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Thief left red-faced after claiming paper breached rights

A row between a thief and his mum went viral after appearing on a weekly newspaper’s Facebook page.

Charlie Cooper was convicted by Canterbury Magistrates of stealing £1,500 of sentimental jewellery from a woman’s house to fund his drink and drugs habit.

The 20-year-old cleaner messaged the Herne Bay Gazette to say the paper had breached his “human rights” by publishing a picture of him outside the court in a report on the case.

But Cooper was left red-faced after the outburst prompted a ticking off from his mum Teresa.

Cooper messaged the paper saying: “I know what I did was wrong but you didnt ask me if you could take a picture and put it in the papers, I know the public have a right to know but.i have my human rights, and now they have been breached, thanks guys well done.” (SIC)

But his straight-talking mum was unmoved, telling him: “They don’t need your permission to take your picture if the courts have given them permission to be there to do so.”

Cooper replied: “They do, I dont want my picture taken. End of.”

Teresa then responded: “IT DONE NOW. THAT LADY DIDNT WANT HER JEWLERY TAKING BUT YOU DID IT ANYWAY, END OF.”

Cooper also faced a wave of criticism from the Gazette’s Facebook friends for claiming his human rights had been breached.

The full story can be read here:

4 comments

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  • August 5, 2013 at 9:27 am
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    Strangely deluded, even given his addictions.
    Presumably, he didn’t think about his victim’s ‘human rights’, before breaking into her home and stealing her jewellery.
    Don’t think his conviction will do much for his career as a cleaner.

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  • August 5, 2013 at 10:08 am
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    I think most newspapers get a call every week from someone complaining about their conviction.

    This, however, is priceless.

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  • August 5, 2013 at 3:08 pm
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    A villain once rang me to complain we had put his picture in the paper without his permission. But he was prepared not to take us to court if we left £20 cash, wrapped in brown paper, at a stated location before 6pm that day. Sadly, I couldn’t find any brown paper so he had to go without.

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  • August 7, 2013 at 10:46 am
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    I once had a phonecall from a man whose benefit fraud conviction I had reported on; he had pled guilty and received a suspended sentence.

    He telephoned me four days after the story came out, to tell me that since its publication he had become a ‘hermit’ because the story was so humiliating. He insisted he was innocent, even though he’d entered a guilty plea, and said it was completely unfair of me to write that he was guilty just because that was how he had pleaded.

    He criticised me for publishing a list of his previous convictions, read out in open court, and pointed out the innate unfairness of my failure to report ‘all the good things I have done for this country’.

    He told me I would be responsible for the starvation of his wife and child because he had just lost his job, thanks to the report. It turned out he never had the job to begin with.

    He called me back about six months later, demanding the story be taken off of our website, for all the same reasons. We declined.

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