Son demands answers after his mother's body was 'disfigured after her death'

Michael Roberts,70, said he broke down in tears after seeing the horrendous injuries his mother, Freda, had suffered following her death at the John Radcliffe Hospital on April 13.

However, both the hospital and the funeral directors, where the injuries were first seen by Mr Roberts, have denied any knowledge of how they occurred.

Mr Roberts, who lived with his 92-year-old mother until her death, is now determined to fight for answers.

The pensioner, from Witney, said: “Somebody has done something somewhere and in the end I just want somebody to say 'I’m sorry, it was an accident'.

“That’s what’s making me very angry - that nobody is owning up about it.

“She was hard working, she was widowed very young. She was a very kind person and she had a really hard life, but she was a fighter and she deserves so much better than this.”

Mr Roberts said his final goodbyes to his mother in the hospital on the day she died.

When he left her in the hospital, he said she had none of the injuries that he later saw after her death.

Two weeks later though, when paying for the funeral at HJ Knapp Funeral Director in Wantage he was told his mother’s body had arrived and was asked if he wanted to see her.

Mr Roberts said: “In the hospital she just looked asleep, but when I saw her in that state it was just awful.

“She had a big gash on her forehead, her nose had been pushed in – I just said ‘that’s not my ‘mum’.

“There was no warning about what had happened to her.

“I looked after her for years and years. It was very upsetting to see her like that.”

Mr Roberts immediately called his cousin Carole Collins, who lives near Wantage, and the pair contacted Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, as well as the funeral directors for an explanation.

However, following independent investigations by both parties the family are still no closer to knowing how the disfigurement occurred.

Ms Collins said: “It won’t bring her back we know that but why should we just accept it?

“We are only the little people, sometimes others think they can squash you down because you haven’t got the money to take it further.

“It’s terrible that somebody can do this but nobody is doing anything about it.

“For the life she had she deserves that much.”

A spokesman for OUH said a ‘full investigation’ had been carried out as soon as Mr Roberts raised his concerns.

The spokesman added: “There are strict and robust procedures in place for looking after a patient’s body after they have died in our care, including logs of the condition of their body and any items accompanying them on arrival and departure from our mortuary.

“In this instance, there was no record of any injury to Mrs Roberts upon both entering and leaving our mortuary.”

The trust has said a plan has now been put in place to improve practice so that mortuary staff and funeral directors share a record at the time of transferring a patients from the hospital to the funeral directors.

CCTV cameras are also due to be installed in the mortuary.

A spokesperson for HJ Knapp said: "We always aim to provide the highest standard of care and support for families who come to us at their time of need.

“We have apologised to Mr Roberts and his family for not immediately informing them when we noticed the injury when bringing his mother to our premises.

“As with all complaints of this nature, Dignity has met with the family to share the results of our internal investigation, and we are working to find a resolution that is satisfactory to them.”