Judge poised to decide future of 12-year-old boy at centre of treatment dispute

Doctors treating Archie Battersbee at the Royal London Hospital think it ‘highly likely’ he is dead and say life-support treatment should end.
Undated family handout file photo of Archie Battersbee, 12, who is at the centre of a High Court life-treatment dispute (Hollie Dance/PA)
PA Media
Brian Farmer6 June 2022

A High Court judge is preparing to make decisions about the future of a 12-year-old boy at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute.

Doctors treating Archie Battersbee at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, think it “highly likely” he is dead and say life-support treatment should end.

Archie’s parents, Hollie Dance and Paul Battersbee, from Southend, Essex, disagree.

Mother of Archie Battersbee, Hollie Dance, outside the High Court (James Manning/PA)
PA Wire

Lawyers representing the Royal London Hospital’s governing trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, have asked Mrs Justice Arbuthnot to decide whether doctors should continue treating Archie.

The judge is scheduled to begin overseeing a final hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London on Monday.

She has heard that Archie suffered brain damage in an incident at home in early April.

Miss Dance has told how she found him unconscious with a ligature over his head on April 7 and thinks he might have been taking part in an online challenge.

The youngster has not regained consciousness.

Father of Archie Battersbee, Paul Battersbee outside the High Court in central London (James Manning/PA)
PA Wire

One specialist told the judge at an earlier hearing that he thought scans showed that Archie had suffered “irretrievable” brain damage.

Two others said they thought tests showed that the youngster was “brain-stem dead”.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in