A High Court judge has visited a 12-year-old boy at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute.
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, disagree.
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“He needs more time, that is all we are asking for, is a little more time to prove everybody wrong,” Ms Dance said.
Mrs Justice Arbuthnot, who is overseeing Archie’s case at private hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London, visited the youngster on Friday ahead of a final hearing on June 6 and 7.
Addressing the judge’s visit, Ms Dance said: “It has been a stressful process, but there is nothing I can do. She is going to come to her own conclusions, and we just have to wait until the next hearing and hope.
“We know our boy is strong, we know he is in there, and we just hope to high heaven that the courts agree with us.”
Ms Dance, who has been keeping vigil at Archie’s hospital bedside, added: “We will keep fighting for him.
“He’s stable and doing well, so we are trying to keep our spirits up.”
Lawyers representing hospital bosses asked her, at the latest hearing last Wednesday, to consider whether more tests should carried out before the final hearing.
The judge indicated she would make a decision about whether more tests were needed this week.
A barrister leading a legal team representing the Royal London Hospital’s governing trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, told the judge last Wednesday how specialists thought Archie had been “extensively investigated”, but were prepared to carry out further tests for “the sake of no stone being left unturned”.
The judge has heard that Archie suffered brain damage in an incident at home in early April.
Miss Dance has told how she found Archie 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.
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