| You can help FAAS to fight for justice in Scotland by making a donation or by using the amazon adds on this site to get all your reading and viewing requirements. |
|
|
 |
|
Dr David Patrick SOUTHALL From : 13 November 2006 To : 1 December 2006 Category : Fitness to Practise Hearings Info : Fitness to Practise Panel The Fitness to Practise Panel will meet at 44 Hallam Street, London W1W 6JJ to consider a new case of impairment by reason of misconduct. Dr David Patrick SOUTHALL Area of practice: London and Staffordshire The Panel will inquire into allegations that David Patrick Southall, a consultant paediatrician, acted in a way which was inappropriate, added to the distress of a bereaved person and was an abuse of his professional position, in relation to a report he was instructed to prepare by a local authority in relation to the care proceedings of a child. It is further alleged that, in relation to his treatment of
two further children,
| From: The Evening Standard (London, England) | Date: June 4, 2004 | More results for: david southall Byline: DAVID COHEN THE fateful day that Davina McLean faced her accuser, the eminent paediatrician Professor David Southall was, she says, "like being raped across the table". "I still remember how he dunked his custard cream biscuit in his tea, bringing it slowly to his mouth," says Davina. "He was looking at me, making direct eye contact, and then he rose to his feet to say that, in his opinion, my husband and I were a danger to our five-year-old son, Ben. He said we suffered from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, that we 'liked the idea of Ben having a rare breathing disorder' and accused us of making it all up." Munchausen's, a condition in which parents are said to harm their children to draw attention to themselves, was first identified in the 1970s by the now discredited Professor Sir Roy Meadow; Professor Southall followed in his footsteps as an expert on the syndrome. Hindsight reveals that the decision to remove Ben from his parents' care in mid-1991 - and place him with foster parents - was a mistake. Less than a year later, after a High Court battle, Ben was permanently returned to his parents' middleclass detached family home. And, so you might think, that would be that. But what could not be reversed was that the son they got back - so the McLeans allege - had suffered "irreversible brain damage" as a result of a controversial sleep study conducted by Southall and his team. "We believe they gave him carbon dioxide," says Davina, her face crumpled with pain. "The boy they admitted for those tests was a happy, confident, perfectly normal boy with a rare breathing disorder. The boy that came out was irretrievably brain-damaged." The McLeans want to see Professor Southall struck off the medical register for what happened 13 years ago. Next week, they may get their wish, though not in the way they envisaged. On Monday, Professor Southall, 55, considered by some to be a brilliant and innovative paediatrician, goes before the General Medical Council to answer allegations of serious professional misconduct. There are, it is believed, eight families who have brought complaints against Southall, including the McLeans. But only one complaint will be heard by the GMC next week, that pertaining to Stephen Clark, the husband of solicitor Sally Clark, who was famously jailed on Meadow's evidence for the murder of two of her children before her conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2003. The Clark complaint against Professor Southall follows a bizarre unsolicited letter Southall wrote to the police in April 2000 saying that Stephen Clark was more likely to have been the killer of the Clark children. He offered his medical opinion after watching Stephen Clark in a Dispat ches Channel 4 television document, despite the fact that he had never met Stephen, nor been involved in the case. It prompted the GMC to level four charges against Professor Southall, asserting that his actions were "inappropriate, irresponsible, misleading and an abuse of his professional position". The upcoming Clark case has given the McLeans a Catch-22 dilemma. They want Professor Southall to be struck off, but, if that happens, it means that their case will never be heard, their names never officially cleared. "Southall has taken all the happiness out of my life," says Davina, tears streaming down her face. "I have had another child, Joshua, now seven, and I so want to move on in my life - but I want Southall to get his just deserts, and I can't have closure until I get justice. Thirteen years on, I still lie awake at night unable to sleep; my husband has suffered a massive heart attack, and Ben doesn't know what planet he is on." She pulls out an album of "before-and-after" photographs. "Look at him there, just before he was taken away from us - so full of life, so sociable, so happy." She breaks down again. LATER, she shows me many medical reports that attest to his "normal" development before being subjected to Southall's sleep study. "Intellectually, he falls within normal limits," notes a June 1989 report by educational psychologist Jim Tuthill. "I never saw that Ben