A MAN ended up in a police cell because a mother asked him to look after her ill daughter, York Magistrates Court heard.

Anthony Mark Jackson, 34, was banned from contacting the woman under a restraining order, said Julia Birtwell, prosecuting.

So when the mother saw him in the street and asked him to look after her child while she was shopping he said no.

But the mother asked him again, and this time he said yes.

She was still shopping when police went to the house, saw Jackson there, and started arresting him for breaching the order.

The child is not his.

For Jackson, Keith Whitehouse said he had been reluctant to help the woman, but had agreed because the child was ill.

District judge Adrian Lower told Jackson: “I am sure in many ways you felt you were doing the right thing and helping out.

"Of course you weren’t doing the right thing, however difficult it may seem to you. You were under the terms of the order. You should simply have said no.”

If the woman tried to get him to do something in future, he should ring the police so they could tell her not to contact him and to make her domestic arrangements without him, the judge said.

Jackson, of Bell Farm Avenue, off Huntington Road, York, pleaded guilty to breaching the court order and obstructing police.

He was fined £170 and ordered to pay a £34 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.

Ms Birtwell said Jackson ran away during the arrest and wasn’t arrested until some days later.

Police kept him in custody until he appeared before the court.

The two-year restraining order was imposed in February after Jackson was convicted of assaulting the woman twice. He had denied the charges.

Every time a restraining order is made the court sends a copy of it to the person it is designed to protect.