KEY POINTS:
A Northland couple were today given 10 month jail sentences for their part in the kidnapping of Hamilton boy Jayden Headley.
Jeremy Owen Daly and Tania Carol Thomason, of Mangonui, pleaded guilty in May this year to unlawfully detaining six-year-old Jayden.
The pair were originally charged with kidnapping along with Jayden's grandfather Dick Headley and mother Kay Skelton.
Jayden was at the centre of a bitter custody dispute between his parents, Skelton and Chris Jones who had legal custody.
He was abducted from Hamilton Central Library a year ago and taken by his maternal grandfather Dick Headley into hiding in the Far North.
At Kaikohe District Court today, Judge John McDonald said Daly and Thomason must have known that Jayden's father, Chris Jones, had been awarded lawful care and custody of his son, but they kept Jayden away from him.
"I accept that in the beginning, you had no knowledge of the kidnap events. That you thought a mother and child were going to arrive and needed time out.
"In the first 10 days you were in the dark but it soon became plain, from media coverage, that the boy had been kidnapped. Then, for five months, you gave Jayden and his grandfather safe haven."
- NZPA
