Brody Dalle has been sentenced to 60 hours of community service and fined $1,000.
Brody Dalle slapped with fine and community service
The Distillers frontwoman has been ordered to carry out unpaid work for contempt of court in her lengthy custody battle with former partner Josh Homme.
On November 19, the 42-year-old musician was convicted of one count of contempt for "willfully” refusing to hand over her five-year-old son, Wolf, to the Queens of the Stone Age rocker as agreed in September.
Homme and his lawyers had requested a penalty of five days in jail if she didn't finish 120 hours of community labour, but Judge Lawrence Riff was much more lenient.
Speaking to Rolling Stone after she appeared at Los Angeles County Superior on Tuesday (30.11.21), Dalle said: “I’m relieved by the court’s decision. I don’t believe anyone should go to jail or pick up trash for protecting her children.
“As a mother, I will always put my children first and protect them at all costs.”
Dalle was acquitted for the same thing regarding their 10-year-old boy Orrin, while their 15-year-old daughter, Camille, was granted a temporary restraining order against her father in September, and was not included.
In her defence, Dalle told the courtroom: “I didn’t withhold our children. Our children testified to that. Our children testified to the abuse they have experienced at the hands of their father and the reasons why they refused to go and continue to refuse to go."
She then claimed that her ex had “testified to calling me a ****, a cow, and telling me to, ‘F*** off forever.’ Does this sound like a person who wants to do the right thing by our children? He has taken no responsibility for his words and actions and the effect that they have had on our children.”
Homme claimed that he is “willing to take responsibility for things that I do."
However, the 48-year-old musician wanted “justice” served and “one set of rules for both sides".
He told the judge: “I’ve suffered a lot of parental alienation in a short period of time.
“This family is in grave danger and so fractured and ripped apart. All I want to do is see my kids. I want my mother to see her grandkids. I want my father to see his grandkids.”
However, Dalle insisted "parental alienation" was a “strategy used in family court by abusers to take the onus off the abuser and place it onto the victims."
Judge Riff called on both parents to put their differences aside to co-parent their kids.
He said: “What I’m hearing, I hope, is that (both sides) want the same thing. They want a healed family with three quite lovely children who need the benefit of two loving parents. Both sides want that."
The pair will return to the court on Friday (03.12.21) regarding the community service and where it will take place.
And they will also have future hearings about the allegations of domestic violence brought about by Dalle, who claimed the 'No One Knows' star "abused" their kids "physically and emotionally", as well as any amendments to their split custody arrangement.
The pair were unable to see their two children without supervision for 30 days before Homme was allowed visits with his young son again from the middle of October.
Tagged in Josh Homme Brody Dalle