COLOURFUL CAST BEHIND THE DRAMA

DURING the fight to save Charlie Gard’s life, an everchanging cast of characters entered the family’s life.

As Great Ormond Street Hospital insisted Charlie’s life support machine be switched off because treatment for his rare genetic condition would be futile, his parents found themselves surrounded by those who insisted there might be hope after all. And who could blame the traumatised couple for hanging on to that hope, however slim?

This assortment of experts and ‘ saviours’, including a pro-life American attorney, an anti-abortion American pastor, a former Ukip parliamentary candidate, an emissary from the Vatican, a freelance journalist and an American doctor, were regular visitors to Charlie’s parents, Connie and Chris, as they maintained a vigil at their son’s bedside.

1. THE AMERICAN ‘SAVIOUR’

HARVARd-EdUCATEd Michio Hirano, 56, is professor of neurology and chief of the division of muscular disorders at Columbia University Medical Centre in Manhattan. He is regarded as a leader in his field.

‘He’s a saint,’ said six-year- old Arturito Estopinan’s father, Art. The boy has MddS, a similar mitochondrial depletion syndrome to Charlie, and was the first person in the United States to receive the experimental and pioneering nucleoside bypass therapy that Charlie’s parents wanted to try.

‘He saved my son and he’s saved about 16 or 18 other children around the world with these devastating diseases,’ said Mr Estopinan.

Earlier this year, dr Hirano, who is married with two daughters, offered to treat Charlie in the U.S. He said there was a ‘small but significant chance of helping Charlie’ and it was ‘worth trying’. More than £1 million was raised to pay for the treatment.

Great Ormond Street says it invited dr Hirano to examine Charlie in January. ‘That invitation remained open at all times,’ Katie Gollop QC, the hospital’s barrister, told the High Court this week.

But dr Hirano’s credibility was undermined when the QC revealed that the invitation was not taken up until this month.

He had not examined Charlie until then, nor had he read Charlie’s contemporaneous medical notes, viewed his brain imaging or read all the second opinions about his condition obtained from experts, all of whom had taken the opportunity to examine him and consider his records.

In addition, Katie Gollop said, dr Hirano retained a financial interest in some of the drugs he proposed to use on Charlie.

dr Hirano was listed as a consultant with U.S. pharmaceutical company Meves when he attended a conference in Alabama. He said he has ‘now relinquished and has no financial interest’ in the treatment that would have been used on Charlie. He said this information was disclosed to the court when he gave evidence on July 13.

2. THE BIBLICAL BELIEVER

THE REV Patrick Mahoney arrived in the UK with his ‘right to life team’ this month.

Mahoney is pastor of the Church on the Hill in Washington dC and director of the Christian defence Coalition. Almost immediately he posted a photograph on Facebook of himself with Charlie’s parents at the boy’s bedside, claiming the hospital had tried to prevent him entering the intensive care unit before relenting. A photo of Charlie wearing a U.S.-themed romper suit was released, which was also posted on Facebook and Twitter.

‘This continues to show Great Ormond Street Hospital’s disregard for the wishes of Charlie’s parents. First the hospital denies care, and now they deny prayer,’ he wrote.

Rev Mahoney has been jailed in the U.S. for defying a court order that prohibited him from demonstrating in front of abortion clinics in Houston, Texas. He has said abortions are justified only to save a mother’s life.

In 1989, and for a period during the early Nineties, he was spokesman for a group calling itself the Coalition for Ending Child Abuse, which doggedly pursued the prosecution of a Florida gynaecologist whose crime had been to perform a termination on a tenyear-old girl. It later emerged the child had been raped by her father.

Rev Mahoney was also media director for a campaign called Operation Rescue. Activists stalked doctors and judges and used ‘ sidewalk counselling’, targeting pregnant women with photos of aborted foetuses.

Operation Rescue pioneered the use of so- called ‘Truth Trucks’, which would drive past schools and sports grounds covered in graphic images of abortions.

Rev Mahoney said he and fellow evangelist Catherine Glenn Foster became acquainted with Connie and Chris via a mutual friend in the U.S. ‘After that we put together a proposal on how we could help the family,’ he said when we spoke to him at the High Court this week.

Connie and Chris since appear to have distanced themselves from the reverend.

