A Christian woman who was arrested after she silently prayed outside an abortion clinic has been awarded a £13,000 payout and an apology from the police.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce issued a claim against West Midlands Police for wrongful arrests and false imprisonments, assault and battery in relation to an intrusive search of her person, and for a breach of her human rights in 2022 and 2023.

She was first arrested in 2022 after she engaged in silent prayer in a “buffer zone” imposed by local authorities around the BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham.

A law was passed last year which introduced the zones - which would extend 150m from the clinics - to protect women from protesters, but it has yet to come into effect.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has received thousands in compensation and apology from the policePA

Vaughan-Spruce was told that “engaging in prayer” was an “offence”, but was found not guilty by Birmingham Magistrates Court after the prosecution were unable to offer evidence to support the charge.

However, weeks later, she was arrested a second time in February 2023 for the same offence outside the same clinic, though she insisted that she was “not protesting”.

Six months later, police later dropped the charges, apologising to Vaughan-Spruce and stating that “there will be no further investigation”.

Vaughan-Spruce, who has now also received £13,000 in compensation, said in a statement: “Silent prayer is not a crime. Nobody should be arrested merely for the thoughts they have in their heads – yet this happened to me twice at the hands of the West Midlands Police, who explicitly told me that ‘prayer is an offence’.

“There is no place for Orwell’s Thought Police in 21st-century Britain, and thanks to legal support I received from ADF UK, I’m delighted that the settlement that I have received today acknowledges that.

“Yet despite this victory, I am deeply concerned that this violation could be repeated at the hands of other police forces. Our culture is shifting towards a clampdown on viewpoint diversity, with Christian thought and prayer increasingly under threat of censorship.”