Abbott son ‘ordered crystal meth to her £1.2m home’
DIANE Abbott’s son had crystal meth delivered to her home when she was Shadow Home Secretary, a court heard yesterday.
The diplomat is then said to have chased her around her £1.2million home with scissors, claiming he had a gun in his dressing gown pocket.
James Abbott-Thompson was high on a cocktail of drugs when he started ‘threatening his mother with violence’. He then went on a drug-induced rampage, attacking nine police officers, doctors, nurses and security guards at various hospitals.
Yesterday it emerged the ‘rising star’ had been hooked on drugs even before he joined the Foreign Office fast-track scheme in 2014.
Wood Green Crown Court heard the Cambridge graduate had been taking crystal meth, the ‘chemsex’ drug GBL and cocaine since 2013. At just 27, he was posted to the British Embassy in Rome as first secretary for exiting the EU, advising Britons in Italy on their post-Brexit rights.
But his addiction and mental health issues ended his career.
Yesterday the ex-diplomat was handed an indefinite hospital order and banned from entering the Foreign Office after attacking police officers there and throwing a stone at a member of the public when he was refused entry after being sacked last summer. Prosecutor Benn Maguire told the court the Labour MP was ‘chased around her home’ by her son ‘who said he had a gun in his pocket’, although no gun was later found.
Police were called to her home in East London on July 26 last year to find Abbott-Thompson naked except for a dressing gown making wild claims of being raped by ‘someone at the Home Office’, and yelling at officers: ‘Stop raping me.’
Miss Abbott locked herself in a room and Abbott-Thompson bit a police officer then tried to escape from an ambulance. Mr Maguire said the 999 call about the gun and the scissors, which formed the basis of several officer witness statements, ‘came from Diane Abbott herself’.
He went on: ‘The officers had information that he had had crystal meth delivered to the home address and police officers later found items consistent with crystal meth in Mr Abbott’s room.’ He was assessed as suffering from a drug-induced psychosis and sectioned.
But he went on to carry out a terrifying series of attacks in various London hospitals, beating up a two nurses, a doctor, a therapist and five police officers.
Abbott-Thompson threw punches and kicks at one mental health nurse after telling her: ‘I will get
‘Doused with hot custard’
you.’ A security guard who tried to protect her was punched and kicked in the head and hand.
On another occasion, he smashed a female nurse’s glasses, saying: ‘Bitch you think you are white? You want some of this?’ Another doctor was doused with a bowl of hot custard and later a canteen tray was used to hit a female therapist.
On November 29 Abbott-Thompson turned up unannounced at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and asked to see a welfare officer. When told they weren’t there, he flew into rage and went on to attack two police officers. He also hurled a stone from a flower pot at a member of the public in reception.
Sarah Elliott, QC, defending, said the 28-year-old had been ‘self-medicating’ due to mental health issues, revealing his mother had first taken him to a child psychologist as early as 13. Miss Abbott made headlines when she decided to send him to the £10,000-a year City of London School in 2003 after criticising colleagues for choosing private schools. She was not in court yesterday.
Her son’s lawyer presented character references from his godfather Jonathan Aitken and the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
At an earlier hearing he pleaded guilty to 12 assaults, racially aggravated criminal damage, making threats and exposing himself.
Yesterday Judge Aaronberg QC told him: ‘You were a model citizen, you had a good education, a good degree and good employment. You need to resist the temptation of taking illicit drugs in the future.’