again. That's him," she points to a picture of a limplooking Ben, "after he came back to us - I called him Ben two. He has profound speech and language difficulties, poor balance, a tremor and, at 18, the mental age of a six-year-old. I want to know what happened to my son in Southall's sleep study on the night of 18 July 1991." Davina, 47, and her husband, David, 52, a dental technician, first met Professor Southall after being referred to him in 1989 by Doctor Robert Dinwiddie, their consultant paediatrician at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital. Their two eldest sons, then 11 and 10, were in rude health. But Ben, born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire and just four years old, was a sickly boy diagnosed by Dinwiddie as suffering from a rare disorder called Ondine's Curse, a condition in which breathing can stop without warning. Ben, however, was a plucky lad, and had so impressed staff at Great Ormond Street with his bravery that the hospital used a smiling picture of him in their fundraising brochure. A year later, he was nominated for the annual Child of Achievement awards, presented by Princess Diana. The McLeans were after the best breathing monitor they could get for their son, and this led to them seeking a referral to the Royal Brompton and Professor Southall, whom Davina had seen on television promoting a new kind of monitor. "Doctor Southall was absolutely charming," recalls Davina. "He came across as the most caring, sincere, genuine person you could ever meet." Southall invited Ben to take part in a two-night sleep study, Davina recalls. "The aim was to see whether Ben was a suitable candidate for the monitor. It was only later that we discovered that Ben had been given a research file number, SC2026, and that, without our knowledge, Ben had entered Southall's research system." Nevertheless, on those first two nights, Davina stayed with Ben in hospital and nothing untoward happened. It was only months later, when Ben was invited to return for further tests, that Davina became concerned. "A ward nurse described Ben as 'research material'," says Davina. "Her words terrified us. As soon as I got back home - by then we were living in south Wales - I called Southall to thank him for his time, and said that we weren't going to pursue his monitor after all." Two days later, on 22 March 1990, Southall sent a damning letter to Dinwiddie, Ben's consultant. "We are very suspicious of the parents' motives," he wrote. Within months, the McLeans were shocked to find themselves at the centre of a childprotection storm. Southall was accusing both parents of having Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. A case conference was called, but stalled after a social worker reported that "Ben is a happy child making progress in all areas of development apart from his speech" and that they had "no intention of pursuing care proceedings". But Southall kept pursuing the McLeans and the following year another child-protection conference was called. The McLeans were persuaded to allow Ben to undergo a 28-day monitored sleep study overseen by Southall's team. They say they were scared he would be taken into care if they did not agree. On the night of 18 July, they reluctantly delivered Ben to the sleep study. The last image Davina has of Ben is of him screaming, arms outstretched, and being restrained by a nurse as his parents left the building. "The next morning, when we picked up Ben, he looked like a different person. A friend who was with us commented, 'My God, Ben, what have they done to you?'" But it was only later, says Davina, that they got to see the protocol for the sleep study. Tucked away in the appendix on page four was some deeply disturbing small print. It stated that Ben's respiratory system would be subjected to carbon dioxide, a gas which can cause brain damage in incorrect dosages. Within a month, Ben was taken into care, and his two older brothers were placed on the at-risk register. It took a High Court battle to get him back, but his parents say that the boy who returned to them was never the same. South Wales Police are investigating what happened that night, says Davina. And the GMC has drafted a charge sheet accusing Southall of "inappropriate and improper conduct". Professor Southall has refused to comment on this, or any other case, ahead of the GMC hearing. "We lost our son on 18 July 1991," says Davina. "We know that something happened that night to give him brain damage. Without a proper inquiry, we can't prove they gave him carbon dioxide, even though the protocol shows that they planned to give him carbon dioxide. And we can't prove that the carbon dioxide gave him brain damage." While she is talking, Ben, who is now a grown lad of 18 , returns home from the special needs school he attends. "Hi, hi," he says cheerily, giving his mother a smile and a hug, oblivious of my presence. "What would you like?" Davina asks. "A bar of coke," he says, immediately slipping off his shoes and socks. "You mean a glass of coke," Davina corrects him. "Hi, hi," he repeats, making his way upstairs where he will spend the rest of the afternoon alone in his bedroom. "I can't forgive Southall for what he has done,"
