A church worker has avoided jail after stealing nearly £100,000 from the Diocese of Westminster, money that could have been used to support the homeless and food banks.
Francisca Yawson, 37, made nine bank transfers to herself while she was a gift aid and operations technician for the central London division of the Roman Catholic Church between September 2018 and August 2019, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Yawson, who gave birth to her fourth child in October, previously pleaded guilty to nine counts of theft and was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison, suspended for two years.
Judge Mark Weekes said: ‘All in all, you were funding yourself to a reasonably good standard of lifestyle – grossly and dishonestly.’
Judge Weekes said that the money could have been used to help the homeless and families fed through food banks, adding that it would be on her ‘conscience’ that children may have gone hungry ‘while you were helping yourself to a high lifestyle’.
He said that the case had seen a ‘shocking’ delay after police wrongfully closed the investigation between 2021 and 2025, which he said had produced a ‘different outcome’.
The judge said that had sentencing for her ‘meanness and selfishness’ taken place in 2019 or 2020, she would likely have been jailed.
He told her that she was ‘lucky because of the passage of time’, urging her to reflect on ‘the very real damage you caused to people less fortunate than you’.
Hellbound and Down 