After being convicted of one count of contempt last week in her ongoing custody battle with Josh Homme, Brody Dalle has been sentenced to 60 hours of community service.
She was found guilty by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff for violating a September 1 court order after she failed to deliver five-year-old son Wolf to ex-husband Homme on September 3.
In court on November 4, Dalle had testified: “I demanded they go [to Homme's house] and I pleaded with them. I told them there was a court order, and if they didn't go, that I could go to jail.” Prior to the conviction, Dalle had pled not guilty.
In a split ruling, however, she was acquitted of a similar charge relating to the couple's other son Orrin, as the judge believe the child refused to visit his father of his own volition.
Dalle was required to deliver Wolf and Orrin to Homme after a restraining order she filed on their behalf was denied by the judge in September. The couple's daughter, 15-year-old Camille, successfully applied for her own restraining order, however.
Judge Riff yesterday (November 30) sentenced Dalle to 60 hours of community service – as well as a $1,000 fine – despite Homme's lawyers pushing for a jail term of five days.
In her court statement prior to sentencing (reported by Rolling Stone), Dalle said: “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 added that Homme, “testified to calling me a cunt, a cow, and telling me to, ‘Fuck off forever.’”
“Does this sound like a person who wants to do the right thing by our children?” she continued. “He has taken no responsibility for his words and actions and the effect that they have had on our children.”
In his own statement, Homme said he was “willing to take responsibility for things that I do”, but added that he desired “justice” and “one set of rules for both sides”.
“I've suffered a lot of parental alienation in a short period of time,” he told the court. “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.”
In response, Dalle said the accusation of “parental alienation” was a “strategy used in family court by abusers to take the onus off the abuser and place it onto the victims.”
As he sentenced Dalle, Judge Riff 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.”
Speaking to Rolling Stone following the sentencing, 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.”
