Angela Cannings | Sally Clark | Sir Roy Meadow |

Abuse expert to face court over 'Munchausen' case

TANYA THOMPSON , The Scotsman, January 20, 2005

SCOTLAND'S leading child-abuse expert, whose diagnosis of the controversial condition Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP) resulted in dozens of children being taken into care, is to be called back to court to justify his actions in a landmark legal case.

Professor John Stephenson, who was a paediatrician in Glasgow, gave evidence more than a decade ago after a Scottish mother was accused of trying to murder her baby son. Her lawyers claim new evidence will exonerate her, and the case could result in dozens of convictions being overturned.

Parallels have been drawn with the Angela Cannings case - she was jailed for murdering her two sons but later cleared.

The latest case, due to be heard at Glasgow Sheriff Court in April, will reignite the bitter arguments over MSBP. Largely discredited, it is said to involve parents fabricating illnesses and deliberately harming their children in order to draw attention to themselves.

Identified in the 1970s by the consultant paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, MSBP has divided the medical community. It is claimed that Prof Stephenson has been involved in diagnosing at least 14 cases of the condition, resulting in a number of children being placed in council care.

Massimo Franchi, a Glasgow solicitor acting for six mothers who claim they were wrongly accused of child abuse, said yesterday that the families had been devastated by the allegations.

He said: "The doctors will have to justify what they're saying about MSBP and prove this woman has suffered from the condition. It could mean going back to the Court of Appeal for other women who feel they were wrongly convicted."

The lawyer is considering calling Prof Meadow, who is under investigation by the General Medical Council, to give evidence. It was his testimony that led to a number of women in England - including Ms Cannings, Trupti Patel and Sally Clark - being wrongly convicted of murder.

The mother of four in the Glasgow case had two children taken into care after doctors said she was suffering from MSBP and harming her son to draw attention to herself.

In September 1993, after her son stopped breathing and was rushed to hospital, a civil court ruled that, "on the balance of probabilities", she was responsible, but no criminal charges were brought. It took two years to get the children back.

Last year, an investigation by The Scotsman found that at least 12 parents in Scotland had been accused of having MSBP, resulting in 19 children being placed in care.

The findings fuelled calls for a public inquiry, amid fears that hundreds of mothers may have been wrongly accused of child abuse and even murder.

Are we back to the eighties and early nineties - Have we learned anything?  

Sunday Herald 11 July 2004

"We were accused of raping little girls, having orgies, killing cats and chickens and drinking their blood ... it was all lies but they wouldn't believe us'

by   Vicky Allan                                  

EXCLUSIVE: The full story of the families whose lives were shattered when they were falsely accused of abusing children on a remote Scottish island

For the past nine months Vicky Allan has been talking to the families accused and finally cleared of being involved in the ritual abuse of children on Lewis.

This is their story

John and Susan Sellwood were staying at a caravan park in the northeast of Scotland when the phone call came through. Susan came back from the toilet to find John pacing outside the awning. He started to cry. She assumed the worst: that finally the indictment had come through and that soon her husband would be appearing at Glasgow High Court, along with the seven other accused. Soon the whole story would be hung out in a court room and fed to the media: a tale of animal-sacrifice, robed ritual, mass orgies and the sexual abuse of children, set on the Isle of Lewis. ''The case has been dropped,'' he told her.

The Sellwoods were still in a mildly celebratory mood when they picked me up on Monday. Their ''camper van'' was a cobbled-together affair, constructed from bits that John finds at the tip where he works. Susan listed the accusations she and her husband had been bombarded with in police interviews. ''We're supposed to have all raped the girls and then the men did. Then we were having sex orgies. We had sex orgies with each other's partners - wife-swapping, whatever you want to call it - at each other's houses. We're supposed to have killed cats, chickens, rams and lambs, then drunk the blood. ''We were accused of drug taking and making snuff movies. I didn't even know what a snuff movie was. The satanic cult was supposed to have threatened the mother to keep quiet. John was accused of trying to get her to change her evidence after a complaint. This was supposed to have been on CCTV. Porno photos are supposed to have been taken by us using a webcam. The police said that they had medical evidence that the accused had sexually assaulted the girls.'' She pauses. ''But they had no DNA. They had no DNA evidence.'' Most people's reaction on hearing such a list is one of disbelief: as a society we are poised in a mixed state of credulous horror and denial of the existence of ''satanic abuse''. Since the first wave of alleged cases arrived from America in the 1980s there have been hundreds of such claims in Britain. Only one case, in Pembroke, Wales, where the investigation arising from a boy's allegation of sexual abuse against his father exposed a large paedophile ring, has ever led to convictions.

The notorious Orkney case of 1991 saw nine children snatched from their beds in dawn raids in South Ronaldsay on suspicion that they were the vitims of ritual satanic sexual abuse at the hands of a paedophile ring. In February of 1991 the case was thrown out of court, and followed by the seven-month Clyde Inquiry into the case, and its condemnation of the actions of the social workers involved.

