Teresa Kirk with her brother Manuel at his care home in the Algarve, Portugal

Fighting back the tears, Teresa Kirk tenderly takes the hand of her 81-year-old brother and rests her cheek gently against his head as the sun pours in through the windows of his old people’s home in Portugal. It will be the last photograph of the two of them together and it is, by any measure, an unbearably poignant image of sibling devotion.

But behind it lies an astonishing story that has come to represent all that is wrong with Britain’s shadowy Court of Protection (CoP). A court so powerful that, until yesterday, Teresa was forbidden from placing an obituary notice to inform friends of her brother Manuel’s death.

When this photograph was taken late last year, Teresa, who is 71, had just been released from jail — her punishment for defying British social workers who had decreed that her brother, who had dementia, must spend his twilight years in a Devon care home rather than the Portugese idyll that she wanted for him in the country of his birth.

She was sentenced to six months for refusing to sign legal papers giving social services control over the life of Manuel. Only a campaign by the Daily Mail and Teresa’s lawyers secured her an early release, with High Court judges ruling that she should never have gone to jail.

They returned her confiscated passport, which had been seized at her sentencing, so she could fly to her brother for that emotional reunion.

Last week, Manuel was buried at a funeral organised by Teresa and attended by friends from the home, The Sun And Sea, near Faro on the Algarve. Yet still Teresa was barred from telling her shocking story, thanks to that draconian ruling imposed by the Court of Protection which decreed — even posthumously — that it was in Manuel’s ‘best interests’ for him to remain anonymous.

Even placing an obituary notice in Devon, where Manuel had worked at a hotel for nearly 50 years, would have put her at risk of being returned to prison.

In its earlier reports about Teresa’s battle to help her brother and her imprisonment, the Mail was prohibited from giving his name or saying they were brother and sister. He could only be described as a ‘man’ — and even the name of his pet cat, Tuna, could not be made public.

Only yesterday, with the lifting of the reporting restrictions by the Court of Protection, can the story of Teresa and her brother Manuel Martins finally be told.

The Court of Protection ordered Teresa to bring him home from the care home he loved but she refused and was sent to HMP Bronzfield, where she spent seven weeks

Teresa, a retired accountant and grandmother of four from Brighton, recalled how her ordeal unfolded after she refused to sign the legal papers transferring responsibility for her brother’s life from herself to social services.

‘I was never going to sign the papers giving social workers the power to say where Manuel had to live. When I was a little girl, he would put me on his shoulders and run with me through the countryside near our parents’ home on the Portuguese island of Madeira.

‘Soon after he came to England to work, I followed him. We remained close all our lives and I was not going to abandon him to state social workers in his last years.

‘He would have become depressed in Devon without the sunshine. He loved the gardens and the warm weather where he lived.’

Even after she appealed the sentence successfully, she was unable to reveal any details that would identify her brother

Social workers thought otherwise and had recommended that Manuel should be admitted to a care home in England, staying close to old friends. One of the planks of their argument was that he would be happier in the UK, where he had a cat.

It was early one Sunday morning last September that the police came for Teresa at her home.

‘In front of my crying seven-year-old granddaughter, who was staying the weekend, they drove me off to prison. They dropped my granddaughter at her mother’s house on the way.

‘I was handcuffed at one stage and my family were not told for days where I was. I simply disappeared. When the family asked the police to find me, they said to report me as a missing person.’

The alarming tale of Teresa Kirk, who served nearly seven weeks in prison, is the latest controversy to embroil the shadowy CoP. It is a family court with powers to make far-reaching rulings on almost every aspect of a citizen’s life (and now, it appears, death), along with their relatives, too.

The judges presiding over it can compel people to undergo surgery, use contraception, have an abortion — and even decide whether a life-support system is switched off.

Just as worryingly, the court can put someone in an old people’s home if the State deems it in their ‘best interests’. And they can remove money from the person’s bank account to pay for care and legal costs.

In other words, the life of that person is under the control of the court — and woe betide the relative who breaks the rules imposed by it.

Teresa recalled how her ordeal unfolded after she refused to sign the legal papers transferring responsibility for her brother’s life from herself to social services

Hundreds who have done so have been sent to prison for contempt, just as Teresa was.

Her family learned that Teresa was at Bronzefield Prison near Heathrow — where serial killer Rose West was once incarcerated — only when a ‘well-wisher’ (thought to be a freed inmate) contacted them anonymously to say where she was.

For weeks, her imprisonment was also kept secret from the public — breaking the CoP’s own rules if it jails someone — until the Mail heard about her case and made inquiries to the Ministry of Justice.

