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The image of a Spanish policeman’s hand pushing Naghmeh King’s head down into the police car to stop her saying anything to reporters, is truly alarming. She looks utterly exhausted and in shock. Indeed we know she has been sleeping in a hospital for days to be with her son throughout his surgery. Anyone who has slept in hospitals beside their children knows this is no sleep at all.
And now she is not with him at all, but like her husband handcuffed and hunted as if they were long-wanted criminals. A whole system of emergency protection orders and European arrest warrants has made a dire situation worse. No one appears to think what is happening to the King family is right, but no one appears to be able to stop it.
The momentum of the system bypasses individual suffering, passes the buck and cannot be seen to be mistaken.
Ashya has a stage four aggressive brain tumour. His grandmother has said that doctors in the Southampton hospital told his parents there was nothing more they could do. Like others, when I first heard of the case I thought that perhaps the Kings had taken Ashya out of hospital to spend the time he has got left together, and that this was perfectly understandable.
We were then told that the family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, which brings with it the suggestion that they had refused medical treatment. As the child had just had major brain surgery, they clearly had not done this, what they had done was argue with doctors about what treatment they wanted. In their sadness, they pinned their hopes on the very expensive proton beam treatment, widely seen as a “kinder” treatment. Doctors told them this would make no difference. So the Kings are either in denial or defying arrogant consultants. Either way, they are desperate. Far from neglecting Ashya, they are unable to let him go and my heart clenches. What a dreadful situation.
The doctors may indeed be right about the treatment, and Brett King has clashed with them before. He has spoken of arguing with them and being threatened with a protection order. These parents may be mistaken. Being mistaken is human, what appears utterly inhuman is the powerful combination of the medical system with its certain arrogance and the ridiculous siren–blazing police efforts. The police have defended themselves saying that a child’s life is in danger. Indeed it is, the child is terminally ill.
Lately the police have been heavily criticised for doing so little to protect children amid all the abuse scandals; here they have gone into overdrive. It would be OK if they too admitted some human frailty, but no: now extradition proceedings and expensive lawyers are involved. Huge amounts of money will be spent, maybe the amount that the Kings wanted to raise for Ashya’s treatment that probably would not have worked anyway. I am sure the oncologists do know more than a distraught parent who Googles.
But the reason that this family felt so embattled was not about medical knowledge, but lack of support. In a very dark place, they wanted to run away. To make it all better. No one can be comfortable with this outcome. It is appalling.
Now lawyers are involved, alongside two over-zealous police forces and doctors who seem to have viewed their patient’s parents as the enemy, all we need now are some politicians to come along and point score about Europe.
Meanwhile, a very ill little boy who doesn’t speak Spanish is in a hospital far from home. He is neither with his siblings nor his parents, who have been effectively criminalised for their distress. And possibly their faith. If anything looks like neglect I am afraid it is this.
• This article was amended on 2 September 2014 to correct the spelling of Naghmeh King’s first name.
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