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Charges unlikely for anti-vaxxers who took boy from hospital

The parents of a severely disabled boy who took him from a Brisbane hospital are unlikely to be charged despite a frantic search that spanned two states.

Police found Chase Walker-Steven in NSW on Friday afternoon after an amber, or emergency, alert was issued earlier in the day.

They are yet to determine why Chase’s parents took him from Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital just after midday on Thursday.

But his mother Cini Walker’s social media posts confirmed she and her partner are anti-vaxxers who believed his condition was caused by immunisation and feared hospital food would kill him.

Ms Walker previously warned she would walk out of hospital with Chase if they refused to give him medicinal marijuana.

Detective Acting Inspector Grant Galston said a member of the public spotted Ms Walker, 26, in Newcastle and contacted police.

“The mother gave police information as to where her son and the father may be,” he said on Friday afternoon.

“Contact was made with the father and he returned with the boy to where police were with the mother in Newcastle.”

The boy, who was in need of medical attention, was taken by ambulance to nearby John Hunter Hospital for treatment.

Insp Galston said Chase was found safe and would remain in the care of his parents for the time being.

He said Ms Walker and Chase’s father Marc Alexander Steven, 28, were co-operating with police but he did not think they would be charged.

“At this stage, no,” he said. “We were primarily concerned with the welfare of the child.”

Ms Walker posted on Facebook one day before Chase’s disappearance that they stopped vaccinating him at age two because it gave him seizures.

She also alleged the vaccination caused him to develop “spastic, quadriplegic cerebral palsy and undiagnosed, uncontrolled epilepsy”.

Ms Walker claimed on January 18 the Department of Child Safety threatened to take her son unless they took him to hospital that night to be fed.

“They still think that they have the right to feed my son this formula synthetic s***,” she said.

“They’re going to kill my kid with food and they don’t care.”

Ms Walker said her son’s health improved after he went off medication, started eating organic food and took medicinal marijuana.

“He’s happy, he’s stopped seizuring (sic), he’s coming back and still it’s not good enough,” she said.

Ms Walker said she would take him to hospital but would insist he be given medicinal marijuana to keep him alive.

“I will be doing this and if they choose not to do it…. I’ll walk out of that hospital,” she said.

“I don’t care if child services have to get a court order to come get Chase, at least I know I saved my child and I’ll keep doing it, I will not stop.”
-AAP

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