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CLASSROOM HELPER PAID HER MORTGAGE WITH VICE GIRL CASH

Barnett: Double life

Thursday March 13,2008

By Chris Riches

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(9)

Teaching assistant Michele Barnett was a pillar of respectability, devoted to her special needs pupils.

But last night she stood disgraced after her secret life was exposed and she was convicted of laundering thousands of pounds made by her husband’s string of brothels.

Mrs Barnett, 55, was praised by senior staff at her school for her “total commitment to the pupils’ wellbeing”.

But her web of deceit began to unravel when her husband Ian, 56, was jailed for three years and eight months after he admitted running brothels with a turnover of more than £2.5million.

For police discovered that she was paying for her family’s five-bedroom mansion and their lavish lifestyle with money from the vice business.

Now Mrs Barnett faces being sacked from her job after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of 10 counts of laundering a total of £9,000 of prostitutes’ earnings through their mortgage.

Her husband admitted controlling the prostitution of a woman trafficked into the country from Lithuania by an Albanian gang, as well as running three brothels in Manchester.

Mrs Barnett claimed that she was estranged from him and believed he had sold the sex business in 2005.

But police suspected that Mrs Barnett, a £7,000-a-year special needs teaching assistant at King David School in Prestwich, Greater Manchester, was receiving money from the business to pay the mortgage on their luxury home in Broughton Park, a wealthy district of Salford.

Tina Landale, prosecuting, told a jury that Mrs Barnett must have known where her husband’s money came from.

The court heard that press cuttings were found at their home, along with envelopes full of money from the brothels – all with her husband’s name on them.

He had even brought some of the prostitutes back to the family home, and used the lounge and piano room as the background for photographs of them, which he posted on a website advertising his brothels.

Police found emails between Mr Barnett and his daughter Emma, talking about his “whores”. The couple, married for more than 25 years, had a Rolls-Royce and a Jaguar with personal plates, went on exotic holidays and lived a “lavish and wealthy lifestyle”.

Miss Landale said: “The brothels sold sex videos to the customers, and when the police searched the house they discovered a TV continuously recording sex films and 3,000 sex videos.

“Michele Barnett could not have failed to notice the production of these tapes, and the prosecution say she must have known what they were for.”

Mrs Barnett was sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for two years.

After the case Joshua Rowe, head of governors at the Jewish faith King David School, said Mrs Barnett was still employed by them.

But her future will now be discussed with Greater Manchester Police and the local education authority.

The brothels sold sex videos to the customers

Tina Landale, prosecuting

...

14.03.08, 10:21pm

As a former pupil of Mrs. Barnett’s to say I am amazed would be a gross understatement. This isn’t a pretentious squeal. More so a note of concern. Not about Mr or Mrs. Barnett personally, but for the country as a whole. I did know the woman personally, and she really one was one the warmest and kindest souls I ever had the pleasure to come into contact with. And when I say amazed, I am not amazed at her behaviour or her so called criminal activity, more so at the crown court to pursue such a case to such extremes. I see the government are not returning the thousands of pounds in “illegal” money it has come across due to the Barnett’s taxpaying. No, and I don’t think it will have a problem persisting to receive millions of pounds everyday in illegal money. It’s a little known fact that ninety-nine percent of bank notes currently in transaction have traces of cocaine on them. And your government is currently glad to receive such money. Let that act as a metaphor.
What is so wrong about selling something people give away for free? Am I missing something here? There a plenty worse things in the world than giving someone an orgasm. Notice how hundreds of men, women and children are currently being killed under our government rule. And they jail a man and women for selling orgasms. Are these people serious? You kill and guy in war and you get a medal, give someone an orgasm and your as popular with the courts as Adolph Hitler is to the Jews. Its legal to sell. And its legal to fuck. What’s wrong with combining the two and selling fucking provided, of course that its in a safe and clean environment? Which leads me on to my next point, note that Mr. Barnett owned “brothels,” thus removing the nuisance and unmitigated dangers of street prostitution. So he cleaned the streets up for those more main-stream members of society. You should be thanking the man, not removing his liberty.
Also notice her wage, a measly seven thousand pounds a year. To sit and have the patience of a saint, and teach children with special needs, all day and every day.
Something is seriously messed up here to say the very least.
So, what’s the message here folks? Stay at home all day, do nothing, and get paid. Earn a living, and get locked up. Think about it, the government pay criminals (and I am by no means insinuating that everyone on the dole is a criminal) to sit at home all day filling their minds with odious day time television, filling their mouths with equally odious food and filling their gut with cheap booze, the tax of which the government are more than pleased to receive. And yet two consenting adults, giving the opportunity to many vulnerable and consenting women to sell sex, get jailed.

I will leave you with a final point, to those who have responded to this. I hope you do actually read this especially the person who claim “not that her special needs pupils will have any idea what prosititution
etc is” she taught me for about a year for behavioural problems. Attention deficit disorder or ADD, if one were to drop the medical jargon and put it in your language, which happens to fall under the “special needs” category in which she was employed. Please don’t insinuate that “special needs” is a euphemism for mentally handicapped, it is not, and you could go about seriously upsetting and offending someone if they were to read that. And please, spell prostitution correctly, your entire fallacy is undermined by your grammatical inadequacies.
Lets just hope the school do right by her, and stick with her.
Good night Britain, go back to sleep.

• Posted by: DamienConrad • Report Comment

NO HARM DONE

13.03.08, 7:47pm

if they where forced into it or there where children involved she should be prosocuted along with her husband, if not what is the problem, they are not murdering anybody with drugs, this government is doing a lot worse things to the people of britain than she is doing but they manage to cover it up and they keep there jobs and good pensions.

• Posted by: allout • Report Comment

DO ME A FAVOUR YOU LOT !

13.03.08, 11:51am

Do you really want a gangsters moll looking after your kids ?
I dont think so !!

• Posted by: lioned • Report Comment

LIVING OFF IMMORAL EARNINGS EH?

13.03.08, 11:29am

She must be an MP!

Can't see the difference myself. She's good at her job as an assistant, leave her be.

• Posted by: Jac16 • Report Comment

YES, I AGREE WITH THE CHAP BELOW

13.03.08, 10:41am

Leave the poor cow alone. There are far worse things in this country to worry about like those nasty little scrotes who have just got away with murder in a happy slapping incident.

• Posted by: Zeigfreid • Report Comment

HOLIER THAN THOU BRIGADE

13.03.08, 9:24am

I suppose the holier than thou briagde will hound her out of her Job, not that her special needs pupils will have any idea what prosititution etc is.
If she's good at her job, she should be allowed to continue. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There are far worse things happening in society than this. Just legalise prostitution, it's the oldest trade going anyhow.
Crikey the government live on immoral earnings.

• Posted by: Rosw • Report Comment