Skint Tina Malone reveals she felt like a ‘low life’ after she was forced to borrow money from a priest
TINA Malone has revealed she borrowed money from her priest after her Jon Venables court case left her skint.
The Shameless star, 56, was forced to flog her possessions and beg relatives for cash in a bid to make ends meet when she was charged with sharing an alleged picture of James Bulger’s murderer online.
Speaking to the Mirror, she explained: “I felt like a lowlife. I borrowed money from everyone I knew. I cleaned my mother out.
“I ended up having two parties at home where I sold my designer clothes and jewellery to pay the rent.”
The sales only raised a total of £1,000 and her eldest daughter Danielle was so ashamed she stopped speaking to her mum
Things got even worse when Tina was slapped with a £10,000 fine and an eight-month suspended sentence.
She continued: “After the Venables thing, when we got the call from the solicitor telling us I could face six months in prison it was five days before Christmas. My priest came round and put an envelope on my table with money in. That’s how bad it was.”
Earlier this year Tina broke down in tears on This Morning as she revealed she couldn’t afford to take her kids to Disneyland Paris after the court case.
She explained that she had no idea how to use social media or computers when she posted an apparent picture of the toddler’s killer on Facebook.
Tina sobbed as she told hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield: “I have never, on my father’s grave, sent an email. I don’t know what ‘copy and post’ is. I truly don’t know what all that is.
“I’m a technophobe. I have a pad and a pen to write. This has destroyed me.”
Asked if she could pay the money back, she erupted into tears again and said: “I’m terrified, I’ve got to pay it back, it just means I’ve got to go home and tell the five year old that you can’t go to Euro Disney… I feel like I’ve let me mum down and me husband, but it was my fault though. I’m not feeling sorry for myself.”
She confessed to breaching an injunction protecting the identity of James’s killer in February 2018 and avoided jail despite admitting the crime, which she blamed on the stress of her panto cocaine arrest in 2017.
The Sun revealed Tina told the court she had been left suicidal in 2017 after police found cocaine in her handbag while she starred as the wicked fairy godmother in the Sleeping Beauty panto in Barrow-in-Furness at Christmas.
MOST READ IN TV & SHOWBIZ
The star, who accepted a caution from cops, maintained the drugs had been planted.
The pictures were said to have breached a 2001 injunction made “against the world” that banned images or information which could identify Venables or fellow killer Robert Thompson as adults.
The pair – who became the youngest murderers in modern British history when they were convicted in 1993 – were given new identities following their release from prison.
Both live under taxpayer funded anonymity – with publication or sharing of any details regarding his current ID and whereabouts being punishable by jail time.
Got a story? email digishowbiz@the-sun.co.uk or call us direct on 02077824220.
We pay for videos too. Click here to upload yours.