A New Zealand mother has gone to the High Court to try to free her autistic son, who has now spent 21 years locked in secure care after he was found unfit to stand trial over a handful of broken windows.
The man can be identified only as J for legal reasons. He was first detained in 2004, at the age of 20, under the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act. He had broken several of a neighbour’s windows and was charged with wilful damage, an offence that carries a maximum penalty of three months in prison or a $2000 fine. Because of his autism and intellectual disability he was found unfit to stand trial, and instead of facing that minor charge he was placed in compulsory care. He has been held ever since.
J now lives in a secure wing of the Mason Clinic, Auckland’s forensic mental health facility, where he lives alone under the constant watch of three staff. Another judge who looked at his case described that arrangement as untenable and poorly suited to his needs. He has spent more than half his life in detention, most of it in seclusion, over an incident that would have earned almost anyone else a fine or a warning.
His mother has spent years working through the courts to get him out. The case has already reached the Supreme Court, which in August 2025 ruled that the legal test used to justify his continued detention was unlawful. The court redefined how that test should work, saying far more weight must be given to a disabled person’s right to liberty when it is set against any risk they might pose. Under the reworked approach, that right to liberty grows stronger the longer a person has already been held. The Supreme Court sent the matter back to the Family Court and asked it to re-examine the decision urgently.
Almost a year on, that urgency has not translated into freedom. The first Family Court hearing is not due until late July 2026, with a second hearing set down for October, roughly 14 months after the Supreme Court called for a swift review. J remains inside the whole time, and the state has continued to apply for fresh detention orders, including an interim order for a further 19 months.
That slow pace is what has driven his mother to the High Court in Wellington this week. Rather than wait for the Family Court process to grind on, her application asks the High Court to use its own powers to decide whether J’s ongoing detention is lawful right now. The application signals that the case is likely to seek damages of around $5 million for unlawful detention, drawing a comparison with the compensation paid to Alan Hall after his wrongful murder conviction was overturned.
Barrister Tony Ellis, who is acting for the family, has been blunt about what the delays mean for a man who has already lost decades. In earlier comments to RNZ he said the harm was continuing despite the country’s highest court having ruled in J’s favour. “The violation is ongoing,” he said. “Notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision, Jay remains detained and the state continues to seek renewed detention orders, and an interim order for an additional 19 months detention has been issued.” He added, “He’s spent half his life in detention. His life has been wasted.”
Ellis has also taken the case beyond New Zealand’s own courts. In May he lodged a complaint with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which has formally accepted it. That is an unusual step, because such committees normally expect complainants to exhaust every domestic avenue first before an international body will look at a case. Ellis told RNZ that “the Committee has already said that the New Zealand Family Court is dragging its feet” over delays of this kind.
The case has drawn in some of the country’s main disability and human rights bodies. IHC and the Human Rights Commission were both granted leave to make submissions to the Supreme Court as interveners, so the wider questions raised by the law could be heard alongside J’s own circumstances. IHC welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision when it came down, treating it as a marker for how the state should treat intellectually disabled people who end up caught in the compulsory care system.
J’s story sits at an uncomfortable point in the way New Zealand handles people who cannot be tried in the ordinary way. Someone found unfit to stand trial is not convicted of anything, yet the compulsory care system can keep them locked up for far longer than the original charge could ever have justified. In J’s case a fine-level offence has turned into 21 years of confinement, and the courts are still arguing about whether it should continue. For his mother, the fight now is simply to have him assessed on his rights as they stand today, rather than watching another year pass while he waits inside.
What do you think about how New Zealand treats people found unfit to stand trial, and how long this case has taken to resolve? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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