Rev Mahoney had led demonstrations at Great Ormond Street and the Royal Courts of Justice, his hands clasped in earnest supplication, where protesters chanted ‘medicine not murder’.

Staff at the hospital subsequently received abuse both in the street and online, even death threats. Families have also been harassed while visiting their sick children. This backlash was condemned by Charlie’s parents and by the judge, who lamented that social media gave a platform to ‘ users who know almost nothing’.

He did not identify Rev Mahoney by name but there was little doubt he was referring to him and the cast of other questionable characters at the heart of ‘Charlie’s Fight’.

3. THE EVANGELIST

EARlIER this month, U.S. lawyer Catherine Glenn Foster tweeted a photo of herself planting a kiss on Charlie’s head. A passionate pro-lifer and evangelical Christian, she had flown to london at the request of Charlie’s parents.

Mrs Glenn Foster, who is married with three children, wrote on Twitter: ‘Connie snapped this photo as I was sharing a moment with baby Charlie.’

Experienced at arguing cases involving unborn rights, assisted suicide and euthanasia, this year she became president and CEO of anti-abortion lobby group Americans United for life. She said she was helping Charlie’s parents with medical and legal issues.

4. THE UKIP MAN

AlASdAIR SETON-MARSdEN, 54, was Ukip’s candidate for Chelsea and Fulham in the General Election. He is a former marketing director for computer firm Psion.

In 2012 he studied employment law and at an industrial tribunal successfully represented a parking warden, who had been unfairly sacked for refusing to issue a large number of tickets.

Mr Seton-Marsden, silver-haired

and smartly suited, became the official spokesman for Charlie, offering his services free of charge, and made several statesmanlike pronouncements outside court hearings.

But the relationship soured after he made inflammatory comments on American TV, accusing the NHS of ‘holding Charlie captive’.

‘They [his parents] have been told they can’t even take him home to die and they cannot fly him to America. So literally, he is being held captive by effectively the British State and British National Health Service,’ he said in an interview with Fox News this month.

The media strategy was blamed by Charlie’s parents for contribut - ing to the hysteria that culminated in hospital staff receiving abuse and death threats, and tarnishing their own reputation.

Chris Gard used a social media post to distance himself from Mr Seton-Marsden. ‘He is not helping us and he is certainly not helping Charlie,’ he said.

Contacted by the Mail, Mr SetonMarsden said he had made an ‘off - the- cuff remark’ about Charlie being a hostage of the state, adding: ‘I always deal with the truth. All I have ever done is follow every single instruction given to me by the family or the solicitor.

‘We have always worked free and we all worked very hard. All we were trying to do was look after Connie and Chris and Charlie.’

5. THE EMISSARY

MARIeLLA eNOC is the president of Bambino Gesu, a children ’s hospital owned by the Vatican and known as the Pope’s Hospital. The hospital contacted Great Ormond Street about an ‘eventual transfer of Charlie to our hospital’.

‘We know the case is desperate,’ Miss enoc, 73, revealed in state - ment a few weeks ago. But she said Great Ormond Street was blocking the move, citing ‘legal reasons’.

She added: ‘I was contacted by the mother who is very determined and doesn’t want to be stopped by anything.’

A doctor from Bambino Gesu was eventually sent to London to examine Charlie this month.

The hospital’s interest in Charlie provided a useful distraction from publication of a damning investigation in the Italian P ress, which accused Bambino Gesu of putting profits before the welfare of children. The scandal occurred before Miss enoc joined the hospital.

6. THE MEDIA AGENT

ALISON SMITH- SqUIRe is the journalist and media agent who broke the story of Chris Gard and Connie Yates’s attempt to raise funds to enable Charlie to go to America for treatment.

A qualified journalist since 1985, she says the couple came to her in December 2016 and she encouraged them to find a resolution with Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The first story about their campaign appeared in the Daily Mail in early March this year . It went on to make headlines around the world.

The mother of three, whose business is called F eatureworld, has faced criticism because she has combined being the couple’s spokeswoman with writing about them, but says she represents ‘the ordinary person who would never be able to afford professional media representation’ and that she never takes money from interviewees.

She said in a blog: ‘ My own children and my husband know how much I have put my own life on hold to give my utmost to this story. I have worked morning, noon and night to help Connie, Chris and Charlie.

‘ I have been so pleased and honoured to help them, overjoyed when things have gone right, depressed when they went wrong.’