|
 January 25, 2005: The
Federal government released the first
national examination of the reasons for so many wrongful convictions
in Canada.
This should be required reading for every prosecutor, cop and
criminal defence lawyer in the country. News reports
Dr.
Charles Smith | Dr. Joel Yelland | Dr.
Roy Meadow | Angela Cannings
| Trupti Patel | Scotland
cases | Anthony Kporwodu
and Angela Veno | Still to be exonerated: Darren
Koehn | Previous
on Sally Clark | Sally
Clark site
Sally and Steve
Clark
Baby deaths doctor 'breached
duty to be fair'
Press Association, Tuesday
May 31, 2005
A Home Office pathologist who claimed there was "overwhelming
evidence" of a double murder in the Sally Clark baby case
undertook "serious and repeated departures" from expected
medical standards, a disciplinary panel heard today.
Mistakes made by Dr Alan Williams led to "very serious consequences
for Mrs Clark and her family", the General Medical Council's
professional conduct committee heard.
Dr Williams is accused of serious
professional misconduct over postmortem examinations he performed
on 12-week-old Christopher Clark in 1996 and eight-week-old Harry
two years later.
Mrs Clark was jailed for life for smothering the boys, but had
her conviction quashed by the court of appeal after spending
three years in prison.
The committee, sitting in London, has already ruled that Dr Williams
failed in his duty to consider all possible causes of death and
said his postmortem of Christopher was so impaired it could not
be considered reliable.
It also ruled he had withheld details of some blood samples taken
from Christopher and had originally given the cause of death
as lower respiratory tract infection - and "this did not
have a proper scientific basis".
The committee is now considering whether the facts of the case
amount to serious professional misconduct.
If he is found guilty, Dr Williams could be struck off or have
conditions imposed on his medical registration.
Today, Sarah Vaughan-Jones for the GMC, said Dr Williams' cumulative
actions fell "far below" standards expected of a medical
practitioner.
She said his actions "potentially and actually had very
serious consequences on Mrs Clark and her family", and there
had been a "breach of an expert's important duty to give
fair, accurate and objective evidence" at criminal trials.
Dr Williams had passed blame on to other people and some of his
findings had no scientific basis, she said.
In mitigation, James Turner QC, for Dr Williams, said colleagues
had heaped praise on the pathologist as being a "caring
professional", and "honest professional", who
showed great integrity.
There had been no deliberate move to deceive people, he said,
adding: "Whatever has gone wrong has gone wrong inadvertently
and in good faith and not in the cause of pursuing a crusade
or hobbyhorse," against mothers whose children died.
"This is a case where the consequences were a result of
an unfortunate combination and coincidence of errors on the part
of a variety of individuals and institutions."
Dr Williams denies serious professional misconduct. The hearing
continues.
SocietyGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
-
- Professor admits
murder claim
- Expert accused father
of killing babies on basis of documentary
Sandra Laville, The Guardian,
June 8, 2004
A distinguished paediatrician
admitted to the General Medical Council yesterday that he had
accused a father of murdering his two babies on the basis of
watching a television documentary.
Professor David Southall, a
leading expert in child protection, intervened in the case of
Sally Clark, the solicitor jailed for life for killing her two
sons, in a "dogmatic and high-handed manner", despite
having no professional involvement in the case, the GMC heard.
The consultant paediatrician
had not seen any medical records or postmortem results relating
to the death of Mrs Clark's two babies. But after watching her
husband Stephen talking about his wife's murder conviction on
a documentary, he telephoned police to state that the father
rather than the mother had deliberately suffocated the babies.
He later reinforced his claims,
stating it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Mr Clark
was a double murderer.
Prof Southall recommended that
the couple's surviving child, who was at the time being looked
after by Mr Clark, be removed from his care. Due to his eminence
and experience the local authority seriously considered this.
Prof Southall, 55, consultant
paediatrician at the North Staffordshire hospital in Stoke-on-Trent,
pioneered covert video surveillance of parents suspected of abuse
and was a strong advocate of the theory of Munchausen's syndrome
by proxy, whereby care givers fake or induce ill ness in their
children to draw attention to themselves.
