My family is being treated worse than human traffickers
Brother of cancer boy Ashya slams parents’ arrest
THE family who smuggled their dying son out of an NHS hospital and fled to Spain say they are being treated ‘worse than human traffickers’. Brett and Naghmeh King will appear before a Madrid court today accused of neglecting their five-year- old son Ashya, who has a brain tumour.
They will be extradited back to Britain if a judge decides their decision to take Ashya from his bed in Southampton General Hospital was tantamount to child cruelty.
Ashya has undergone major surgery for an aggressive brain tumour and is kept alive by a feeding tube. NHS cancer specialists told his family that the boy cannot be saved and will die within four months.
But his parents refused to accept this prognosis and took their son and their six other children on a ferry to France on Thursday before driving to Malaga.
Ashya’s brother Naveed, 20, wrote on Facebook that the boy’s parents and six siblings were being kept away from him.
He said: ‘All we know for now is that they may want to send my parents back to the UK for
‘We couldn’t believe we
were being pursued’
deeper questioning, they don’t allow anyone to see or visit Ashya, not even family.’
Television footage last night showed Ashya’s parents being taken from the court in Malaga to a police car. Both appeared to be handcuffed and police pushed them into the car.
Mr King could be seen saying: ‘We just want the best for Ashya.’ His wife can be heard saying the couple want the ‘best treatment’ for their son.
In a moving video made minutes before he was arrested, Mr King, 51, said they had gone overseas to try to get specialist cancer treatment which he said medics in the UK refused to sanction. The proton beam therapy, which costs £100,000 per patient, is not widely available on the NHS but is commonly used throughout Europe.
The couple’s eldest son Danny, 23, yesterday condemned the police’s decision to pursue the family across Europe and described their behaviour as ‘heavy-handed’.
Speaking to the Mail, he said: ‘It was incredible. I have never seen anything like it. It was like we were worse than human traffickers.
‘We heard that the police were on the way and couldn’t believe we were being pursued.’
He added: ‘My parents still want to pay for treatment. I still hope that they can so hopefully we can have little Ashya here with us a little bit longer. We will find the money somehow. But when you are told your child has only four months to live, what is money?’
Last night Naveed said the family had travelled to Spain with all the necessary medical equipment for Ashya and had even bought him a £1,600 wheelchair.
Referring to concerns from the hospital that Ashya’s life was in danger after he had been taken, Naveed said the family had bought food for his feeding tube, which was the same as he was given in hospital. Medical experts had told police the battery in Ashya’s tube feeding unit was due to run down and his life was ‘in grave danger’. But Naveed said they had a power cord for his feeding system in the car.
Mr King, who runs a property company, said in his video that Ashya’s treatment seemed to be based on ‘trial and error’ and had left his son limp and unresponsive.
He added: ‘[The doctor] said more or less if I questioned him in any way regarding his treatment they’ll get an emergency protection order and take him away from me.
‘So after that, I realised I can’t speak to the oncologist at all because if I actually ask anything or gave them any doubt I wasn’t in full accord with them, they were just going to get a protection order.
‘Which meant in his deepest, darkest hour, I wouldn’t be there to look after him and neither would my wife.’
Proton beam radiotherapy is currently only available to treat eye conditions on the NHS in the UK but countries throughout Europe use it for a range of cancers. Patients can also access proton beam therapy abroad through NHS funding, where they must be assessed by a panel.
Roz Jones, whose son Alex had surgery for brain cancer in 2008, said the family had to raise £100,000 for proton beam therapy in Florida. She said they hit a brick wall with the NHS and the hospital concerned which left them with no choice but to make the financial sacrifice.
Mrs Jones told Channel 4 News: ‘With the proton therapy I had been reading about, [the hospital said], “No, that’s not tried and tested, they’re after your money, you mustn’t take [your son] to the States.”
‘But we made the right decision because my little boy’s perfect – he’s got no side effects and he’s a lovely little boy.’ Mr and Mrs King, who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, were arrested on Saturday night after a receptionist at the hotel they were staying in reported them to the police. Medics then took Ashya to a children’s hospital where he remains in a stable condition.
A hotel waiter said: ‘The father insisted on carrying his child to the ambulance. He was holding the sick child and begging to be allowed to go to hospital with him. But the police said no. It was heartbreaking.’
Hampshire police said they would not apologise for the way they conducted their search for Ashya. Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead said: ‘We had medical experts telling us that Ashya was in grave danger. I make no apology for being as proactive as possible. I’d much rather be standing here facing criticism over being proactive than do nothing and explain why a child has lost his life.’
Southampton General Hospital disputed Mr King’s comments and said it did offer the family access to a second opinion over their son’s treatment. A spokesman added: ‘ We understand how distressing this situation is for everyone involved, particularly Ashya’s family. We will continue to do what we can to support them.’