Fathers4Justice campaigner found guilty of defacing Queen portrait with purple paint while it was hanging in Westminster Abbey

Tim Haries, 42, climbed over a cordon and wrote 'help' on £160,000 painting

Told steward who tackled him: 'Sorry, mate, I've nothing against the Queen'

Haries, of Doncaster, said he had wanted to highlight 'social justice issue'

Father of two had denied causing criminal damage to Ralph Heimans' work



Today he was convicted of the charge by a jury at Southwark Crown Court

Recorder of Westminster said direct action could not be used as a defence

Haries will be sentenced on 5 February



Fathers4Justice campaigner Tim Haries, 42, was found guilty of causing criminal damage by a jury at Southwark Crown Court today

A Fathers4Justice campaigner who sprayed the word 'help' onto a portrait of the Queen as it hung in Westminster Abbey was found guilty of criminal damage today.



Tim Haries, 42, shouted 'Fathers for justice' as he defaced the Ralph Heimans painting before telling an Abbey steward who tackled him to the ground: 'Sorry mate, I've got nothing against the Queen', Southwark Crown Court was told.

Despite telling a police officer arresting him that he was 'guilty as charged', the father of two had denied a charge of causing criminal damage of more than £5,000.

Haries, who told jurors he wanted to highlight the 'social justice issue of our time' , smuggled a can of purple spray paint into the Abbey on June 13 last year, before scrawling the word 'help' on the £160,000 painting.



Prosecutor Allister Walker said Haries was tackled to the ground by steward Peter Crook after defacing the large oil painting.



Photographs of the incident were later posted on a Fathers4Justice Facebook page.



Haries told officers who arrived at the scene 'It's for Fathers4Justice', and when asked if it was he who had sprayed the painting, he replied 'Guilty as charged', the court was told.



Today jurors were addressed by Haries, who told them he had now decided to represent himself and said he carried out the act as a protest against the 'social catastrophe' of fathers not being allowed access to their children.



'The pain of losing my children has been like a living bereavement for me,' he said.



'I believe that contact denial is a hate crime and an abuse of children's fundamental rights.'



But Judge Alistair McCreath, Recorder of Westminster, told the jury that direct action or civil disobedience could not be used as a defence in law.



Haries was told he could leave the dock and sit at the back of the court room when representing himself.



But, after being found guilty, he said he wanted to reappoint his defence barrister Kyriakos Argyropoulos.



Judge McCreath told him: 'You can't just duck and dive and have counsel and not have counsel.'



But Mr Argyropoulos said he consented to represent him again, before the judge said he would adjourn for a month for pre-sentencing reports to be carried out.



Haries, of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, was given conditional bail to return to the court for sentencing on 5 February, but the judge told him this was not an indication of how he would be dealt with.



The £160,000 oil painting by artist Ralph Heimans before, left, and after it was defaced by the father of two



Haries later released a statement through Fathers4Justice in which he said his 'children's lives are worth more than any painting'.



'Whilst I disagree with the verdict reached by the jury, I take full responsibility for my actions,' he said.



'Every Family Court judge who separates fathers from their children does so with the authority of the Queen.'



He said that he defaced the painting a day after his 'desperation at not seeing my children was further heightened' when a shared parenting debate in Parliament was attended by just four MPs .



'As a result of this disgraceful attendance and the obvious contempt MPs have for the children and families ripped apart in secret courts, I felt compelled to act,' he added.

