PCSO branded me 'disgusting' for leaving my son in a car for minutes, says TV star Laurence Fox
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As Detective Sergeant James Hathaway in popular ITV drama Lewis, Laurence Fox is used to dealing with errant behaviour.
But it was the actor who was on the receiving end of a dressing-down from the police yesterday.
Fox, 35, says he was branded a ‘disgusting and appalling human being’ by a Police Community Support Officer after he left his five-year-old son, Winston, briefly unattended in his car while he went to a chemist to buy medicine for his 22-month-old son, Eugene.
The actor, who is married to The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl star Billie Piper, told his followers on Twitter: ‘Park in loading bay to run into chemist to get medicine for sick child. Eldest son asks to stay in the car.
'I agree as I will be minutes. Return to car to find police community support officer telling me my son has been screaming in the car.
'He looks fine to me. I ask him if he is ok and he says he’s fine. I ask him if he was screaming, he says “no”.
‘Get in the car. As I close the door ... officer calls me a “disgusting and appalling human being” and infers my son is lying.’
Fox, son of actor James Fox and cousin of Silent Witness star Emilia Fox, said he would complain formally about the officer.
‘I cannot believe it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got their number. Looking forward to writing to whoever it is you write to when you are harrased [sic] by the police.’
Technically, it is an offence to leave any child under 16 alone for any period of time, even briefly, in a locked car.
Section One of the Children And Young Persons Act 1933 makes it an offence to ‘neglect or abandon’ a child, but the law does not make clear what this amounts to.
A prosecution would depend on the circumstances and could, in theory, lead to up to ten years in jail.
But law experts said that in every case a parent needs to take into account the age and maturity of the child.
In a car, for instance, an older child might be able to release the handbrake or get out. If the doors were locked then the child might be safer, but they could become distressed if they found they were trapped.
Fox lives in a village near Midhurst in West Sussex with former pop singer Miss Piper, 31, who was previously married to DJ Chris Evans.
This is not Fox’s first brush with the police. In 2007 the actor was given a formal caution after punching a photographer as he left the Garrick Theatre in London where he had been appearing alongside Miss Piper in the play Treats.