says Davina. "The question that lingers for me is how one
doctor can be given so much power." Byline: DAVID COHEN IT ALL began innocently with a joyful trip to the local dog breeder. Andrea and Paul Colley's eldest daughter, Jane, was turning six, and for her birthday, they were buying her the present of her dreams - a cuddly, black Labrador puppy. Jane could barely contain her excitement as, flanked by her younger sister and brother, she cradled her new companion - instantly given the name Jake - and carried him into their home. It was a momentary portrait of suburban bliss. For nobody could have predicted the grisly events that would happen next - or the dire consequences for each member of the family. Jake died mysteriously five weeks later after showing no signs of illness. A second Labrador puppy, bought to replace Jake, was inexplicably found dead, too, and then a third was discovered dead in its basket within weeks of coming into the Colley home. Immediately, Andrea was taken into police custody, and in short order, her three children, then aged six, three and one, were removed from her care by social services. The charge: she was suspected of killing the three puppies, each of which, a postmortem had revealed, had died "by non-accidental means". The vet gravely i n formed the police that "there wasn't a bone in the second puppy's body that wasn't broken". And worse, the third puppy had not only been strangled, but so badly beaten that "its internal organs were mashed together". Soon social services were involved in the investigation, too, and, concerned that the person behind the violence was extremely disturbed and could be a danger to Andrea's children, they sought the advice of the distinguished child expert Professor David Southall. The spotlight of suspicion fell on Andrea and her police officer husband. But Professor Southall, consultant paediatrician at North Staffordshire Hospital, immediately went further. He indicated that of the two parents, the more likely culprit was Andrea. Crucially, although at that stage he had never met Andrea or her children, he also suggested a motive: he saw "clear parallels", he told social services, between this case and Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, a rare condition in which depressed parents - usually mothers - harm their children as a perverse cry for help. "Mrs Colley is overweight," he wrote in his report to social services. "The reason I raise this matter is that weight problems of this kind have been associated with Munchausen's-syndrome by proxy. I have seen injuries to pets in many cases of severe Munchausen's." He outlined a direct relationship between pet abuse and child abuse. His advice was clear: the children were at great risk and should be immediately taken from their home. Andrea, it would later unequivocally emerge, was not responsible for the dogs' deaths. Nor was there a shred of hard evidence, other than Professor Southall's theorising, that she suffered from Munchausen's. But it would be another year of acute stress and anxiety before the person responsible for the dogs' deaths confessed and the children were taken off the "at-risk" register. Andrea's testimony, told in a tearful three-hour interview, has surfaced at a critical time and is the second story of a family that has suffered from Professor Southall's accusations to have been told to the Evening Standard in the space of a month. In two months' time, Professor Southall is due to face the first of eight charges of serious professional misconduct to be heard in public by the General Medical Council. They all relate to the professor's disputed diagnosis of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, and claims by various parents that he falsely accused them of child abuse. LATER this year, another eminent child protection expert, Professor Roy Meadow, the paediatrician who first identified Munchausen's syndrome, will also be publicly investigated by the GMC. Both Southall and Meadow could be struck off the medical register if the complaints against them are proven. Until now, it has been Meadow who, with his high-profile role in falsely accusing cot-death mothers Sally Clark, Trupti Patel and Angela Cannings, has been the more publicly denigrated of the two doctors. But Professor Southall's role in what could yet amount to the greatest serial miscarriage of justice in the history of the British legal system is about to take centre stage. "It is outrageous to think that Southall diagnosed me as Munchausen's from a veterinary report," says Andrea Colley. "He never even came to meet me or talk to me. But such was the weight of his opinion that he was believed and my children were removed from my care." Andrea, 36, now a final-year law student at Keele University in Staffordshire, where she lives, says she has come forward to tell her story to help other mothers who continue to be falsely accused of harming their babies in secret family court hearings. "Of course, there are mothers who harm their babies, and they need to be severely dealt with. But as my story shows, mothers are too easily accused by medical experts like Southall who apply