A woman was jailed ‘in secret’ for trying to remove her father from a care home where his family thought he was in danger of dying.
Wanda Maddocks, 50, is the first person known to be imprisoned by the Court of Protection, which settles the affairs of people too ill to make their own decisions.
A judge ruled that she should go to prison for five months for contempt of court even though she was not present or represented by a lawyer.
Details of the case were made public for the first time yesterday and provoked a fresh row over behind-closed-doors justice.

Miss Maddocks, who served six weeks of her sentence, was jailed because she ignored the court’s orders not to try to remove her father John from Park Hall care home in Bentilee, a suburb of Stoke on Trent.
She was condemned for incidents including taking the 80-year-old dementia sufferer to a court hearing and to see a solicitor.
She was also censured for producing a leaflet to try to publicise details of the case and giving her father a wooden cross ‘to ward off evil’ in the care home.
Her family said Mr Maddocks, a retired painter and decorator from Stoke-on-Trent, had been held ‘like a prisoner’ on the orders of a local council.
Miss Maddocks was initially not allowed to be named after the hearing and was identified only by her initials WM.

And the court’s ruling containing details of her sentence was not published.
The Court of Protection is a branch of the High Court and its hearings are always conducted in private.
Judge Martin Cardinal merely went through the motions of observing open justice when he handed down his sentence.
He ordered the doors of his courtroom in Birmingham to be unlocked and told ushers to announce in the corridor that members of the public were free to come in.
But there was no wider announcement of the judgment and no-one who was not directly involved is thought to have attended.
The ban on naming Miss Maddocks was lifted because there was no reason for it to remain in place after her release. Mr Maddocks has since died.

Closed courtroom: Judge Martin Cardinal jailed Ms Maddocks for five months and merely 'went through the motions' of observing open justice when he handed down his sentence by ordering the doors of his courtroom in Birmingham to be unlocked
He separated from wife June more than 30 years ago. She remarried but now suffers from Parkinson’s Disease.
The extraordinary case began when the grandfather-of-one was found collapsed at his own home last year.
He was placed in a care home and the local authority applied for a legal order which said he must stay there.
These are introduced when officials believe someone could be at risk of harm, and put the Official Solicitor in charge of their affairs.
After a few months Miss Maddocks’ brother Ivan took him out of the care home for lunch.
Miss Maddocks was alerted and flew her father to Turkey, where she owns a number of properties.

They stayed for 13 weeks before returning to Britain, and her father went to a different care home.
Mr Maddocks said: ‘Wanda was certain she could care for him herself but the social services said he had to be put in the home. Wanda was very angry that they were taking Dad away from us.’
Miss Maddocks, a former buy-to-let landlord, was jailed on September 11 last year after the sentencing in her absence by the Court of Protection in Birmingham.

She was freed from Foston Hall prison in Derby on November 1 after returning to the court to purge her contempt by apologising to the judge.

I don't know how they could get away with doing things like this so furtively - or how they could even claim to justify it. The whole thing is absolutely chilling.

HOW LIFE AND DEATH DECISIONS ARE MADE IN SECRET

The Court of Protection was set up in 2005 under the Mental Capacity Act – one of Tony Blair’s most contentious laws.

It gave legal force to ‘living wills’, instructions from patients ordering doctors to let them die if they became gravely ill. Here STEVE DOUGHTY looks at how the court works:

The court makes life-or-death decisions when the power to withdraw life-sustaining treatment is in dispute. It also governs the correct use of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, orders which can give care homes and hospitals the right to prevent a resident or patient leaving, if it is considered in their best interests. Backbench Labour MPs feared the legislation could be used to withdraw fluids and food from patients who might not wish to die.
The court makes rulings on power of attorney – decisions on who should have control of the money and property of those deemed no longer competent to handle their own affairs.
Originally Labour ministers said Court of Protection cases should be heard in public, but in 2006 the then Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, issued guidance which said ‘the court may order that identities of people involved in a case are not disclosed if it is considered necessary to protect their interests’. He added: ‘The circumstances under which the court may consider that all or part of a hearing should be heard in private are wide.’
Court of Protection judges rule in hundreds of everyday power of attorney cases, where people want control of the bank accounts of elderly relatives with dementia. In the past this function had been handled quickly and efficiently by officials as a matter of routine. Now families can suffer long delays.
By 2009 the average delay was four months – at a typical cost of £400 and the Court of Protection had attracted 4,000 complaints. The court is currently handing 2,700 cases a year – more than ten for every working day – and long delays continue.
Among the court’s current caseload is thought to be 30 life-or-death cases. Recent examples that came to light when judges published their rulings included a case in which a Muslim family tried to save their father. Hospital doctors said he should be allowed to die, but some witnesses had seen the man move his eyelids and grimace. In another case a judge ruled that a man with a disabling disease had consented to a living will by blinking at his wife and that his breathing machine could be disconnected.
No-one involved in any such case has ever been named. The secrecy maintained by the Court of Protection is such that in 2011 it obtained an injunction which forbade a newspaper to speak to any of 65 people, or to allow its journalists to go within 50 yards of a care home. The case involved a family who wanted an incapacitated elderly relative to be allowed to die.
Only one Court of Protection case is ever known to have been conducted under media scrutiny. The 2010 case involved the welfare of the Duchess of Cornwall’s nephew, blind and autistic pianist Derek Paravicini, and journalists were allowed in only after a lengthy application process.
And although Wanda Maddocks is thought to be the first person jailed by the court, no-one can be sure – someone else might have been imprisoned behind the court’s accustomed closed doors.

The sinister spread of justice behind closed doors
'She was treated like a killer': Son's anger at secret imprisonment of his sister in row over care of their father
Police officers 'stood over vulnerable man and watched him die while commenting that he was out cold'

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.
Keen walker: John Maddocks pictured in 2003

Keen walker: John Maddocks pictured in 2003

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.

It argued there was no choice but to take control of his affairs when he was found collapsed in his home by his carers. The council also deny he was badly treated during his stay in several care homes.

What has angered the family and open justice campaigners, however, is the draconian way in which Miss Maddocks was treated and the fact the secretive court was able to send her to jail.

Miss Maddocks added: ‘If my case had been in the public domain the judge would never have dared to jail me. There would have been uproar.

The Human Rights Act is supposed to guarantee everybody the right to a family life. It is the council and the court who have broken my father’s human rights, not me.’

Lib Dem MP John Hemming, who was first alerted to the case, called for new laws to ensure courts cannot sentence people to prison in secret. He said his own private member’s bill had been blocked by the Government.
What angered the judge and the council involved, Stoke-on-Trent (pictured) was not just that Miss Maddocks took father away but that she desperately tried to publicise what was happening to him

What angered the judge and the council involved, Stoke-on-Trent (pictured) was not just that Miss Maddocks took father away but that she desperately tried to publicise what was happening to him

I don't know how they could get away with doing things like this so furtively - or how they could even claim to justify it. The whole thing is absolutely chilling.

And so starts my fight with the CoP.....the appointed deputy is using all sorts of excuses not to hand over mum's affairs to myself......the co-executor of mum's will. My mum's solicitor and myself have a fight on our hands with these bastards.


Jane

angelchemuel wrote:

Good luck jane