Care Home Agony

13 May 2013

Care Home Agony

Wanda Maddocks is first person to be imprisoned by Court of Protection. Sentenced for trying to remove her father John from a care home. Family feared Mr Maddocks, an Alzheimer's sufferer was in danger of dying but the judgment and her sentencing were not made public for six months. Court set up to settle the affairs of people too ill to make their own decisions

The woman imprisoned by a secret court yesterday described the shocking moment police descended on her father’s care home to ‘cart me off to jail’. Wanda Maddocks was sentenced for trying to remove her father John from a home where his family thought he was in danger of dying. But she was not present in court, nor was she represented by a lawyer, when the judgment was made – and her sentencing was not made public for six months. Last night the case was at the centre of a furious row over behind-closed-doors justice as MPs condemned the secrecy of the court that jailed Miss Maddocks.  She was visiting her frail father when officers arrived to break the news that she had been sentenced to five months in prison. She said: ‘I walked out of the care home and saw a small white van, then two female police officers approached me with two court officers. ‘They told me I had been sentenced to jail for contempt of court. I couldn’t believe it. ‘They told me it was almost unheard of for somebody to be jailed like that in a civil hearing without first being given the chance to explain themselves.’

Miss Maddocks served six weeks in Foston Hall – the women’s jail in Derbyshire which was home to Maxine Carr, girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Huntley – following her arrest in September. The Court of Protection had originally ruled that Mr Maddocks, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, must stay in the care home in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, because the plans for his care put forward by his children were considered inadequate.

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