Susan Brierly's children were treated by David Southall and her children have SC files. ( special code ) .........Prof David Southall is up before the GMC on 13 November 2006 and the police have announced a criminal investigation into his conduct.

Now it is time to throw light on legacy of Sir Roy Meadow the dark; ANGELA CANNINGS IS FREE BUT AN EVENING STANDARD WRITER KNOWS ONLY TOO WELL THE AGONY OF MOTHERS LIKE HER.

From: The Evening Standard (London, England) | Date: December 11, 2003 |

Byline: DAVID COHEN

THE night after the Trupti Patel verdict, my phone rang at three in the morning. I dashed out of bed, wondering who could be calling at such an hour.

"David, its Susan Brierley," said the croaky, tearful voice on the other end.

"I need to talk."

"Now?" I said groggily, my mind racing as to what could be so urgent.

"Yes," she insisted. "I want the world to know what [Professor Roy] Meadow has done to me, too. That user name not allowed - he said I murdered my son and would probably smother my baby daughter, so they took her away. I'm innocent, David, just like Trupti and Sally.

You've got no idea what it's like to have your child stolen from you.

Please... can you help get my daughter back?"

Suddenly my caller was overcome by deep racking sobs. "It's put a hole in my heart," she eventually continued.

"The judge says he will throw me in prison if I tell my story to the Press, but I don't care. I'm sorry I called so late, but I'm afraid that if I wait until tomorrow, I'll lose my bottle."

In the last year, Susan Brierley has come to symbolise for me the unbearable tormented agony of the scores of gagged mothers who comprise the unseen legacy of Professor Roy Meadow - the man who, for almost two decades, was this country's premier cot- death "expert".

Susan and I first spoke after the Sally Clark verdict in February, several times after Trupti Patel was acquitted in June, and again yesterday, when Angela Cannings walked free. In each of these three historic instances, we have witnessed the overturning of a miscarriage of justice that has the discredited fingerprints of Sir Roy Meadow all over it. Each time, Susan has responded with renewed hope, believing that one day, she, too, will get justice.

MY PERSONAL journey into Professor Meadow's dark legacy began 11 months ago with what seemed a routine assignment.

As a writer, you typically get one hit at your subject, so you keep an open mind, immerse yourself, and give it your best shot. Then you move on.

But this story was different.

I remember the moment it began to dawn on me that the Sally Clark case was the tip of the iceberg. I had journeyed to Birmingham to meet Karen and Mark Haynes, a middleclass couple whose newborn child had been wrenched from them 20 minutes after her birth because Professor Meadow had said that Karen had murdered her infant son and was likely to kill their daughter, too.

I had listened intently as they recounted their saga. I had seldom met such convincing subjects, but that, ultimately, was not the point, for it is hardly for journalists to pronounce on who is innocent or guilty based on personal impressions.

Rather, it was later, when I sat down to read the full text of the court judgments - replete with expert witness statements - that my eyes began to open. You see, like most people, I had never been inside a family court.

Hearings are held in secret, behind closed doors, and unless you are a judge, social worker, policeman or expert called to give evidence, you are unlikely to experience one.

I had assumed, however, that a judge would remove a child from its mother only if there was strong and unambiguous evidence that the mother would harm it. What I read shocked me to the core.

Five medical experts had been called to opine on the cause of Karen's son's death. The first, Peter Fleming, a professor of infant health and developmental psychology at the Institute of Child Health in Bristol, concluded that the "more likely" cause of death was "metabolic abnormality".

Three pathologists concurred that it was not possible to conclude that the mother had murdered her baby.

But the fifth expert, paediatrician Roy Meadow, came to the opposite conclusion. He said: "A natural cause is a lot less likely and smothering is much more likely."

That was when it hit me: Meadow's opinion might be all but discredited today, but in the past nothing carried more weight. The judge had overruled four doctors in favour of the minority view of the country's foremost expert in cot deaths and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, the controversial malady he himself had first described in 1977 - and which conveniently attributes a motive to these mothers by claiming they harm their children as a perverse cry for help.

A single, astonishing line in Meadow's statement magnified my unease. "I have not met the parents."

