A mother who says she has been treated “like a criminal” for fighting for her severely brain-injured son is speaking to the media anonymously ahead of a life and death ‘best interests’ at the Royal Courts of Justice, London.
The case, to be heard before Mr Justice McKendrick, concerns the welfare of a 28-year-old man, anonymised as FHR, who suffered a catastrophic hypoxic brain injury in 2020, aged 22, and is now in a Prolonged Disorder of Consciousness.
His mother, anonymised as FN, supported by the Christian Legal Centre, is opposing attempts to withdraw the food and fluids keeping her son alive.
In July, the mother asked the Court of Protection to lift a sweeping transparency order which prevents her from sharing photographs and videos of her son or talking about the court proceedings to end his life, but the application was rejected.
A final ‘best interests’ hearing is listed to begin today and will last until Friday 21 August to determine whether FHR should continue to receive clinically assisted nutrition and hydration.
FN says the transparency order has left her unable to tell her son’s story, unable to seek prayers and public support, and unable to fundraise effectively for legal representation and care. The order does not allow her even to tell anyone outside her “immediate circle of family and friends” that she has been taken to court with a view to ending her son’s life.
Since April 2025, following FHR’s interim move from his family home to a care home, FN says she has been banned from visiting him in person. Contact has been reduced to short daily video calls, leaving mother and son separated during the most traumatic period of their lives.
In a statement provided via her solicitors, FN said:
“If it didn’t happen to me I never would have believed it. Until you experience it you never know how you will react. You don’t know you had it in you to fight so hard for your child.
“He is my baby. You are faced with something you have no control over. Motherly instinct is the most powerful thing I have ever experienced, and for it I have been treated like a criminal.”
A mother separated from her son
Before his brain injury, FHR was, according to his mother, a sociable, warm and family-centred young man who loved photographs, often appeared in family pictures, and would “photobomb” his mother’s photos for fun. FN says sharing family photographs on social media was part of normal life and that her son never objected to being pictured or seen publicly.
FN says that since his injury, it took her and her daughter years to come to terms with the grief of losing the healthy, cheeky young man they knew, while learning to love and protect him in his new and profoundly vulnerable condition.
She said in her statement:
“As a matter of fact both my daughter and I love him and are more protective of him now because we know how vulnerable he is now. He has always been loved and I didn’t think we could love him even more but we do.
“Only people in our situation will truly understand this because it took us years to navigate through the complexity and mixed emotions of losing our healthy son and falling even more deeply in love with our new one.
“It is not to say we have forgotten our healthy cheeky son, on the contrary, it is our love for that son that has expanded our heart to be able to love him as he is now.”
FN says she believes her son would not want to be hidden from the world because he is disabled, and that public visibility, prayers, support from old friends and community solidarity are consistent with who he was before his injury.
Viral video led to stricter order
In April 2025, shortly after FHR was moved to a care home on an interim basis, FN and her daughter say they became urgently concerned about his care. FN says that on 17 April 2025 they witnessed a dangerous respiratory deterioration but that care-home staff insisted he was “stable” and refused to act.
After FN’s daughter called an ambulance, the ambulance crew independently concluded FHR had to be urgently taken to hospital, where he was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia and was treated for a week.
When FHR was discharged back to the care home, FN says the family was banned from visiting him “until further notice” on the grounds of alleged “challenging behaviour”. She says she felt her son was being isolated from his family after they had raised concerns about his care.
In desperation, FN posted a video on social media on 26 April 2025. The video went viral, attracting more than one million views. FN says she did not name the care home, give its address, or identify the Court of Protection proceedings. She says the response was overwhelmingly compassionate, with many people offering prayers for her son and family.
Following the viral post, the Court amended the Transparency Order on 19 May 2025 to prohibit publication of any photographs or videos of FHR taken since his brain injury. FN says the order has left her feeling “completely gagged” and resulted in the loss of contact with people who had supported her through social media.
The ICB has also made an application to commit FN to prison for alleged contempt of court, though that application is currently stayed.
‘This is about whether a mother can love, protect and speak for her son’
FN says the order has been used against her while her son remains separated from his family.
She believes public scrutiny is especially urgent because the Court is now being asked to decide whether FHR’s life should be ended.
She says she wants the freedom to speak, fundraise, seek prayers, and show people the son she loves, not as a legal abstraction, but as a human being with a family, history, faith, personality and community.
“My son is not a case number. He is my baby. He is loved. He is vulnerable. He needs his mother.
“I have been treated as if loving him, protecting him and refusing to give up on him is something wrong. But I will never stop fighting for him.”
‘Inflicting further suffering’
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said:
“It is a profound injustice that this devoted mother has been prevented from seeing her son for more than a year. No loving parent should be separated from their child in this way.
“The state has no place inflicting further suffering on a family already enduring unimaginable trauma by imposing separation on them.
“A mother knows her son in a way that no institution ever can. Her evidence, her understanding of him, his needs and responses, and the unique bond they share, is what the Court should have uppermost in its mind when making a life and death decision to withdraw hydration and nutrition.
“Justice demands not only rigorous legal scrutiny, but compassion, transparency, respect for the sanctity of life, and recognition of the primary role of the family.”