Just Stop Oil sprayed Falmouth University building orange

However both Holly Astle and fellow defendant Ethan Paul, who covered another building belonging to Exeter University with orange paint, were found not guilty of a second charge of causing £11,406 of criminal damage because the prosecution could not prove that was how much it cost to clean up the mess.

Mr Paul, an environmental consultant, from Heswall, Wirral was also found not guilty of causing criminal damage of under £5,000 to the Stella Turk building, because the water based paint was easily washed off the next day.

Falmouth University graduate Holly Astle and Exeter University graduate Ethan Paul were on trial jointly at Truro Magistrates’ Court after pleading not guilty to two charges of criminal damage, one of £11,406, and one for under £5,000.

Their defence was under their right to protest under article 11 of the European Human Rights Act and necessity through danger to life.

The prosecution elected to prosecute the two defendants jointly for damage to both buildings. Both defendants represented themselves.

Ethan Paul sits outside the Stella Turk Building after throwing paint on it (Image: Supplied)

The prosecution told the court that on October 11 last year, security at the Tremough Campus at Penryn were alerted to a protest outside the Stannary Building.

The protest turned into a march and when it got the Stella Turk Building run by Exeter University, Mr Paul broke off and threw orange paint over the outside brickwork of the building.

Following the act the march moved to the Bridge Building run by Falmouth University where self-employed illustrator Holly Astle from Falmouth produce a type of fire extinguisher and sprayed the front of the building with orange paint.

She was led away from the scene by security to the reception area and was left there, but returned to the front of the building, dipped her hands in the paint and dabbed orange handprints all over the glass frontage.

Both defendants were eventually arrested by police and taken to Camborne Custody Centre where they answered no comment to all questions.

Simon Foster, director of estates, operations and planning for Falmouth University told the court that the university had been unable to clean all the paint off the Bridge Building, despite hiring a specialist cleaning company, because the work had started to damage the very fabric of the building and it was now in the hands of the university’s insurers. It said so far it had cost the university £11,406 to try and remove it.

He said if they could not get the paint removed then the whole frontage may have to be replaced at a cost of possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds.

However under questioning from the judge and Holly Astle, he admitted he had no invoices to prove the damage had cost over £11,000 and had no knowledge how the amount had been decided, as that would have been done by the finance director and FX Plus, which had first tried cleaning the building.

He also said he had no knowledge of any damage to the Stella Turk building as it was nothing to do with Falmouth University. However he agreed that all the paint seemed to have been washed off the next day.

Taking the stand Holly Astle said in her defence that the protest was an act of love; to protect life. She said it was a protest about the continuing failure of both universities to tackle climate change which was putting the future lives of its students at risk.

She said the university had not taken notice of previous protests or other methods and they felt the paint spraying was the only option they had to make the university take notice.

“What keeps me awake at night is not the fear of judicial punishment, but the fear that I haven’t done enough,” she said. “It is not a crime to be a bystander: to watch as the world burns, where scientists are pleading with us to act and avert the unimaginable suffering entailed by global ecological and societal collapse. So I would rather that we were found guilty of criminal damage than to stand on the sidelines, bearing the guilt of failing to act at this crucial point in history.”

She told the court that she believed that the paint was water based and would easily wash off as it had off the Stella Turk building and disputed the amount of damage that had been caused.

Finding Holly Astle not guilty of the first count, Judge Matson said that the prosecution had failed to prove that the cost of cleaning up was as much as £11,406 as they had provided no invoices, however she did find her guilty of the second charge that she had caused damage of up to £5,000 to the building and that her actions had been reckless in doing so.

Clearing Mr Paul of both charges, Judge Matson said despite their defences failing, the prosecution had not provided any evidence of any lasting damage to either building caused by Mr Paul and she found him not guilty.

Holly Astle was given a 12-month community order with 60 hours of unpaid work and ordered to pay £4,000 compensation to the university.

Ethan Paul sits outside the Stella Turk Building after throwing paint on it (Image: Supplied)

Speaking after the trial, Ms Astle told the Packet: “I am so pleased that my co-defendant Ethan was found not guilty. I believe the judge to have been fair and taken our evidence into consideration.

“The one grievance I have is how the judiciary currently responds to climate protest: It is tragically surreal to live in times when the justice system recognises by a whole that we’re facing an unravelling of our life support systems, yet has little to say about the cause, the remedy, the victims or the perpetrators.

“How the legal system chooses to respond to climate action is paramount, as we are at a critical point in our own history in order to create rapid change, where we must all ask ourselves what we can do.”