Mum Arrested After Confiscating Kid's Ipads and is Held in Cell for Seven Hours

It was 12 hours before she was able to return home


A UK mum reportedly spent seven hours behind bars after being arrested for confiscating her kids' iPads.

It turns out that iPads are seemingly essential for school kids now, with some in education struggling to remember how to use a pen and pencil, since they are so used to the technology, such as 'Apple pencils' on offer to them.

Perhaps the only benefit to Donald Trump's tariffs likely driving up the prices of Apple products and other technology is that we might finally see kids entertained by something other than an iPad, such as a book or, dare I say it, the outside world?

Those who let their kids look at iPads for hours on end must have a good reason for it, but I suppose it's no different from adults doomscrolling through Instagram and TikTok in the evening. Some tough love here - neither of them are good for you.

And history teacher Vanessa Brown certainly seems to agree as she decided to confiscate her kids' technology so they could focus on schoolwork, only to land herself in a prison cell for most of the day after being arrested for theft.

The 50-year-old was held at Staines police station in Surrey, having taken the iPads with her as she popped round to her 80-year-old mother's house for a coffee on March 26.

However, she quickly found herself in cuffs as police dragged her in for questioning, after they had been alerted to a potential theft.

Speaking to LBC, the mum-of-two said: "I find it quite traumatic even talking about this now.

"At no point did they [the officers] think to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a little bit of an overreaction for a moment, confiscating temporarily her iPads and popping over to her mum's to have a coffee’. It was just a complete overreaction.

"It was thoroughly unprofessional. They were speaking to my mother, who is in her 80s, like she was a criminal."



Police arrested the mum-of-two before she was able to return home 12 hours later (Getty Stock Photo)

Police also visited her children's school, and they were even pulled out of class. A spokesperson for Surrey Police told LBC that a man in his 40s had alerted police to a potential theft, with tracking devices on the technology leading officers to Vanessa's mother's house.

The spokesperson said: "Tracking device on the iPads showed that they were at the address and a 50-year-old woman from Cobham was arrested on suspicion of theft. A search was then carried out using post-arrest powers and the iPads were located.

“The woman was subsequently released on conditional bail while further enquiries were carried out. The police bail conditions included not speaking to her daughters, who were connected to the investigation, while officers carried out their enquiries.

“Following these enquiries, officers discovered that the iPads belonged to the woman’s children and that she was entitled to confiscate items from her own children.”



Seemingly every kid has an iPad these days (Amazon)

She finally returned to her mother's house 12 hours after the initial arrest.

Vanessa's bail conditions sadly meant she was not able to speak to either of her daughters ahead of Mother's Day on March 30, as inquiries were still ongoing at that time.