A HUSBAND who three times in five days defied a court order protecting his estranged wife has been jailed for 60 days and could serve an extra 28 days.

Kathryn Reeve, prosecuting, told York magistrates that York County Court gave Emrah Aktas’s wife a non-molestation order on April 17 to protect her from him. Four days later, on April 22, the civil court confirmed the order, which had a series of conditions including not going within 200 metres of her home or their children’s school and not to contact her or their children.

But on April 24 and April 29, he was seen near her home, and on April 28, he spoke to the children within 200 metres of both home and school.

Aktas, 33, now of Heslington Road, York, pleaded guilty to three charges of breaching a non-molestation order and one of breaching a conditional discharge imposed for a public order offence and failure to surrender on October 15, 2013.

He was jailed for 60 days. Magistrates also ordered him to pay nearly £700 in outstanding court fines that day or he would have to serve an extra 28 days in jail for non-payment of fines.

The court heard he had not paid anything for eight months, despite being employed at his brother’s takeaway business. His solicitor Meghan Waldron said he had been very surprised when he returned from visiting relatives in Turkey to find that his wife had locked him out of the family home. The couple had had difficulties which had led to them splitting up last year, but they had been reconciled and he had thought his wife had wanted them to be together.

“It has been difficult for the defendant to come to terms with the end of the relationship, it having ended so abruptly,” said the solicitor. “He is very sorry to have found himself in this position and apologises to his wife for having put her through what she describes as a very upsetting period.”He had not threatened his wife or children, she said.