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May 22, 2003updated 17 May 2007 11:30am

Judge imposes news ban in missing granny case

By Press Gazette

A High Court judge thanked the media for helping trace a missing grandmother but, when she was found, imposed a news blackout.

Cambridgeshire County Council has taken out injunctions against the two women, who removed their elderly relative from a care home, to stop them talking to the press.

Print and broadcast media nationally, and particularly in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, have received copies of the injunctions served on mother and daughter Anne and Karen Jenkinson. The orders restrain them from disclosing any information about Edna Herapath or the circumstances of the case.

They also banned identification of residential homes in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.

The women took Anne’s Jenkinson 82-year-old mother, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, and did not return her for three weeks, refusing to disclose to the home where she was.

The county council took court action to find her and Mr Justice Munby appealed to the public for help in tracing her. The Jenkinsons were arrested and kept in custody overnight until a further court hearing last week.

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After questioning both women, the judge thanked the media for helping to find Herapath but then imposed the news blackout.

He said he had spent the day discussing, in private, Herapath’s future needs and where she would live. He said the matter would return to court when she had been given the chance to make up her mind where and with whom she would live in future.

James Stewart, representing the Jenkinsons, said in a statement approved by the judge: “My clients are very relieved to have been released from custody. This has been a bewildering time for them. They have at all times sought to act in the best interests of their mother and grandmother by ensuring she is in a home with all the necessary facilities.”

By Jean Morgan

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