to all GN's living in France 4 year old boy missing

Parents are with him now, which is at it should be.

Well hopefully a solution can now be found and Ashya can be treated in a hospital that his parents are happy with (presumably not Southampton) for treatment until the proton beam treatment can be sorted out. Better still, it may be really successful and give him both a longer life and a better quality of life.

Well, it seems that his father, at least, has seen Ashya. Apparently he was mistaken in his assumption that he'd be arrested if he tried.

As Ashya's still a ward of Court his parents can't move him and there will have to be further Court proceedings next week. It's certainly dragging on...

The media show or print what they think will make a "good" story. Leaving much out.
Only rarely, if ever, do we get the truth.

That's because different things are being said at different times.

The father said the doctors at Southampton were going to kill or turn their son into a vegetable. At another interview the mother said she just wanted to be with her son and wet his lips and turn him every 15 minutes, like she did at Southampton. To me that shows the medical team were being very respectful of the family, maybe that's just me I don't know.

It is certainly interesting when you have too much time on your hands and watch the news hours on end to see the contradictions at every turn. At present BBC are saying they are with Ashya but on Sky you will she the father saying he has not been given permission to see him. Yet the media are covering it in real time.

I thought the father said that he had said he would take the child away from Southampton but hadn't said when that would be. I agree the whole thing sounds very confused, I had trouble following what the parents were saying about the Spanish hospital's treatment as well.

This is getting ridiculous all round.

I have been watching Sky and BBC news and one minute the parents are with Aysha, the next minute the parents are being interviewed by the media and are stating they have been refused permission to see Ashya, then we hear they are with him. There does seem to be a case that they cannot take him out of the Spanish hospital but things are turning on a sixpence and to be honest contradictions are happening all the time.

I was saddened to hear the father say the doctors at Southampton hospital were going to kill Ashya or turn him into a vegetable. He said the hospital knew he was taking him out of the hospital that day and he was told Ashya was going to be made a ward of court.

The doctor treating Ashya at Southampton was giving an interview outside the Southampton hospital. He says the parents asked what would happen if they refused treatment and he told them he might be made a ward of court. The doctor says he did not put that forward to the parents, he was answering their question. The doctor was upset that he had been accused by the family of going to kill Ashya or turn him into a vegetable.

I think the thing the one thing the doctor said that made me believe the welfare of Ashya was the concern is he said Ashya had no reflux and if any food or fluid went into his lung he probably would have died. He intimated that had that happened the family could not have dealt with it.

I find statements are being made then something is shown or said that challenges them. It's all very confusing.

nightowl if the Wardship proceedings had been carried through and the court had ordered Ashya to have chemotherapy and radiotherapy as recommended by the UK doctors, and he had then died, how would the Court have felt?
Probably whoever made the judgement would think, 'oh, I did my best according the information I was given. Next case please' and moved on as they are not emotionally involved.

Vulnerable children and vulnerable old people do need to be protected, but the Courts have made some very strange decisions lately and overriden the wishes of concerned and loving parents and children.

Indeed - but sometimes it is just what happens. Cruel old world sometimes.

Too young to go gentle....

I agree (again) with rosequartz.

If Ashya had died during the journey I would have thought that was tragic but I would still have understood why the parents had felt they had no choice but to act as they did. I agree it was not wise for a little boy who had recently undergone brain surgery to be transported across Europe, but I understand why the parents felt they had to take this chance. They were desperate, and terrified - of losing any say in their son's treatment; of him being forced to have treatment that would either kill him or cause major brain damage; of losing the chance for him to have treatment that they felt, rightly or wrongly, might give him the best chance of partial cure or at least quality of life for his remaining months. These parents do not strike me as being in denial, but seem very realistic about the fact that their son has very little time left and a wish to share that time with him.

To turn your question around janea, if the Wardship proceedings had been carried through and the court had ordered Ashya to have chemotherapy and radiotherapy as recommended by the UK doctors, and he had then died, how would the Court have felt? How would his parents have felt? How would those of us who are so sure the agencies involved so far have acted correctly have felt?

As I said before, I have been involved many times in similar scenarios (thankfully not so high profile) and it is only by reflecting afterwards on the actions taken by all the agencies involved that anything can be learned.

This poor little chap is not in a position to express any wishes.

People who have just had brain surgery need gentle handling and proper medical oversight - the journey by car and on a ferry was unwise. That is not to blame the parents - I do not think anyone wishes to do that - but to say that their decision was probably unwise in the circumstances.