Kieran Coonan, his solicitor,
told the GMC's professional conduct hearing in Manchester that
Prof Southall admitted he had phoned the police to say that Mr
Clark had killed both his children. But the lawyer said his client
denied that what he had done amounted to serious professional
misconduct.
Richard Tyson, representing
Mr Clark, said Prof Southall's accusation was "astonishing
and extremely serious", and amounted to him interfering
in a case in which he had no professional involvement and with
little information, and refusing to back down when difficulties
arose.
"The most negative feature
of his actions is the undue pain, distress and suffering placed
on Mr Clark, who has already had to endure a considerable burden,"
he added.
When Sally Clark was convicted
in November 1999 of the murder of her sons Christopher, 11 weeks,
and Harry, eight weeks, Prof Southall was under suspension from
his job over unrelated child protection matters and had agreed
not to undertake any new cases.
Convinced of his wife's innocence,
Mr Clark, also a solicitor, was fighting for an appeal and appeared
on a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary in April 2000. He described
on the programme how his son had suffered a nosebleed in December
1996 while in his sole care in a hotel room.
"There was blood running
out of both nostrils and his mouth, he was obviously choking
... I was thrown into a panic," Mr Clark said on the programme.
Eventually he poured a glass of water over the baby's head to
clear away the blood.
Nine days later Christopher
died inexplicably while at home with his mother.
In January 1998 the Clarks'
second child, Harry, also died at home, sparking a police inquiry
which led to Mrs Clark, now 39, being convicted of double murder.
Watching the documentary, Prof
Southall was "stunned", the GMC heard. "It appeared
extremely likely to me that Mr Clark must have suffocated Christopher
in the hotel room," he wrote in a report for the authorities.
"I felt that the police
had been misled ... I was aware of a third child in the family
and I contacted the child protection unit of Staffordshire police."
His theory, backed by research
from covert video surveillance, was that nosebleeds indicated
deliberate suffocation unless a rare illness was present.
Detective Inspector John Gardiner,
who led the original murder inquiry, met Prof Southall but dismissed
his claim, saying he had come up with "nothing conclusive".
He added: "This illustrates how a well-meaning but scantily
informed person can theorise about what happened."
A child protection inquiry
later found no cause for concern and Mr Clark was never charged
with any offence.
His wife had her murder conviction
quashed in January 2003.
The hearing continues.
Sally
Clark's husband thought murder claim was 'sick joke'
BY PA NEWS, June 08, 2004
The husband of Sally Clark
thought it was "a sick joke" when a senior paediatrician
accused him of murdering his two sons, a hearing in Manchester
was told today.
Steve Clark, 42, a solicitor,
was giving evidence in the case against Professor David Southall
at a hearing of the General Medical Council.
Professor Southall contacted
police after he saw Mr Clark being interviewed on television
while his wife Sally served life in prison for the murders of
her baby sons.
Mr Clark said that he was beginning
to get his life back on track after the chaos caused by his wife's
arrest and conviction when Professor Southall made the allegations.
Mrs Clark was convicted in
1999 of killing her 11-week-old son Christopher and eight-week-old
Harry.
Her conviction was overturned
last year. Her book From Stolen Innocence: A Mother's Fight
for Justice - Sally Clark's Story is currently being serialised
by The Times.
Mr Clark was interviewed by
social workers, and the courts appointed another paediatrician
to review Professor Southall's claims. A second paediatrician
did not agree with Professor Southall and the matter went no
further. Mr Clark then lodged a complaint against the professor
with the GMC in London.
Describing what he had been
through, Mr Clark said: "I was quite stunned. For the last
two and a half years I felt my family had been attacked by the
full force of the state. I'd lost my son, who'd been taken away
from me, and had lost my wife."
Mr Clark said that at the time
of the allegations he had got his son back from foster carers
and was trying to bring him up as a single father.
When he learned of Professor
Southall's accusations, Mr Clark said his initial reaction was
that it was "quite astounding" that a senior paediatrician
could come to these conclusions "largely on watching a TV
programme".
He said Professor Southall
had made the claims without having talked to health professionals.
"Initially I thought - is this some sort of sick joke? Then
I realised it was not, it was deadly serious."
