When the news first broke that his parents had taken Ashya
out of Southampton hospital, the predictable media storm erupted. Armed with
only one side of the story, such emotive terms as “snatched” and “abducted”
were tossed around with gay abandon.
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| Ashya King and his father, Brett |
The batteries for Ashya’s essential feeding equipment, we
were told, were shortly to run out and he would surely starve to death. We were
then told that the family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and with it the suggestion
that the family had refused to allow Ashya to be treated – an inference
demonstrably false as Ashya had recently undergone major brain surgery.
As public pleas by the police – instigated by Southampton
Hospital – for the Kings to get in touch went unheeded, a European wide manhunt
was launched. Chris Shead, the assistant chief constable of Hampshire police,
took to the airwaves to tell us that a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) had been
issued for the arrest of the Kings based on the vague suggestion of “neglect”. (The
Spanish police have since publicly stated the investigation centres upon
equally vague “child cruelty” allegations.
As the days went by, the Kings’ side of the story gradually
became known. With their son suffering a stage four aggressive brain tumour and
given just four months to live, their only ostensible crime was to love their
son and to have the audacity to disagree with doctors on how he should be
treated. For this, they have been pursued like dangerous fugitives to Spain
where they currently languish in a prison cell, prevented from seeing or
speaking to their possibly terminally ill son.
In desperation, the Kings wish their son to undergo
proton beam treatment. This treatment is
perceived to be a ‘kinder’ form of radiotherapy as it’s believed to cause less
damage to the healthy cells around the tumour, making it particularly suited to
children. Unfortunately, this form of treatment is not the best treatment
available for every cancer patient and is not currently available in the UK.
Whilst the NHS has in the past paid for some patients to receive the treatment
abroad, this is only possible with the consent of the patient’s oncologist –
something which would not appear to have been forthcoming in Ashya’s case.
Now it may well be the case that proton beam treatment would
not be effective in Ashya’s case, and the NHS was right not to pay for the same
when the cost of a treatment seems to play an ever more important role in the
clinical decision making process.
What is troubling about the situation is when we hear
from Ashya’s grandmother that his parents had been threatened with the prospect
of a protection order being made, simply for disagreeing with doctors how Ashya
should be treated. That when they decided to privately seek their preferred
means of treatment abroad – at not insignificant cost – they were pursued by
police forces across the continent.
With horrific stories of child abuse in Rotherham, and
particularly the collective failures of various public bodies to tackle this,
still dominating our newspapers, Hampshire Police have gone to the other absurd
extreme. When the Kings should have been permitted – if not helped – to explore
every possible avenue of treatment which may be available to Ashya, they are
locked up in a Spanish prison cell; their son in a hospital hundreds of miles
away prevented from seeing anybody he knows.
Clearly in the first instance a lot hinges on exactly
what the police were told by Southampton hospital, but that Hampshire police leapt
into action as the enforcement arm of the NHS in the event of a disagreement
over medical advice is profoundly unsettling. It should be a matter of public
debate as to where the balance of decision making should lie in cases like this
– with patient or their guardian(s), or with the doctors.
More worrying is how the police have handled this matter. Public confidence in the police, particularly here in the north east, still
bears the scars, rightly or wrongly, of their actions during the miners’ strike,
when they were perceived to be the state’s enforcers. The police, as is widely
and repeatedly stated, police with and by consent in the UK. Any perception
they are merely the establishment’s heavy-handed, ham-fisted hired muscle is
profoundly worrying. More so given an European Arrest Warrant was applied for
and issued in the absence of any prerequisite ongoing criminal proceedings (a
decision the police and CPS have hitherto refused to explain or justify).
As the CPS inexplicably continues to wrestle with the
decision whether to charge and seek the extradition of the Kings, they should
immediately take the only right and decent course of action available to them –
to rescind the arrest warrant, call on their Spanish counterparts to release
Ashya’s parents immediately, and make arrangements for the family to be
reunited with their son as soon as is humanly possible.
I don’t doubt the ramifications of this sad case will be
felt for some time to come. What they will transpire to be should be of great
concern to all of us.
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