A 1994 report on cases in England and Wales by anthropologist Jean La Fontaine suggested that what was presented as the testimony of children in satanic abuse cases was almost always an adult construct, and it has become a widespread conviction that the whole phenomenon was a ''moral panic''. Which elicits the question: why has yet another case of alleged ritual abuse got so far - costing over (pounds) 100,000 of tax-payers' money - only to lead to a dead-end.

The police investigation on Lewis started nearly two years ago, sparked by a series of allegations made by the children of a family we will refer to as Family X.

The first overt signs of it were a series of interviews across the island, followed by the arrest in October of the eight accused - Sellwood, Ian Campbell, Timothy Tetley, Peter Nelson, David Disney, Lily Place, John Gray and Neil Stretton - in a series of dawn raids across Lewis and England. Visiting the island in March, I was struck by the silence - that paralysis that descends at the mention of ''child abuse''. Locals who lived only metres away from one of the accused would tell me: ''I don't know him. I've never met the man.'' A rift of suspicion had cracked through the community, and there was a feeling among the islanders that, as the accused were all incomers, it was the ''white settlers'' bringing their bad ways. As local councillor John Mackay told me: ''The problem was it gave every incomer a bad name. They were all tarred with the same brush.'' Still, it was possible to pick up a little information. Most of the accused lived or had lived in the Ness area. David Disney was actively involved in the community, a member of the Church of Scotland, and worked a croft. Neil Stretton was an aeroplane model-maker who kept chickens. John Gray had moved from Rotherham and used to be a Boy Scout leader. Ian Campbell was openly a ''pagan'' and had moved with his wife, Penny, to the island on a council house swap. Lily Place, 75, of Leicester had lived in the Lional area. John Sellwood was a Mormon who worked as a tip cleaner, helped his wife run a cat rescue centre, and had been Santa Claus at a grotto they ran to raise money for charity. On the whole, these people lived just a few notches up from subsistence. Their lives were held together by disability allowance, medical prescriptions and, certainly since the arrests, anti-depressants. They had come to the island for a ''better way of life''.

Most of the accused denied knowing each other particularly well, though, through talking to them, a flimsy web of connections started to emerge. The Nelsons bought chickens from Neil Stretton. The Nelsons had given the Sellwoods a clapped out old van. Susan Sellwood had known John Gray when he lived in Rotherham. Stretton knew John Gray well and was often round at his home. More crucial, though, is the series of links that existed between all the accused and the family of the alleged victims of abuse and in particular the mother of that family, the adult believed to have been involved in initiating many of the allegations. Mostly the accused denied seeing Family X very much, but painted a picture of a disturbed family, in and out of care, with a history of contact with the social services. Peter Nelson was leaning over the gate of his garden, propped up on a crutch, when I first met him. He and his 37-year-old daughter, Mary-Anne, had moved to the island in 1998, having bought their property on an exposed patch in the Lochs area of the island cheap, although it had a big garden. This was his challenge, his dream: to create a garden more ambitious than the one that had won him Gardener of the Year. In 2003 he opened his mini-Eden to 280 visitors, raising money for Save The Children.

Nelson seemed anxious to tell his story when I met him following the allegations. Even at that point he was still not committed to trial. He knew, he said, Mrs X, the mother of the victims. She had even come to him a number of times for help, asking if she could come and live with him. He had been concerned about the children's welfare and had contacted social services several years ago. Like the Sellwoods and Penny Campbell, he would occasionally struggle to remember the names of people involved.

Nelson had tried to commit suicide just the previous week, taking sleeping and blood pressure pills. ''It's a nightmare,'' he said. ''All I've done is come here to make this garden.'' Without doubt the accused have their peculiarites. For the most part they seem outsiders. Nelson's garden is fenced off and surveyed by CCTV. ''I stand out because I'm different,'' says Nelson, ''People say: 'Why don't you go to a football match? Why don't you go to the pub? People are suspicious of you because of that. You're not anything unless you're into sex, drugs and drinking.'' The Sellwoods and Campbells suspect that certain small prejudices may have coloured the investigation. Penny Campbell believes that the police showed ''blatant religious discrimination, equating paganism with devil worshipping Ian and I believe that it was because he described himself as pagan and I didn't that he was charged and I was released.'' Within the community it was well-known that they were pagan. When their homes were raided it was pagan books that were taken. As one South Dell inhabitant told me: ''Before they came, the community was warned: 'We've got some witches coming.''' In the months following John's arrest the Sellwood's lives were derailed. For the first 10 days Susan lay on the sofa, propped up, numbed by diazepam. When he went to prison in Inverness, she travelled to see him, spending in that first month (pounds) 1000, a crippling stretch on their pension and disability allowance. They don't run their market any more. They always go to the supermarket before 8.30am. Some friends no longer call. John feels nervous now in all dealings with children: ''I am different than I used to be. It gets me upset and I don't know how to handle it.'' So why did the case get as far as it did? The Crown Office says it was dropped because there was ''insufficient available evidence''. Many of the accused feel that they had not been properly investigated before arrest. Instead, supposition and ''shock tactics'' were used in the hope of eliciting an easy confession. John Sellwood, for instance, tells me they informed him that they had him ''on video''. This turned out to be vague and highly interpretable CCTV footage of him supposedly threatening one of the witnesses.

