A celebrated British conductor was arrested upon entry into the US for not paying child support

A British Grammy Award-winner who failed to pay child support for his two daughters has been arrested at a US airport as he travelled to perform at a concert.

Conductor Paul Hillier, from Dorchester, Dorset, was detained on an outstanding warrant at Newark Airport in New Jersey as he made his way to a Mozart festival.

The 61-year-old, who lives in Denmark with his second wife and was made an OBE in 2006 for services to music, had to pay £58,000 before being released and said his rights as a father had been “comprehensively trampled into the ground”.

He released a statement saying that as part of the divorce arrangement with his ex-wife, who lives with their two daughters in the US, he was to pay child support in return for “very specific visitation rights” which he said were never fulfilled.

The statement said: “I paid child support regularly for several years, but apart from a single two-week visit by my younger daughter, the visitation was totally and very effectively prevented by the girls’ mother. Eventually I told her I would stop sending child support unless and until she started to keep her side of the agreement. She never did.”

Tags: child support, conductor, courts, solicitors, USA