What happened
Adam Nasralla was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder at nine. He was detained under the Mental Health Act at eighteen, and at nineteen moved to Wast Hills, a private autism hospital in Birmingham run by Danshell Healthcare.
There he was restrained on the floor and on his bed by as many as nine staff, for up to eleven hours at a time, using a technique recorded as the “Supine T”. His antipsychotic medication was tripled within eight months without his family’s consent.
In March 2014, then 20, he went into crisis. The hospital called the police and told them his autism diagnosis had been removed, that he had capacity, and that he was responsible for his actions. Officers handcuffed him, put a spit hood on him, held him in a van in a restraint belt, and detained him in a cell where the restraint continued. No solicitor or appropriate adult was allowed to visit.
The doctor who assessed him reported that he was not fit to be charged and should not be held in police custody.
The outcome
He claimed negligence, assault, breach of human rights and wrongful arrest. In July 2017 Wast Hills and West Mercia Police both settled out of court and damages were paid. The figure was not disclosed, and no apology was reported.
A local authority serious case review, commissioned on his lawyers’ insistence, found “serious and multiple failings” and that his placement had “completely failed”. It said the hospital relied too heavily on restraint, that its investigations into mistreatment were “seriously flawed”, and that the decision to arrest him was “a very bad decision”. He was later diagnosed with severe PTSD.
No regulatory outcome against the hospital or the force is recorded.
What went wrong
The diagnosis moved at the point of crisis. Autism is lifelong, and an expert quoted in the reporting called its removal highly unusual. That step turned a safeguarding problem into a criminal one: told he had capacity, officers treated a distressed autistic man as a suspect.
The restraint then ran across two institutions without a break, from the ward floor to the van to the cell. The clinician who examined him said he was unfit for custody, and the hold did not stop.
Earlier warnings were missed: his family did not know Worcester Council had begun investigating the hospital and had suspended new placements.
What it teaches
Eleven hours is not an incident. It is a practice, with rotas arranged around it. A service that can hold someone that long has decided restraint is how a day is managed, not a response to danger.
The second lesson is who decides. When a hospital tells police a patient has capacity, it hands a criminal justice decision to a custodian. Fitness to be dealt with as an offender is a clinical question, and it belongs in writing.
Questions for the room
- Nine staff and eleven hours. At what point was the hold reviewed, and who could have ended it?
- You are the officer called to the ward. What do you ask, of whom, before you handcuff a patient?
- The doctor said he was unfit for custody. What should that have stopped?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The solicitors’ press release and the BBC’s report independently record the restraint, the arrest, the serious case review findings and the settlement with both defendants. Neither gives a figure, so none is stated. The eleven hours and nine staff are as those sources report them.
The record adds the later diagnosis of severe PTSD, which the précis does not carry. No member of staff is named and none was prosecuted.
Our restraint reduction training covers what a service needs in place before a hold becomes the way a day is run.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.