Lancaster man attacked his mum, 86, and used daughter, 12, to ask her to drop case from prison

A judge at Preston heard how Mark Cowperthwaite put pressure on the frail pensioner to change her statement – and used his innocent 12-year-old daughter as a go-between in letters from his prison cell.

The 56-year-old admitted the offence at the city’s Crown Court and was sent to jail for 21 months.

The court was told that due to his behaviour Mrs Cowperthwaite became reluctant to co-operate with officers after initially accusing him of assault.

As a result the prosecution fell through, although in court this week it was claimed it might well have collapsed anyway due to administrative problems.

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Barrister Anthony Horsfall, prosecuting, said Mrs Cowperthwaite went to Lancaster Police Station in January with cuts and bruises to her face and bruises to her arms and legs.

She became reluctant to provide more information to officers, but her son was later charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

In a statement after Cowperthwaite’s arrest she denied any assault had taken place, even though his daughter and partner both claimed it had.

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Mr Horsfall said that in the first letter from Cowperthwaite to his daughter from prison where he was on remand he asked her to “tell Granny I love her and I never want to fall out with her again.”

He added: “They have to go to the police and say I never touched her.”

Mr Horsfall told Recorder Kevin Slack that the letter “contained some substantial emotional pressure.” Cowperthwaite, he said, had told his daughter he couldn’t stop crying.

A second letter he sent from prison had similar content. In it he told the young girl that until her grandmother “sorts things out I can’t see you. There is only Granny who can sort this.”

In a period of around three weeks Cowperthwaite, of Arrow Lane, Lancaster, made at least 36 phone calls to his mother from prison. He was aware all of them were being recorded by the authorities. In some of them he was crying, he constantly denied an assault had taken place and referred to what he claimed were issues of age-related memory loss with his mother.

When a police officer visited Mrs Cowperthwaite at home at the end of May she denied he had assaulted her and denied he had contacted her from prison. As a result the assault charge was no longer pursued and the Crown offered no evidence.

But when Cowperthwaite was released from prison he was immediately re-arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.

The prosecution said his actions had had a “serious impact on the administration of justice.” Mr Horsfall told the court: “It was as a result of his efforts that the Crown offered no evidence.”

Zoe Dawson, for Cowperthwaite, said: “The Crown did not have an admissible (assault) case against this defendant that could have been put before a jury.

“The defendant maintains that he was not guilty of the original Section 47 (assault occasioning actual bodily harm).

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“It is not a case where the defendant has in a premediated way sought in advance to speak with his family members and emotionally manipulate them into what he wanted.

“He has strong family ties. He has resided with his parents for a long time. He was residing with his mother and his daughter and he was very concerned about the loss of his family members.

“This communication was not just one way. There were efforts to communicate with the defendant by his mother.”

Recorder Slack told Cowperthwaite: “The primary victim in this case is your own mother who is now aged 86. She attended the police station to report you for stealing from her and assaulting her.

“These offences are writing a series of letters and then (making) a large number of telephone calls to your mother and also to your daughter attempting to persuade her to tell police nothing had happened.”

He said the messages put “substantial emotional pressure” on his mother, with references to him not being able to stop crying.

The second letter he sent from jail had invited his daughter to put pressure on her granny to withdraw all the complaints. Then came the phone calls.

“The calls have a common theme in that you clearly, realising you are being recorded, are very careful in how you phrase matters,” said the judge. “You plead with your mother to go to the police station and tell the police that nothing had happened to her.

“You raised issues about your mother’s memory in a way to explain why she may have been mistaken. 36 calls (were) made from prison to your mother placing her under pressure to go to back to the police and you continued to tell her what you wanted her to say to the police.

“This is clearly sustained conduct on your part designed to interfere with the course of justice.”

Recorder Slack said Cowperthwaite’s conduct was aggravated by the fact it was in a domestic context, his mother was in her mid-eighties, he had attempted to involve his 12-year-old daughter and he had committed the offence while he was in custody.

He sentenced him to 28 months in jail, reduced to 21 months because of his early guilty plea. On release he will be subject to supervision by the probation service for 12 months.