The right to kiss your wife
When should the state intervene in a couple’s private life? Thomas Middleton, 88 years old this week, is seeking to challenge the decision of the council to monitor his behaviour when he visits his wife in her care home. She has dementia and Parkinson’s disease. They have been married for 67 years.
In the US, there was a huge national debate around a man’s right to be sexually intimate with his wife who had dementia.
In Mr Middleton’s case, sex is not even close to being on the table. The care home has prescribed his ability to visit his wife, and to kiss her — only when he comes in and leaves the care home, not “constantly”. Staff make a litany of small allegations against him — they read as the little frustrations of a relationship in difficult circumstances: he tries to adjust his wife’s position to make her more comfortable (in contravention of the home’s Best Practices), he complains about the couple’s kids, he gets frustrated that she cannot see him through her closed eyes and pokes her to wake her up. He has, according to his lawyers, the Trent Centre on Human Rights, become suicidal after the care home’s intervention in their relationship.
Many of us can’t imagine what it’s like to be married for 67 years. Thomas and his wife ran a cinema club for 35 years, went dancing together five nights a week, had children. What happens when that person, with whom you’ve spent more years than most people have been alive, gets sick, gets dementia, gets Parkinson’s disease? What happens when she gets taken into a care home and they tell you not to kiss her?
The care home told the Sunday Times that “where a person lacks capacity to make a decision for themselves… any decisions made are done in the best interests of the adult following consultation with all parties involved, including family members”.
That’s council-speak, but it’s true that issues of dementia and consent are difficult. Yet there should be clearer case law around how family and private life — a human right under article 8 ofthe Human Rights Act — ought to be valued in such situations. Thomas is trying to challenge the decision to restrict his access to his wife. At age 88, he doesn’t have much left. The equity that is left in the family home means he doesn’t qualify for legal aid. He has found a human rights law firm that will do some work for him pro bono. He’s now trying to raise a small sum on social justice crowdfunding site CrowdJustice to cover some of the legal costs they can’t underwrite.
As we live longer and longer lives, issues like Thomas’s will affect more and more of us — whether it is a parent or sibling or friend who ails. The issue in this case is whether the protection of the vulnerable party should be absolute — that in order to safeguard their absolute physical safety they should be hidden away in the musty display case of a nursing home like a precious vase, or whether the interests of the family (and the individuals who make it up) are best served by an approach which maximises quality of life for those with dementia and those who love them.
You can contribute to Thomas’s case on CrowdJustice. He needs £4,000 to cover the costs exposure of a Protective Costs Order application so that if he is unsuccessful he will not himself lose his home.
Julia Salasky is the founder of CrowdJustice.
Have a legal case that could benefit from crowdfunding?
