UK
doctor caught making false accusations of child abuse
http://www.fightcps.com/2004_08_08_archive.html
Fight CPS - 8th August 2004
Professor
David Southall, the now disgraced paediatrician who wrongly accused
a father of murdering his two baby sons, should be struck off, said
a woman whose daughter was placed in foster care because of false
accusations of abuse.
Professor
Southall was found guilty on Friday of serious professional misconduct
after falsely accusing Stephen Clark, 42, of murdering his children,
Christopher and Harry.
Professor
Southall, 56, made his allegations after watching a Channel 4 Dispatches
documentary about the case in 2000. Mr Clark's wife, Sally, had
initially been convicted of murder, but her conviction was quashed
last year.
Yesterday
Justine Durkin, whose own complaint against Professor Southall will
be heard by the General Medical Council (GMC) in January, called
for the consultant paediatrician to be struck off.
"He
destroyed mine and my family's lives," she told Radio 4's Today
programme. "He accused me of having Munchausen's Syndrome by
Proxy, which was unfounded. But it took 11 months to get that far,
and during that time the children were in care."
Professor
Southall made his diagnosis of MSBP - where the sufferer harms their
own child in order to draw attention to themselves - after Ms Durkin
took her daughter Rosie to see him in 1993 at North Staffordshire
Hospital.
Rosie, then
aged one, had developed a cough that led to breathing problems.
Unknown to Ms Durkin, Professor Southall wrote in his notes "Mother
- MSBP?" and she was sent home with a monitoring device.
A few weeks
later she was told her daughter had a serious heart disorder and
would need 24-hour monitoring. But this was a ruse to secretly video
Ms Durkin, 34, to see if she tried to harm her child. Mother and
daughter were placed in a ward for five days, and Rosie was ordered
to remain on the bed for 24 hours a day.
"They
were under the impression I was smothering her," Ms Durkin
said. "Of course, the video didn't show anything of the sort.
It showed me and my daughter in a room for five days, getting extremely
fraught with the situation we were put in."
Ms Durkin
was still accused of having MSBP and was wrongly accused of punching
Rosie in the face. She was cleared of the charges, but not before
Rosie was taken into care and her son, Joe, then three, went to
live with his father, who Ms Durkin had separated from.
Her husband
was granted custody of both children and Ms Durkin was initially
only allowed supervised visits for two hours a week. The conditions
were eventually relaxed, and a year ago Rosie decided to move back
with her mother, although Joe decided to stay where he is.
Ms Durkin's
complaint is one of a further six against the doctor, who was banned
from working on child protection cases for three years. "Obviously
we'd all like him struck off," Ms Durkin said. "If people
are caught doing these things the standards of evidence should be
irrefutable."
After Friday's
hearing Professor Southall's solicitor, Margaret Taylor, said outside
the GMC building in Manchester: "Although disappointed that
the committee has applied conditions to his registration, Professor
Southall sincerely hopes that the decision will not deter other
paediatricians from continuing to act in the particularly difficult
area of child protection and speaking out when they suspect a child
has been abused."