their theories without any real evidence, and whose carefully worded reports can have tragic consequences for a mother and her children." Andrea's ordeal began in earnest after the third Labrador died. "Two police officers arrived to take me into custody," she says. "They took me down to the station where they interrogated me for four hours, quizzing me about my childhood ('normal'), my marriage ('faltering'), whether I had ever suffered abuse ('no'), whether I ever got angry ('of course'), and whether I hit my children ('never'). It gradually dawned on me that my husband was not being interrogated, that I was the prime suspect." Andrea's husband, whom she had married six years previously, had come up with a theory about the dogs' deaths that she found both terrifying and feasible. "He told me that it was probably someone he had arrested who was carrying out a vendetta against him. If he was right, it meant that this person had been in our home and killed at least one of the dogs while we slept. I became hysterical with fear that he could do it again, and that our children could be next." Little did Andrea realise that the experts would misinterpret her panic and fears as an indicator of her guilt. Professor Southall's report to social services says pointedly: "Mrs Colley has made the statement that, whoever has done this to the dogs, could also do it to the children. She included in her description of this latter possibility the phrase 'smothering', with respect to her youngest child - the parallels between this case and Munchausen's syndrome by proxy are clear." "From the moment I was labelled a Munchausen's mother, everything I did or said was seen through a distorted lens," says Andrea. "At the case c o n f e r e n c e , despite a positive report from my GP saying there was nothing wrong with me and that I was a good mother, Southall insisted I was a danger to my children and that they should take them off me." Her eyes redden. "That was the first time I met Southall. It was the worst day of my life. I just pleaded and pleaded and pleaded. It meant nothing to them. I came out of the case conference stunned. Vomiting." Tears roll down Andrea's face as she talks. "I had to go home and say goodbye to my children. I told them I was going away to work. They were just babies. There was nothing I could say, except that I hadn't hurt anything or anybody." Andrea and Paul were sent for psychiatric assessment. By now their marriage, already struggling since the birth of their third child, who was autistic, had broken down irretrievably and the couple had divorced. It only took a couple of hours, however, for Robert Bluglass, the professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Birmingham, to come up with a very different conclusion to Southall's. "This is not a case which can be described as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy," Bluglass wrote. "I find it unfortunate, to say the least, that this speculative explanation was revealed to the parents, and particularly the mother, before the matterhad been fully and thoroughly investigated." The psychiatrist added that the matter of the three dead puppies was a matter for the criminal justice system, not social services. ON Bluglass's advice, the children were restored to Andrea's care five weeks after they had been originally removed. But because of the unexplained violent nature of the dogs' deaths, the children remained on the child-protection register and could be taken from Andrea's care at any time. A year later, Professor Southall had to provide another report; if things went against her, Andrea risked losing her children. She was beside herself with worry. However, Paul suddenly confessed to killing all three dogs. He said he had suffered a " nervous breakdown", the result, he claimed, of physical abuse by his stepfather as a child. Paul subsequently resigned from the police amid a disciplinary investigation into his conduct. The judge cleared Andrea of all blame and ruled she posed no danger to her children. "I just started crying," recalls Andrea. "I felt such relief that the truth had come out. Paul dropped to his knees and said it was unforgivable what he'd done to us all." Contacted by the Evening Standard, Paul, who continues to enjoy regular contact with his children, said that he had no further comment, other than that "I have long ago asked for Andrea's forgiveness". But there were no subsequent words of regret or contrition for falsely accusing Andrea from Professor Southall. Instead the professor was unavailable for comment. "To have your children taken away from you is the worst thing a mother can go through," says Andrea. "I don't care if it's for one minute or one year. I'm still recovering from what happened to me 10 years ago.
At the end of the day, I forgive Paul because he was mentally
ill. But I want to know: what's Southall's excuse?" This Southall case before the GMC on 13 November 2006, will
be an eyeopener....Wait until mention is made of 4000+ medical
files he kept away from the North Staffordshire Health Trust
and which were also unknown to cases that were being heard at
the time before Courts, including the Family Courts.
|
 |