Professor Southall, 55, is
one of Britain's leading experts on Munchausen's Syndrome By
Proxy, a condition which apparently drives parents to harm their
own children, in order to win attention. He currently works as
a consultant paediatrician at the University Hospital of North
Staffordshire in Stoke.
The professor faces a charge
of serious professional misconduct and a charge that his behaviour
was irresponsible or an abuse of his professional position. He
denies both counts.
He admits accusing Mr Clark
of killing his sons and of relying on the content of a television
programme as the principle factual source for his concerns.
Broadcast on April 27, 2000,
the Channel 4 Despatches documentary featured an interview
with Mr Clark, in which he described a nosebleed suffered by
their first baby, Christopher, in a London hotel, just nine days
before he died in December, 1996.
Professor Southall saw the
programme and told police it was his view that Mr Clark, rather
than his wife, had killed Christopher and Harry, their sons.
He advised detectives that
Christopher's nosebleed was consistent with suffocation and said
he was worried for the safety of the Clark's third child, who
lived with his father at the time.
Mrs Clark's conviction was
largely based on the evidence of the now discredited paediatrician
Sir Roy Meadows, who said the
chances of two babies dying of cot death were 73 million to one.
Mrs Clark, who always protested
her innocence, finally won her freedom when her convictions were
dramatically quashed by the Court of Appeal in January last year
after judges ruled that crucial medical information was not disclosed
during her trial
The GMC heard that the Clarks'
first son, Christopher, was born in September, 1996 and died
at home, aged 11 weeks.
A port-mortem examination revealed
that he had died from a lower respiratory tract infection.
The GMC heard that Harry, their
second son, was born in November 1997, but that he died at home,
aged eight weeks, in January 1998.
A Home Office pathologist concluded
that Harry had been shaken to death and when Christopher's death
was re-examined, it was concluded he was deliberately suffocated.
Both parents were arrested
on suspicion of murder and Mrs Clark, who was a solicitor, like
her husband, was charged with the murder of both her sons in
July, 1998.
In November, 1998, the couple's
third child was born and was taken into the care of foster parents
with their agreement. After Mrs Clark's conviction in November
1999, he was returned to the care of his father.
Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers
Ltd.
* * *
Freed
mother speaks out on ordeal
BBC, June 7, 2004
Sally Clark, who was
wrongfully convicted of murdering her two baby sons, has told
how the experience has 'destroyed' her life.
A book about her ordeal is
being serialised by the Times newspaper.
In the book, she describes
how difficult it has been to bond with her five-year-old son
Tom.
She admits: "I am damaged
by what happened. I am a different person. I can't cope. Things
have got worse, not better."
Sally Clark says the three
years and 81 days in prison and the long fight to clear her name
have meant she is no longer the person she was.
The once confident solicitor
can no longer bear to be in crowds, nor does she feel happy collecting
her son from school.
Sally's husband Steve, who
had to sell the family home and give up his solicitor's partnership
to care for Tom and lead the fight to free his wife, says the
couple agreed to be involved in the book so that their son would
have a record of what happened to the family.
But he says they will receive
no money for it: "The book has been written because the
proper story needs to be told.
Medical evidence
Sally Clark was pregnant with
Tom when she was charged in 1999 with the murder of her first
son Christopher, who was 11 weeks old when he died, and of her
second son Harry who was eight weeks old.
When Tom, now five, was born
in hospital, she was not allowed to be alone with him, and he
was handed over to a foster family when he was 10 days old.
Her convictions were quashed
in January 2003 after medical evidence was revealed showing Christopher
died from an undetected lung infection and Harry from a bacterial
infection.
Sally and Steve say they are
still trying to rebuild their lives.
Sally is trying to bond with
Tom (not his real name) after spending so long apart from him.
But she says, even now, he runs first to his father or the nanny
instead of her.
"Mornings are particularly
difficult," she says. "Tom always calls out 'Daddy',
never 'Mummy."
She adds: "I don't think
for a minute that 100% of people think I'm innocent after all
the things that were said about me in the press."
'Fantastic mother'
Her husband Steve, 42, tells
the Times: "Sally isn't well and she never will be again.