Watching the video released by his parents it is clear that he is entirely incapable of "getting out of bed" - he appeared to be unable to move or respond, and was unresponsive to what was going on around him.

Wishing him some peace with his family around him is not judgmental. It is probably the best that can be hoped for for him.

" he needs to be gently cared for in the love of his family and not hurtling round Europe looking for last ditch efforts to prolong his life at whatever quality"

How do you know what he wants? Stop judging!

I doubt very much that they "hurtled".

The parents would know the child's capabilities before the journey. They were with him. Perhaps he was sitting up, and perhaps even getting out of bed.

Don't blame the parents.

As it turned out, the journey did him no harm at all. It was outsiders who made it bad for him.

I don't think they acted wrongly, the hospital and police were right but over-zealous in my opinion. The CPS were wrong to criminalise the parents.

Thanks to Elegran, Mishap and janeainsworth for their posts.

I haven't met anyone who doesn't sympathise with the parents, but that doesn't mean supporting the action they took. This little boy is very sick, and I can't see how a journey across Europe could be in his best interests.

A question for those of you who think the hospital, and police, acted wrongly.

What would you have thought if Ashya had died during the journey to Spain?

I am not being antagonistic, I just wonder if you would feel differently about the 'civil liberties' of the parents in those circumstances.

I think they were right to track the family and find the child; they should have then persuaded the family to take him to hospital in Spain pro tem, and allowed them to be with him.

The British authorities were, imo, over-zealous and I presume the Spanish police acted in accordance with what they had been told.

I agree rosequartz. I think the parents must have felt they were forced to remove their child from the hospital and the UK without warning after being threatened with an Emergency Protection Order if they did not cooperate with the treatment regime proposed by the UK medics.

I believe they were honest with the doctors about the treatment they wished to explore but felt their request was being ignored or blocked. If I put myself in their shoes I'm not sure what I could have done differently.

However much we might need to believe that doctors and other powerful authority figures are always reasonable, caring, and honest people I'm afraid many of us know this is not always the case. I agree with others that there needs to be a full enquiry into the sequence of events to protect the civil liberties of all of us in the future.

When police abroad get a message that a child has been taken out of the country and is being sought, they are pretty certain to detain the adults they find with the child until the details are clear.

People can only be detained for a couple of days (I am not sure how long, I think it is defined in hours) without an arrest, so if clarification takes a while, arrest is the only way they can be kept from leaving. The implications that appear to have been made here are that the removal was in some way illegal, so a charge was on the cards.

I can't imagine that parents taking their children for treatment elsewhere are normally considered unlawful, but given the media coverage and language, it may have appeared to be so to the police in Spain.

Portuguese police have recived so much criticism for their handling of Maddy's case that perhaps the Spanish police were being extra careful?

Elegran whilst I agree with much of your post, I am not sure about this statement:
Two people who may have been unlawfully taking a child out of the country faced arrest and possible charges. Standard procedure.

Someone in the media may have said this, but surely it is not unlawful for parents to take a child out of the country, even if that child is sick?
Parents take very sick children abroad for treatment, to Disney, to Lourdes, and it is not against the law.

If it is unlawful then it has huge implications for all of us and our families.

If he only has months to live, he needs to be gently cared for in the love of his family and not hurtling round Europe looking for last ditch efforts to prolong his life at whatever quality. Poor little chap.

It's sadly a dreadful media scrum but Mr King has now spoken to a barrage of reporters. Just watched on Sky. Outside while being pursued by reporters he says his son only has months to live and he claims he told Southampton hospital he was taking his son out of their care. He admitted he did not tell them that day but they knew of his imminent plans.
The main thing surely is the family are united today.

Blame for what? Acting in what they believed were the child's best interests?

As others have pointed out, it is not just about feeding, but about the care out of hospital setting of a child who was only a few days post-op from major brain surgery. The danger of complications was there, and he needed to be where his condition could be properly monitored.

The only problem that I could see in the response was that the parents finished up being criminalised - that may simply be a spin-off of the current process by which the child was sought and found; and there is something to be said for looking back on that aspect and thinking whether there might be some way of amending that process in these sorts of circumstances. The parents are not criminals - they are frightened, sad desperate and misguided maybe, but not criminals. And the others involved are not inhumane or unkind - they are just doing their best in a difficult situation.

Any enquiry needs to be positive and directed at changing procedures, if that is needed to avoid criminalisation, rather than laying blame. How the media do love to find someone to blame. And an enquiry needs to be as low-cost as possible.