A VICTORY FOR COMMON SENSE
After MoS campaign, Scots court rules Matthew SHOULD be freed from hospital’s secure unit
AN autistic man who has been held in hospital against his family’s will is to be freed following a campaign by The Scottish Mail on Sunday.
Matthew Johnson, 20, is due to be released next month from the secure psychiatric unit where he has been held for more than a year.
The move will open the door to other families whose loved ones are locked up simply because they are autistic.
We highlighted the case of Mr Johnson, who was sectioned under mental health laws in June 2018.
But following a court ruling last week, he will be returned to the care of his mother, Linda Johnson.
He will move into his own flat just minutes from her home in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire, with 24hour support, on October 7.
His mother feared for his safety after he was forced to live alongside patients with severe psychiatric illnesses.
The case highlights the allegedly ‘inappropriate’ treatment of people with autism in Scotland and could spark a flurry of other releases.
Last night, Mrs Johnson told how she was ‘overwhelmed’ by the
‘Giving hope to families across the country’
decision and said our campaign had given hope to families with autistic children who have been detained.
She added: ‘To find out he is coming out of hospital, finally, I am totally overwhelmed with emotion. It has been the fight of my life.’
Mr Johnson was sectioned under the Mental Health Act after he was forced to leave a residential school in Catrine, Ayrshire. His mother said he suffered a campaign of abuse at the school and was repeatedly assaulted by another student.
But with no community care available, he was taken to Kirklands Hospital in Bothwell, Lanarkshire, and sectioned without his mother’s knowledge, she claimed.
He has been detained ever since, and, according to his family, given powerful drugs to sedate him.
Mrs Johnson claims that for the first 89 days of his detention, he was barred from going outside and getting fresh air. He spent his first couple of weeks standing at the door to his room, she said.
In a bid to free him, Mrs Johnson applied to the courts for an ‘ad interim’ guardian order, which would allow her to become his legal guardian – and challenge his care.
At Hamilton Sheriff Court on September 6, Sheriff Harry Small awarded Mrs Johnson the guardianship of her son. She has organised a flat for him which will provide round-the-clock care. As part of his discharge plan, NHS Lanarkshire staff will take him on two outings into the community to see how he copes prior to release.
He will also have seven days of intensive support provided by his new carers before his section under the Mental Health Act is due to be removed on October 7. He will then be free to leave the hospital. Mrs Johnson said: ‘I have just done what any mother would to free their child. I was so frightened that he would think I let him down.
‘When I first heard Matthew was going to hospital, I was hysterical.
‘I asked, “Why is he going to hospital? He’s not mentally ill, he has autism”. I never thought in a million years that he’d be sectioned.