Model who said docs left her struggling to walk filmed 'strutting' at festival
An artist and model is facing jail over a "fraudulent" £3m NHS compensation claim after she was filmed parading in fantasy body paint at a festival despite claiming she needed a stick or wheelchair to get around.
Kae Burnell-Chambers claimed a blunder by NHS doctors led to nerve damage which left her struggling to walk, get out of a car or even dress herself, and she sued for millions.
But explosive video unveiled at the High Court instead showed the 44-year-old model and artist posing and strutting while painted as a fantasy warrior at the Kustom Culture Blast Off festival in 2019. The video was filmed months before she launched her multimillion pound damages bid over delayed diagnosis of her cauda equina syndrome - a condition involving damage to nerves at the end of the spinal cord.
While the condition was genuine, she later admitted exaggerating her symptoms after social media videos emerged, revealing she had been working as a body-painting artist and parading as a model with no sign of having difficulty getting around.
Ms Burnell-Chambers admitted she had "misrepresented" her symptoms during her claim. She is now facing a potential jail sentence after Judge Jonathan Glasson KC found her guilty of contempt of court.
Cauda equina syndrome is a crippling condition which occurs when the bundle of nerves below the end of the spinal cord, known as the cauda equina, is damaged. Symptoms include low back pain, numbness and pain which radiates down the leg, but early diagnosis and treatment can lead to long term effects being much reduced.
Sadie Crapper, barrister for Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, told the court that after NHS doctors missed early signs of the condition in 2016, Ms Burnell-Chambers, from Lincs, launched a bid for damages in 2019.
She attended medico-legal appointments complaining of "a whole array of disabilities," saying she needed help to dress and to get out of the car. When she went to see a doctor had "displayed a laboured gait and used a stick," the barrister said.
She went on to drop her claim in 2022 after social media videos and surveillance footage showed her claim was "fundamentally dishonest," said Ms Crapper. One of the videos was filmed the same morning she saw the medico-legal expert displaying high levels of disability, but the film showed her "at a petrol station with her mum walking with no problem".
A core part of the NHS case was based on a series of social media videos showing her working as a bodypaint artist and model at a series of conventions and festivals around the UK. One particular video from the Kustom Kulture Blast Off in August 2019 "shows her having her body extensively painted and then parading in a show where she walks freely and dances without need for a walking aid," the barrister said.
"By no later than 2017, she had recovered well enough to make a return to body painting. What you see in these videos is somebody who goes to conventions around the country. She's seen to walk without a mobility aid, crouch and converse about the work she's doing freely and without any sign of pain.
"The person seen on the videos is markedly different from the person seen in the medico legal documents and her witness statement. She has at all times known she participated in these conventions, undertook this painting and modelling, and could walk as she did on the footage now available."
She said it was the NHS Trust's case that Ms Burnell-Chambers had "fraudulently exaggerated her symptoms for the purposes of her clinical negligence claim".
"[Ms Burnell-Chambers] now admits that she is in contempt of court and accepts that the custody threshold has been crossed in respect of her wrongdoing," she added. The court heard Ms Burnell-Chambers admitted her condition varies and her mobility is almost normal on good days, and that she had been exaggerating when she saw the medico legal expert doctor.
"She admitted she had been fundamentally dishonest," but nevertheless has real "ongoing disabilities," her barrister Ben Bradley KC told the court.
The judge, giving his ruling, said she had signed an admission that she had "deceived" the examining doctors "and deliberately changed my presentation", and that in doing so had "deliberately interfered with the administration of justice".
In her admission statement, she said her mobility is near normal "on good days", but "on bad days" she considers herself to be disabled. When she saw some experts in the claim, she deliberately attempted to demonstrate what she perceived her function was at its worst, without telling the experts that was what she was doing.
"I know it was wrong to misrepresent my presentation whilst making a civil claim. I accept that I deserve to be punished as a result," she added. At the end of a half-day hearing, the judge concluded: "I find the defendant guilty of contempt of court on the basis of her admissions."
Ms Burnell-Chambers will now be sentenced in October. The maximum term for contempt of court is two years' imprisonment.
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