Sally Roberts: Radiotherapy Has Crushed My Son's Spirit

Sally Roberts: Radiotherapy Has Crushed My Son's Spirit
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Sally Roberts, the mum who went on the run with her cancer-stricken son Neon last year has said the treatment he was ordered to have by the High Court has 'crushed' his spirit.

Sally sparked a manhunt when she took off with Neon after medics advised that he needed surgery, chemo and radiotherapy for a 50-pence-piece sized brain tumour.

She fled their Hampshire home after her legal bid to stop the life-saving treatment failed.

Sally was convinced the intense therapy would 'fry' Neon's brain and leave him with lasting disabilities.

The High Court then ordered that Neon should stay in the care of his father, Ben, 35, and undergo treatment.

Now eight, Neon is said to be responding well to radiotherapy after two lots of surgery on the tumour, but appearing on ITV's Daybreak, his mum was still adamant that it should not have gone ahead.

"I find that a very strange description, 'responding well', because when you look at him and his co-ordination, he's just hiding away from the world," she said. "He wants to always build dens around himself. It's very emotional.

"I felt we were rail-roaded right onto what the NHS were pushing onto us," she added, explaining that she would have preferred Neon to undergo a different type of treatment.

"I was contacted by a proton therapy expert from the States who was ready to take him on. The very treatment [radiotherapy] itself is a carcinogenic immune-suppressive assault on the body when there's a multitude of other treatments out there.

"I think his co-ordination and his spirit has been crushed, he's very much feeling pretty rubbish."

Sally, who is estranged from Ben, now lives in Brighton with Neon's twin sister, Elektra. She added that Neon's improvement would have 'been the same case with or without the radiotherapy'.