Professional cupcake baker Indea Ford, 34, today admitted abducting her two children and taking them to Alaska

A British mother who admitted abducting her two children and taking them to Alaska without permission has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Indea Ford, 34, broke court orders to take the children to Sitka following the breakdown of her 'acrimonious' relationship with their father, Isleworth Crown Court heard on Monday.

Professional cupcake baker Indea, who previously lived in Maidstone, Kent, was due to go on trial today.

But this morning she tearfully pleaded guilty to two counts of child abduction after the move with her two young daughters in October 2015.

Sentencing Ford, Recorder Gibson Grenfell QC said: 'A cynic might say the defendant has achieved what she set out to achieve: keep the children in America permanently.'

'I think there is some degree of aggravation in the fact the children were taken to Alaska with no previous connection to the area though they did know their step-father.

'The fact is the girls' relationship with their father which had been maintained, though there may have been difficulties, has been severed.

'The breached the original order. In cases were a court order is flagrantly breached there must be a deterrent sentence.

'The children have already been out of the jurisdiction for three years and are still out of the jurisdiction. They are likely to be out of the jurisdiction permanently.

'There is no indication she will bring them back. The relationship broke down and the parties separated in 2012. Things became acrimonious between them and there were a number of court hearings.'

But he said the father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, may have at times behaved 'reprehensibly' during the relationship.

Parts of Ford's mitigation has been made subject to reporting restrictions, but the court heard the father denies certain allegations.

After marrying an American in the military, Ford broke a custody order and a family court judgment preventing her moving the children abroad.

Lauren Soertsz, in mitigation, said Ford made the 'wrong decision' when she overstayed in the US while on holiday, but did so with the best intentions.

'She was operating on emotion and when she saw how happy the children were, her desire for that to continue was just too strong,' Ms Soertsz said.

She added: 'By remaining in America, she was protecting her children. She wanted them to experience a conflict-free life. Something neither had had in their short lives.'

After their relationship broke down in 2012, a family court in Dartford ordered that custody be shared between the biological parents.

In April 2017 the mother-of-three was arrested in Sitka, an island town in the south of Alaska 4,500 miles from where she lived in England until 2015

The judge also ordered that each parent must hold one of the girls' passports and Ford failed in May 2015 to get a family court to approve their move to the US.

But her sentencing hearing was told how the father went round to collect the girls on October 3, 2015, and could not find them.

The father called police and they learned the girls had left a day earlier on a flight to the States after she obtained a new passport for the second child, claiming it had been lost or stolen.

Jennifer Knight, prosecuting, said the girls were made wards of the court five days after their disappearance when the father made an application in the High Court.

Ford has been jailed for three-and-a-half years but is likely to serve nine after remaining in custody on both sides of the Atlantic after taking her children to Alaska without permission

Prosecutor Jennifer Knight said: 'Each parent informed the other if they intended to go on holiday. Sufficient notice was to be given of such a trip.

'The order set out clearly that it was a criminal offence to remove the children from the jurisdiction without written consent of every person with parental responsibility of the children or the leave of the court.

'There has been an acrimonious relationship between Indea Ford and the girl's father.'

The police became involved and Ford, who has a child with her new husband, was extradited in April.

The children remain with their stepfather in the US state. Their father was not in court.

Ford is likely to be released in about nine months, having already served time in custody on both sides of the Atlantic

In April 2017 the mother-of-three was arrested in Sitka, an island town in the south of Alaska 4,500 miles from where she lived in England until 2015.

She has been in custody in America and the UK since her arrest in January this year. Her parents, who also live in the States, sat in the public gallery.

Indea is married to American Kenny Ford, who works for the Alaskan coastguard, and they also have a toddler together.

Ford moved to the north-western United States with her two British daughters in October 2015.

Before her extradition Mrs Ford had been under house arrest since her arrest in April 2017.

Since moving to Alaska she appears to have become a popular member of Sitka's main evangelical church, Grace Harbor Church.

Pastor Paul McArthur told the local press his congregation was praying for Ms Ford and her safe return.

He said: 'Anyone who meets Indea Ford, and the Ford family realises that Indea is not a criminal.

'The more details that you learn of this story. Every one of them makes it even more of an amazing thing that such a thing should be happening in two countries sophisticated enough to understand basic justice'.

Mr Recorder Grenfell said although the defence had invited him to pass a sentence that would allow Ford to return to her children, it was not within his duty to do so.

He said: 'I do not think it would be consistent with my duty nor in accordance with the facts in the case and the level of the defendants culpability to do so.

'The present case is in many ways unusual.'

He said the appropriate starting point was four years and seven months but because of her early pleas. personal mitigation and family circumstances was reduced to three-and-a-half years imprisonment.