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A woman was filmed parading in fantasy body paint Festival He was jailed after the mob claimed he needed a stick to get around and handed a £135,000 court bill for his “lies”.
Kay Burnell-Chambers, 44, claimed a mistake by NHS doctors caused nerve damage that left her struggling to walk, get out of the car or even dress herself, and sued for more than £3 million in compensation.
But a video was unveiled high court Instead the model and artist were shown posing and strutting as an imaginary warrior alongside other body painted models at the Custom Culture Blast Off festival in 2019.
The video was filmed just months before she launched her compensation bid due to the delay in diagnosing her cauda equina syndrome – a condition in which there is damage to the nerves at the end of the spinal cord.
Although the condition was real, he later admitted to exaggerating it symptoms After social media videos surfaced it was revealed that she was working as an artist and parading as a model despite claiming to have severe disability.
He was then hauled to court by the NHS, with Mrs Justice Tipples sentencing him to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of court for “falsehoods” he had caused by describing his loss claim as “grossly inflated” – and handed him a bill of £135,000 for the case.
Sending the tearful mother down to begin sentencing, the judge slammed Burnell-Chambers for her “lies” and said video footage showing her modeling while she was claiming to be severely disabled was “devastating”.
“The truth is that you recovered well from that situation over time and you knowingly chose to lie symptoms To make a huge dishonest claim for compensation,” he said.
Cauda equina syndrome is a crippling condition that occurs when the bundle of nerves below the end of the spinal cord, known as the cauda equina, is damaged.
signs and symptoms This includes lower back pain, numbness, and pain that radiates down the leg, but prompt diagnosis and treatment can greatly reduce long-term effects.
Sadie Crapper, barrister at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, said: high court An earlier hearing was told that Burnell-Chambers, a fine arts graduate from Lincs, made a bid for damages in 2019 after treatment for her condition was delayed in 2016.
She attended medico-legal appointments, complaining of ”all kinds of disabilities” and said she needed help getting dressed and out of the car – and when she went to a doctor her gait was poor and a cane was used, the barrister said.
However, she dropped her claim in 2022 after social media videos and surveillance footage revealed that the picture of her disability she was presenting to support her claim was “fundamentally dishonest”. Ms Crapper said.
A key part of the NHS case was based on a series of social media videos which showed her working as a body paint artist and model at a series of conventions and festivals across the UK.
A video from Custom Culture Blast Off in August 2019 showed “her body extensively painted and then paraded in a show where she walks independently and dances without the need for assistance to walk,” the barrister said.
“Prior to 2017, she had recovered well enough to return to body painting,” he told the judge.
“She’s always known that she’s attended these conventions, painted and modeled, and in the footage now available she can walk.”
He said it was the NHS trust’s case that Burnell-Chambers “fraudulently exaggerated her symptoms to make a clinical negligence claim”.
Burnell-Chambers acknowledged that her condition is variable and that on good days her mobility is almost normal, and that she was exaggerating when she saw a medico-legal specialist doctor.
Her barrister Ben Bradley Casey told the court, “She accepted that she was fundamentally dishonest,” but she nevertheless had genuine “ongoing disabilities”.
Burnell-Chambers signed an admission that she had “deliberately altered my appearance” and by doing so she had “deliberately interfered with the administration of justice”.
When she saw some experts in the claim, she deliberately attempted to demonstrate what she thought was her worst act, without telling the experts what she was doing.
Sentencing him for contempt of court today, Mrs Justice Tipples said: “You deliberately exaggerated and lied about your disability in order to present a picture that you have suffered a severe and ongoing disability as a result of the Trust and to overstate your claim for damages on a very large scale.”
Refusing to suspend the sentence, he said: “In my view, those factors and other mitigating circumstances outweigh the serious nature of your contempt, which is so serious that the only appropriate sentence can only be achieved by immediate imprisonment.”
The judge also ordered Burnell-Chambers – who is on benefits and of “limited means” – to pay £135,000 towards the NHS trust’s lawyers’ bills.