Judge set to make decision on future of 12 year-old Southend boy
A decision is expected over whether his life-support should be turned off
Last updated 6th Jun 2022
A decision is expected to be made about the future of a 12 year-old boy from Southend at the centre of a dispute over whether his life-support should be switched off.
A High Court judge is poised to make a judgement based on information from doctors treating Archie Battersbee, and also his parents who want to see him given longer.
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.
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.
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”.