A busker well-known for his performances in Liverpool city centre had a lengthy jail sentence extended for secretly filming private family court proceedings.
Elavi Dowie, 53, was known for playing an electric guitar while rapping on Church Street, but also performed all over the country. He made headlines in 2020 when armed police approached him as he performed in Blackpool, after a complaint he was "too loud" and "intimidating people".
He was also prosecuted in 2017 after calling a black PCSO a "house (n word)" in Camden, after she approached him for busking in a restricted area. He was handed a conditional discharge for that offence.
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However he had also been involved in an acrimonious and protracted court battle over his two children, and had been made the subject of a non-molestation order at Preston Family Court and restraining orders imposed at Liverpool Crown Court. In August last year, he was jailed for eight years at Bradford Crown Court for breaching them both repeatedly.
However the Attorney General's office also made an application to have Dowie, originally from Old Trafford in Manchester but most recently of Preesall Road, Preston, committed to prison for contempt of court. The application came after it emerged Dowie had uploaded covertly filmed clips of family court proceedings.
It is illegal to film inside any courtroom in the UK, apart from in the Supreme Court and some Court of Appeal hearings, but family court proceedings in particular are covered by strict legislation to protect the identities of the children involved. The contempt proceedings were dealt with at the High Court in London last month and Dowie was sentenced this week.
According to a written judgment, Dowie uploaded three videos to Youtube in June and July 2020, and has "flatly refused repeated requests to remove the videos" from the web. Judge Mr Justice Macdonald wrote: "Mr Dowie not only recorded private proceedings in breach of the prohibition on doing so, he published deeply private matters to the public."
He added: "In addition, he used the recordings to make public serious and entirely unfounded allegations against the judge, counsel, the psychologist and the Cafcass officer. He has refused to mitigate this position by removing the offending videos from the Internet, although as he points out, he is in custody."
When he was challenged over the videos, Dowie fully accepted uploading them and claimed he had done it "due to the pervasive corruption and institutional racism that I faced as a black man". He also bizarrely claimed that a family court judge in Manchester had given an "order for me to be killed."
The court heard in the videos, Dowie referred to the Cafcass officer as having an agenda to allow paedophiles access to his children, called a psychologist a "criminal" and claimed the district judge had "fabricated evidence". Mr Justice Macdonald wrote: "The prohibition on recording family proceedings and on publishing certain information relating to family proceedings is vital to the integrity of family proceedings.
"As I noted in my previous judgment, the statutory prohibition on recording in court without the permission of the court, and on publishing such recordings, reflects what Parliament considers to constitute a serious risk to the administration of justice if those actions are taken.
"If those giving evidence in private proceedings were to be required to do so in the knowledge that their evidence may be recorded and relayed to the public at large they will be reticent in giving full and frank evidence to the court in the future. The same risk arises if parties know that deeply personal matters relayed in evidence in private proceedings risk being disseminated to the public at large."
Elavi was committed to prison for eight months, which would be added on to his existing prison sentence. He was also ordered to pay £9,498 in costs to the Attorney General's office.
