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Jailed: Mother who attacked top Wolverhampton cop and lied to courts

A woman who was spared jail after attacking one of Wolverhampton's top police officers is now behind bars after lying to the courts about caring for her sick child.

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Denise Dickens hurled racist abuse at Superintendent Keith Fraser before pushing him over and pinning him to the ground when he intervened in her attack on a teenage girl on a bus in May last year.

The incident happened just seconds after she had assaulted 17-year-old Rebecca McEwan on the number 45 bus in Birmingham.

Dickens, of Rosemary Road, Rednal, was convicted after a trial of racially aggravated common assault, and a racially aggravated public order offence.

On November 19 last year, Birmingham magistrates decided not to send her to prison after hearing she was the full time carer for her baby, who suffered from a lung disease, and also cared for her two older children.

However, after reading media reports about the lenient sentence Dickens received, an aunt contacted police and informed them none of the 24-year-old's three children were in her care, and the baby did not have lung disease.

Yesterday, Joanne Barker, prosecuting, told Birmingham Crown Court: "Essentially she said that she lived with her three children, that she was the primary carer for them, and that the youngest one had a lung disease which required some dedicated treatment involving oxygen during the night. It was argued in the magistrates' court that due to those responsibilities and the effect incarceration would have on her children that they should pass a sentence alternative to custody.

"It was as a result of the press coverage detailing the sentence that led to the truth being identified, because the defendant's aunt saw the press coverage and realised immediately that it wasn't true."

Dickens was arrested, and even in interviews with police maintained the lies, Ms Barker said.

She had never had custody of the youngest child, who is subject to a protection order and taken from her at birth, and she hadn't had custody of the two eldest children 'for some years'. Her contact with the children was 'sporadic', Ms Barker said.

The court heard in the past year Dickens had secured short-term employment, and saved enough money to enrol in a course with South City College.

Mr Fergal Bloomer, mitigating, said she hoped to be able to secure a better future for herself, having had a troubled past and little support, and this education would be a stabilising factor in her life.

He said her motivation for lying was to avoid prison and 'someone she had difficulty with' who was also in custody.

Mr Bloomer said: "She accepts that she went to the probation service and told a lie, and once it was committed to paper it was difficult to resile from."

Dickens pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice at an earlier hearing, and was yesterday sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Judge Murray Creed said: "You lied to the court to avoid prison.

"As a result of what you said or claimed in the pre-sentence report, and indeed had asserted when you were interviewed in relation to this inquiry...the matters were wholly misrepresented.

"In my judgment this matter can't be dealt with other than by an immediate prison sentence."

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