"She constantly feels
people are judging her."
He says he did wonder at times
if his wife was guilty.
"I'm not a lovelorn idiot.
I would by lying if I said it never crossed my mind - did she
actually do it?
"But the you think, no,
of course she didn't. She was a fantastic mother and she doted
on the children."
The Clarks hope their experiences
will lead to the government and the NHS taking urgent measures
to ensure it never happens to anyone else.
Mr Clark says the most important
change would be "for every death that is supposedly suspicious
to be looked at by a properly qualified paediatric pathologist".
One of the hardest decisions
the Clarks now have to make is whether or not to have another
child.
In the book, Sally says: "Could
either of us take the risk of being alone with a new baby, for
fear that if something happened...?
"Neither of us could ever
harm a baby, but we now know that you can be as loving and devoted
a mum as anybody ever born and still wind up in prison, maybe
for the rest of your life, for something that never happened."
© BBC MMIV
The
child abuse myths unravel
Up to 5,000
cases that had been through the family courts might need to be
looked at again
Margarette Driscoll,
THE SUNDAY TIMES (London U.K.), February 1, 2004, Sunday Features;
News Review 5
- After Munchausen's syndrome
by proxy,
another medical theory looks set to crumble.
Cases of shaken baby syndrome
(SBS) examined in a review of infant deaths ordered by the attorney-general.
Like the hundreds of parents accused of causing
or faking illness in their children as a form of child abuse,
those involved in SBS cases argue they have been
damned by a medical diagnosis that does not hold
water.
Sally Clark is the Manchester
solicitor whose wrongful conviction for the murder of her two
babies began the unravelling of Munchausen's, the abuse theory
formulated by Professor Sir Roy Meadow.
She was originally accused of having shaken one of her babies
to death. Several other mothers are in prison, convicted of murder
or manslaughter on the basis of supposedly "classic"
signs: bleeding in the baby's brain or eyes and fractures to
the rib or leg bones. More have suffered the intrusion
of social service investigations or have had their children taken
away. "I have had lots of hopeful calls from families,"
said Rioch Edwards Brown, who founded the Five Percenters, a
campaign group, after she was wrongly accused - then cleared
-of shaking her son Riordan. "We now know that injuries
producing these symptoms can be caused by trauma at birth or
falls. Which is not to say babies are never shaken, but there
is no such thing as a 'syndrome'."
This week the first anti-
Munchausen's conference will take place in Australia. One of
the speakers will be Charles Pragnell who was among the first
to raise the alarm about the diagnosis in Britain.
Now living in Australia, Pragnell
has witnessed the damage that can be wrought when zealotry overtakes
common sense.
He was working for Cleveland
social services when scores of children were taken into
care on the say-so of Marietta Higgs, a paediatrician working
on a now discredited theory about sexual abuse.
"One of the things
we were supposed to learn from Cleveland was that social workers
should not act on the basis of a medical diagnosis alone,"
Pragnell said.
"If you look at
Munchausen's cases there is often no corroborative evidence."
The child protection
service has a history of accepting theory as fact: satanic abuse,
anal dilation, repressed memory syndrome and now Munchausen's
and SBS.
"If a paediatrician
suspects child abuse there is no need to give it a label,"
said Pragnell. "It's for the police and social services
to investigate. By pinning the blame on someone the doctor is
acting as judge and jury."
Yet one has to wonder
whether the furore over Munchausen's risks the pendulum swinging
too far the other way. Margaret Hodge, the children's minister,
said up to 5,000 cases that had been through the family courts
might need to be looked
at again and added fuel to the fire by saying parents whose children
had been adopted would not get them back. But a relatively small
number of cases are likely to hinge on medical evidence
alone.
Paediatricians are becoming
reluctant to get involved in child protection, fearing complaints
or worse. Several have had their car tyres slashed and their
homes daubed with slogans.
Despite the criticism
Professor Alan Craft, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics
and Child Health, said he retained "complete confidence"
in thediagnosis of Munchausen's and believes the row can have
only harmful consequences for children: "There is no doubt
that some parents do abuse children. We are getting to a stage
where (cases of) children being harmed will not be picked up."
|