Teresa’s lawyer, Colin Challenger, said yesterday: ‘Anyone with common sense would have realised in three minutes that Teresa’s view on what was best for her brother was genuine and sincere. They would also have seen that the Portuguese home was ideal for him.

But despite the threat of prison, she refused to bring her brother back to Devon from the home in Portugal that he loved

‘When Manuel had incipient dementia and was increasingly unable to look after himself at his derelict house in Devon, she stepped in to help him as a good sister and found the perfect care home in the Algarve.

‘He moved in there in 2015 and said he did not want to return to England to a home he did not know.’ Mr Challenger estimates that more than £100,000 has been spent on legal fees by social services battling to get Manuel back to Devon.

Under CoP rules, this money will be paid from Manuel’s savings and small pension. It is likely the rest will be seized from the former head waiter’s estate, if and when his £200,000 house in Sidmouth is sold.

The huge legal costs included paying for top-flight barristers — at hundreds of pounds an hour — to attend hearings seeking Teresa’s imprisonment, then oppose her release and, finally, to try to silence her and the Mail.

Two social workers ramped up the costs further when they flew to Portugal to interview Manuel for a CoP report on his wellbeing, staying at a seaside hotel for two nights but seeing him for only a few hours.

Mr Challenger said last night: ‘I am ashamed to have any connection with a court system able to act in this heartless, incompetent and unsympathetic way.

‘Even when the CoP and Devon social services were told about Manuel’s death, there was feet-dragging over lifting the secrecy order. It has prevented Teresa from publishing an obituary.

‘Her original imprisonment was, in my opinion, unlawful and against the interests of her late brother.’

Two social workers ramped up the costs when they flew to Portugal to interview Manuel in his care home (pictured) for a CoP report on his wellbeing

John Hemming, the former Lib Dem MP and family rights’ campaigner, said: ‘The gagging order imposed did not protect Manuel, but only those who made the decisions to imprison Teresa and run an expensive exercise to try to get her brother back to Britain from a Portuguese care home.

‘The CoP seems reluctant to relinquish control of people even in the afterlife. It’s time this court stopped hiding what goes on there.’

Teresa, who lives on a state pension, appears an utterly sympathetic and sensible woman.

On discovering her imprisonment, we visited Manuel — a British citizen — without warning, to check on his care home in Portugal.

The home in Portugal had an indoor swimming pool, doctor and nurses, massage facilities and spacious grounds

With an indoor swimming pool, doctor and nurses, massage facilities and spacious grounds, it was close to the sea. He had a bright ground-floor room with huge windows overlooking the garden, filled with flowers and a vegetable patch.

And, despite vascular dementia, he took a delight in choosing freshly caught sardines from the day’s menu posted up on the wall for the 40 residents.

There were trips to the beach, regular barbecues and visits to the riverside coffee bar nearby. Facebook photos of life at the newly built home near the tourist town of Tavira showed him dancing with other residents and posing, with a straw hat and a broad smile, as he enjoyed an ice cream.

As Chris Kirk, Manuel’s former brother-in-law and Teresa’s ex-husband, who lived near the Portuguese home, said when we visited: ‘It is like living in a five-star hotel. Manuel is well looked after and there are plenty of things to do.

‘He speaks Portuguese as his first language so he can talk to other residents. But his English is perfect, too, and there are three others from England living there.’

When we arrived at The Sun And Sea care home — which until today could also not be named because of the court gagging order — we were greeted by a director, Carolina Lopes, 26, who showed us around.

After a few minutes, we bumped into a beaming Manuel who was in the dining room, eating cakes.

‘I have been here for more than a year and I want to stay,’ he said, before going to sit in the garden.

Despite having vascular dementia, he took a delight in choosing freshly caught sardines from the day’s menu at The Sun And Sea, near Faro on the Algarve coast

Of course, there are always two sides to any story.

But what we do know is that the care home chosen by UK social workers has a rocky past. It is under new ownership, but before changing hands one 84-year-old resident, a retired banker with dementia, died after choking on a piece of roast beef at lunch. An inquest in 2015 said ‘key issues’ leading to the tragedy were inexperienced staff and a failure to puree the man’s food.

Teresa is the second woman known to have been jailed by the CoP in a dispute over the choice of care home for an elderly relative.

Nearly four years ago, the Mail revealed that 50-year-old Wanda Maddocks had also been secretly imprisoned by the court after trying to save her father from a British care home she believed was dangerous.

Last night, Teresa said: ‘Only now am I able to speak about how I fought to look after my brother in the best way. The Devon social workers wanted to control his life.

‘It cost him a lot of money and, apart from missing his cat [placed in a cattery in Devon], he was horrified at the thought of returning to Britain and being put into a home here.

‘I am finding comfort from the fact that he died in peace in the country where he wished to end his days.’