In family courts the burden of proof is lower than in criminal courts, based merely on the balance of probabilities. All too often there is no prior evidence of abuse nor physical evidence relating to a child's death. It seems, often, to come down to perceptions of character and expert medical conjecture.

As my investigation proceeded, I discovered that Meadow had given evidence in more than a hundred family court cases, and that, alarmingly, he was often the only expert called. Sometimes, he would meet the mother whose fate he was deciding, sometimes not.

On February 12, the Evening Standard published my first "special report''.

In it, I wrote: "The concern arises that the ordeal of Karen Haynes is merely the tip of the iceberg. For it alerts us to the distinct possibility that the Sally Clark case reveals not just a single grotesque miscarriage of justice.

But rather, that it lifts the lid on serial miscarriages of justice ... ever since Meadow began writing his reports and giving evidence in such cases 20 years ago."

In the week that followed, I was deluged by emails and letters from readers, wanting to know how they could help, including some heartbreaking letters from "Meadow's victims".

One father wrote to me saying: "The expert in our case was Professor Sir Roy Meadow who stated that my wife had attempted to kill our daughter by poisoning. His statement led us to lose our four lovely children to the local authority. We are still fighting ..."

Another reader poignantly said: "I wonder if Professor Meadow has any idea what it is like to wake up every morning knowing there is a little person missing from your home."

For me, it was the start of a journey of discovery that led to my interviewing - over many months - as many cot-death mothers who had lost their children to family court judgments as I could find. At first it was an uphill battle. Most were too terrified to meet for fear that a judge would lock them up for flouting gagging orders.

But others, like William and Michelle Carter of Roehampton in south-west London - and Angela Cannings's husband, Terry, in Salisbury - gave full and frank interviews and we published their powerful stories.

I also interviewed Angela Cannings's solicitor William Bache, Sally Clark's solicitor John Batt, and Penny Mellor, t he formidable activist who is aiding more than 50 cot-death mothers.

They spoke using strong language about the role of Meadow and the glaring weaknesses in the family court system.

I discovered that Meadow has frequently given evidence outside his area of expertise. For example, when a child was poisoned and a toxicologist should have been called, Meadow was the expert used.

Meadow, I learned, also had a penchant for changing his theories to fit the facts. If a baby was perfectly well before dying inexplicably - as in the Cannings case - that, he opined, was consistent with smothering.

YET if a baby was ill before dying inexplicably - as in the Sally Clark case - he held that to be consistent with smothering, too. This cherrypicking was repeated in family court cases, too, even more devastatingly, because of the absence of public scrutiny to point up the inconsistency.

I found Professor Meadow's phone number. He came to the phone, his voice calm and unflustered, in stark contrast to the mothers I know who wake up every day without their children. Or who wake up every morning in a prison cell. All he would say was: " I don't comment on individual cases."

Since the Sally Clark case, Meadow has not given a single interview, nor bothered to explain himself to anyone. Yet until then, he was the type who actively sought publicity. He was proud of the oft-repeated "Meadow's Law" that "one cot death is a tragedy, two is suspicious, and three is murder", as well as his now ridiculed claim that the odds of two infant deaths in a family are one in 73 million. It is easy to forget that until his "science" was exposed as inaccurate and misleading, these statements carried enough weight to seal the fate of scores of families.

As up to half a dozen mothers languish in jail and dozens of others are free but deprived of their children, the question is: what is to be done? I have come to believe that it is no longer appropriate to proceed on a drip-drip basis, of one appeal following hard on the heels of another. It is time that the entire body of cases involving Meadow are judicially reviewed as a matter of urgency. Only then will we know for sure which innocent mothers have been condemned and which are guilty as charged.

I sometimes wonder why this has not happened already.

Perhaps because it is not just Meadow who will be severely embarrassed when he is called to account. Some esteemed family court judges, who have unquestioningly relied on his evidence for nearly two decades, will be roundly shamed, too.

As Terry Cannings told me: "It's not just him. It's the whole system that's to blame."

Yesterday, on the steps of the Court of Appeal, Angela Cannings said that the past four years of her life "have been a living hell". For scores of bereft mothers - such as Karen Haynes, Michelle Carter and Susan Brierley - the living hell of being separated from their children based on the evidence of a discredited 'expert' goes on.

. Some names have been changed for legal reasons.