The soldier son of a woman who fled to the Orkneys to escape family problems has pleaded for her to be given the chance of a new life.

The Argus revealed last week how wheelchair-bound Ruth Taylor faces eviction from emergency accommodation in the Orkneys because she is not classed as homeless.

In April, Miss Taylor fled from Brighton to escape problems at home.

She was taken to the Orkneys by her military policeman son, Lance-Corporal Matthew Taylor, who is now awaiting court martial for going absent without leave.

In an emotional five-page letter to The Argus, written from military detention barracks, L-Cpl Taylor described his mother as "a kind, sincere and beautiful woman, 57 years old, confined to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke three years ago that left her paralysed down her entire left side".

L-Cpl Taylor said some of the people visiting his mother's home in Moulsecoomb were "the dregs of society".

He said he had gone home on leave in April and realised his mother was in "physical danger".

He said: "She asked me to take her away from Brighton before it killed her, a sentiment that I wholeheartedly agreed with."

Mother and son first fled to France, "only for all her worldly possessions to be stolen" and then to Amsterdam.

L-Cpl Taylor continued: "Circumstance brought us to the Orkney Isles on June 26, exhausted, dirty and financially insolvent."

The Orkney Islands Council initially housed the couple in bed-and- breakfast accommodation. But on the same day as L-Cpl Taylor was arrested, the council decided his mother was not homeless as she had somewhere to live in Brighton.

L-Cpl Taylor described the escapade as a "disaster that I wholly take the blame for."

A Brighton and Hove City Council spokeswoman said: "If she comes back to Brighton and presents herself as homeless, the homeless unit will take it from there."