A brother of Wanda Maddocks, who was jailed for trying to get her father out of a care home, was also given a secret prison sentence, it was revealed yesterday.
Ivan Maddocks was given a two-month term – in his case suspended – for his defiance of the orders of the Court of Protection, the legal tribunal that deals with the affairs of people too ill to make their own decisions.
He received the punishment some seven weeks before his sister was jailed for her refusal to obey court orders. It meant he would have been jailed had he committed any further breaches of court orders.
It has emerged that Ivan Maddocks has joined his sister Wanda in receiving a jail sentence for trying to get their father out of a care home where they thought his life was in danger
The suspended sentence, imposed on July 10 last year, hung over Mr Maddocks indefinitely and ran out only when his father John died in January.
Disclosure of the second sentence imposed on the family follows widespread concern at the secretive operations of the Court of Protection and the way 50-year-old Miss Maddocks was given a five-month sentence for contempt.
Judge Martin Cardinal ordered her to be jailed because she had repeatedly defied the court in her efforts to remove her father from the Stoke-on-Trent care home where the court had ordered that the 80-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer must live. The family believed their father was suffering in the home and his life was in danger.
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The Mail revealed yesterday that Miss Maddocks – a property developer whose home is in Turkey – was arrested by police and court officials as she left her father’s care home a few days after she was sentenced in secret.
She had not been in court when sentenced, nor was she represented by a lawyer. Her name was kept secret and only revealed this week, together with some details of the case, after the Mail made inquiries to the court. Mr Maddocks, 55, could be named only as IM following his suspended sentence.
A spokesman for the judiciary said the sentence ‘would have been in open court’, but no record of the hearing has been made public.
Mr Maddocks said yesterday that the suspended sentence had been handed down after he took his father from the care home to see a solicitor in Birmingham and then to the court. He asked a solicitor to call the judge so he could meet them in the court building.
Wanda and Ivan's father, John Maddocks, pictured in 2003
‘We wanted the judge to see him for himself,’ Mr Maddocks said yesterday. ‘We thought, if the judge sees him he’ll surely let him live at home. But he threatened to put me in jail. They took Dad and locked him in a room. We weren’t allowed contact with him and he was sent back to his care home.
‘I had to go into the court to face the judge. I didn’t have a solicitor with me. They said they would lock me up and I actually got upset. I didn’t think I had done anything wrong. The whole thing is just scandalous.’ John Hemming, the Lib Dem MP who first became aware of the case, said: ‘A suspended sentence is still a punishment. When the courts punish people it should be clear who is punished and why.
‘The rules do not make an exception of suspended committals for contempt. They refer to committals and make no reference as to whether they are suspended or not. Many, many people are given suspended committals and we don’t know who they are.’
John Maddocks died in January this year after a long battle with Alzheimer's
Judge Cardinal ordered that John Maddocks should stay in a care home after he collapsed at home.
He backed social workers and expert advisers in Stoke-on-Trent who said Mr Maddocks’s four children could not provide the round-the-clock care he needed.
Ivan and Wanda Maddocks ignored court rulings in taking their father to Birmingham. After Mr Maddocks was sentenced his sister provoked Judge Cardinal into jailing her with a series of acts that defied court orders.
These including producing a leaflet to try to publicise the case, giving her father a wooden cross to ward off evil in his care home, and leaving an offensive message on a social worker’s voicemail.
After John Maddocks was placed in one care home his family believed his condition was deteriorating and his daughter flew him out to her home in Turkey where he spent 13 weeks before returning to England and another care home, run by the local authority.
Ivan Maddocks said yesterday: ‘After he was put in the care homes something was really wrong. He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t eating properly. I took him out one day and he fell asleep. He was all out. I think they were over-drugging him. He collapsed in the care home.
‘In three weeks his kidneys were failing. He was just bones, dead thin with his eyes rolling over occasionally, on a drip, twitching. On the death certificate it said he had died because he hadn’t been eating or drinking.
‘Wanda was right all along. Something was really wrong. He would have been better living with the family. If he’d have been allowed to stay with Wanda he’d still be alive. In Turkey, he liked the sun, he seemed healthy. Dad, in his last home, wondered why Wanda hadn’t visited. I said I’m not supposed to tell you this – and don’t tell the council – but they locked her up.
‘He thought Wanda wasn’t seeing him because she was fed up of him. It was because they kept her from him. I said no, she still loves you. He just went quiet. I’m sure he understood what I said.’
A spokesman for the care home has denied it caused the death of Mr Maddocks.
Ivan Maddocks said the family wanted a full investigation into the care their father received but spoke of feeling powerless after their experiences with the court system.
‘There were so many injunctions it was unreal,’ he added. ‘It’s wrong. People should be able to speak out. I’ve never heard of anyone being jailed for trying to look after their father.’