A MOTHER of an autistic man has won a seven-year battle for him to be released after he was locked up in a mental health unit.

Leo Andrade handed a petition signed by 50,000 supporters to Downing Street in a bid to free 24-year-old Stephen. He was kept in four different units and sometimes held in isolation and injected with powerful antipsychotic drugs. Mrs Andrade, a mother-of-three, had been preparing to spend another Christmas without Stephen when he was released with little warning last month.

She said: “They called me on a Friday night and told me to come and collect him on Monday. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“There have been so many times when I thought he would be out and they were dashed.”

Mrs Andrade, 54, from Islington, north London, plans to discuss the prospect of legal action against the NHS for false imprisonment and a breach of human rights with her lawyers.

Read the full story here