justice Hogg set up a 'no go zone' around the child identified only as 'X'. Ruling the measures were a means of 'protecting' the little girl, she also banned Ms Haigh from making any more court applications for three years. She said further litigation was 'not conducive to peaceful existence. Litigation is anxiety making.''
She added: 'It is not good for a child to be the subject of litigation, and after eight years it really has to come to an end for X’s sake.'
In August 2011, at the height of the custody battle between Ms Haigh and David Tune, also 43, then-Family Division President Sir Nicholas Wall ordered her to be unmasked and be named and shamed as he branded the 'scandalous allegations' a 'pack of lies'.
He said they were made up by Ms Haigh, who had also 'coached' her daughter to make the false claims. He said the couple should be named to clear Mr Tune of the child abuser smears. She now has a second daughter 'R', by a new partner, who will be three in May. In December 2011 she was jailed for three years for defying court non molestation orders forbidding contact with X. Ms Haigh's jail sentence in December 2011 came after she approached the girl in her father’s car at a petrol station near Doncaster, and opened the door to talk to her. She had the sentence reduced to two years and three months and was initially released on licence from prison in September 2012. But after attempts to get X to attend her half sister’s christening she was returned to prison for breaching the terms of her licence. She was freed again in May last year. In December last year, she was back in court after she attempted to make contact with X by sending her a birthday card, and was given a conditional discharge. The local council Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council started care proceedings as long ago as 2006 and X has lived with her father since. Initially, Ms Haigh was allowed contact but that stopped after she launched her email and internet campaign against Mr Tune. They returned to court this month to seek the exclusion zone around X’s home, school, the secondary school she hopes to go to, as well as her paternal grandmother’s home where she spends a lot of time. The judge said X had been spoken to by a social worker for her views, and offered birthday cards and gifts from her mother, half sister, and maternal grandmother. But she said she did not want them. She told the social worker the best thing in her life was 'living with Daddy'.
She said: 'That is awesome, she was happy and wished for things to stay the same.'
As for Ms Haigh, the judge said: 'The mother throughout these proceedings has not and never has accepted the findings in the original care proceedings. She does not accept that she coached her child to tell lies about sexual abuse. She does not accept that she has behaved inappropriately in any way, and has a very firm view that she is innocent, as she puts it, of any crime, that she and X are being punished.'
She added: 'She wants contact and cannot understand why she has been prevented. She would like her two daughters to know each other and believes it is in their best interests for that to occur.'
She added: 'Fundamentally the mother does not understand and can see no reason why she cannot see her daughter. She believes that no contact is not in her daughter’s interests, and is detrimental to her contrary to her and her own Human Rights and respect for family life, and contrary to the interests of her own younger child who is X’s half sister.'
The judge said she had taken the views of the mother and X into account and decided that X does need protection from her mother. The exclusion zone was necessary 'to protect X from a deliberate or accidental meeting by the mother with her daughter.'
She said it is there 'to protect X and to give X some peace of mind, and that is what she needs.'
She said when the exclusion zone comes to an end in 2017, there may be a different situation. 'It may be that X will have her own views, maybe the mother will have come to a different view about the past.'
Banning Ms Haigh from making further applications over the next three years, she said of X: 'She needs to be able to continue her life with her father, do well at school, she has the 11-plus coming up, and I hope very much she will do well and get to the school that she wants. If there were further litigation this could deflect her from what is otherwise prospective success.'
