The Distillers leader Brody Dalle has been ordered to undertake 60 hours of community service and fined $1,000 in a Los Angeles courtroom, as a sentence for her conviction for criminal contempt arising from her bitter custody battle with her former husband, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme.
On November 19, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff found Dalle guilty of violating a September 1 court order when she didn’t deliver the couple’s 5-year-son Wolf to Homme as expected on September 3.
“I’m relieved by the court’s decision,” Dalle told Rolling Stone after the sentence was passed by Judge Riff. “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.”
“I didn’t withhold our children,” Dalle told the court. “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.”
Pointing out that her former husband “testified to calling me a cunt, a cow, and telling me to, ‘Fuck off forever’”, Dalle said “Does this sound like a person who wants to do the right thing by our children?”
“This family is in grave danger and so fractured and ripped apart,” Homme said in response. “All I want to do is see my kids.”
Dalle and Homme are due back in court on December 3, when the specifics of the community service order will be confirmed.
