Unfitness to Plead Consultation Responses - Law Commission ...

unwell. Mr A was being seen every couple of days by a community mental health worker
and was on medication.
Mr A was regularly signing on at an immigration centre. At one of these meetings he
was held and sent to a detention centre. Whilst in the centre he could not access his
medication and became actively suicidal believing his “auntie” to be haunting his room in
the centre. He wet the bed and the staff became increasingly exasperated with his manic
behaviour. He did not sleep or eat and was terrorised by auditory and visual
hallucinations. Kids Company sent a private psychiatrist to prepare a report and his
lawyer had to advocate to have him released back into the care of the community mental
health team who had been unable to access him in the detention centre.
Eventually the lawyer refused to represent Mr A at his appeal as she stated he had
exhausted his legal aid funding. Mr A appeared in the High Court and I accompanied Mr
A with a man he had met on a train and his girlfriend. His mental health worker was due
to attend but called to state his car had broken down and he would not be able to make
it. Prior to court Mr A informed me that he was being tormented by voices and lights and
so he had taken all his medication (he had taken an overdose) he insisted on going into
the court as he wanted to see a judge and stated that I would have to talk for him as he
“felt like he was going to switch and hurt someone”. He sat in the bench rocking
throughout. I offered a pathetic defence for a complex case with no legal training. I
explained Mr A had been brought to the UK as a child by an aunty; he had been used as
a domestic servant and we think sexually abused as he showed symptoms of this and
alluded to it, i.e. adult wetting in public when nervous; we explained Mr A’s aunty had
abandoned him largely and that he had been sent between Wolverhampton, Manchester
and London. Mr A had fallen into gang activity when in London to survive but had
attended college and then obtained a place at university. Mr A, until he was in sixth
37