A father has won an extraordinary legal battle against a council that sought to gag him from speaking about the forced confinement of his daughter.
Bethany, 17, has been detained for almost two years in a psychiatric hospital. The teenager, who has autism and suffers from extreme anxiety, is locked in a cell-like room with only a mattress and chair and is fed through a hatch in a metal door.
Disability hate crime has risen by more than a third over the last year, shocking new figures have revealed.
The latest police figures show a 33 per cent increase in disability hate crime across England and Wales in 2017-18 compared to 2016-17.
Thirty-two of the 43 police forces which responded to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request recorded a total of 5,342 disability hate crimes in 2017-18, compared to 4,005 offences the previous year.