Bill Thompson, an expert in false allegations and consultant on the Orkney case, believes, however, the real problem may lie in the credibility of those making the allegations - both Mrs X and the children. He questions whether the methods used in obtaining the story from the children were valid.

The victims had been in disclosure therapy with National Children's Home (NCH) and the social service. There are guidelines for this, but, Thomson says, they are often not followed and the truth is determined using a series of validity indicators. ''What has to be asked,'' says Thompson, ''is whether the guidelines for the interview techniques have been broken?'' This, he believes, is just another Orkney all over again. ''It will be the same methodology. It always is. What it boils down to is a social worker or police officer starts asking leading questions and this then sets off a whole series of speculations.'' There is no accusation in our society worse than paedophilia, no word that clings more damningly. ''It's just that one word,'' said Peter Nelson. ''I would rather die than be called a paedophile.'' Because of this word the Nelsons had their car torched, their greenhouse smashed and bleach poured round their trees. Because of it, the Campbells received abusive phone calls. Nobody, certainly, on Lewis is going to forget that word. These are airtight communities - so close, the phone book published in Ness lists not just the names of the inhabitants, but also their nicknames or their parents' names - and a history is difficult to escape. Even in the past week Peter Nelson has had his garden raided at night, teenagers shining torches into his CCTV cameras. As Dell councillor John McKay commented last week, the dropping of the case has provoked a ''mixture of emotions and reactions'' on the island. ''You know what people are like. You're always guilty in the eyes of some.'' In March, I met Penny Campbell in her home in South Dell. With a whispered intensity she told me that she was not going to leave Lewis. Even then she was already involved in a letter-writing campaign on her husband's behalf. ''Our fight,'' she wrote to me later, ''is on all sides at the moment. Against an incompetent, biased and politically motivated police force, against social services and against ignorant people who, through no fault of their own are unaware that such injustices can happen.'' Since then she has issued press statements, enlisted the help of Bill Thompson, and attempted to fuse the fellow-accused in solidarity. Just as on Orkney, perhaps, they think they can win an apology and compensation. They want to have their names cleared. They want to make the point that, in allegations of child abuse, perhaps names of accused should not be released until proven guilty. Meanwhile, however, a single fact remains. All the evidence suggests the children in Family X were sexually abused. And, in the cloud of smoke and the feverish cries of ''satan'', it looks as if the perpetrator(s) is/are set to disappear.

Orkney expert slams Lewis 'sex abuse' mistakes

By Neil Mackay, Investigations Editor, and Vicky Allan, Sunday Herald 11 July 2004

                                   The expert who helped discredit infamous claims of satanic abuse in Orkney has branded the failed investigation into similar allegations on Lewis an even bigger disgrace.

Dr Bill Thompson said police and social workers had completely failed to learn the lessons of the 1991 Orkney case, in which nine children were taken into care amid allegations of ritual abuse which were later thrown out of court.

Thompson, the criminologist whose work for Orkney families helped lead to the dropping of the case, said: ''The Lewis case is worse than Orkney. Orkney preceded this case but the investigating authorities didn't learn from the earlier mistakes.'' The Lewis investigation cost more than (pounds) 100,000 and saw eight people charged with sexual offences against children in October 2003. The charges were dropped at the beginning of July.

Thompson says that the Lewis accusations - involving animal sacrifices, snuff movies, devil worship and the rape of children - were ''classic textbook satanic allegations which have been disproved everywhere''.

Thompson says police and social workers should release transcripts of interviews with the children who made the allegations to prove whether or not investigators asked leading questions which encouraged the children to fabricate their stories.

Thompson says that only the release of the transcripts can clear the names of the people who were wrongly accused of satanic sex crimes against children. ''People want to kill them,'' he said. ''They will suffer stigma forever. They need a chance to clear their names. ''Let's suppose it can be proved that the children have been sexually abused, how does that prove the existence of a satanic cult?'' he asked. Thompson accused police of ignoring evidence which contradicted allegations of ritual abuse. ''Social workers and police have one-track minds in these cases,'' he said. ''They were convinced this case was true and were blind to evidence to the contrary. ''The belief system that led to Orkney is alive and well in Lewis more than 10 years later.'' Thompson said that because of the experiences of Orkney, police and social workers ''should have asked themselves if they were leading the children and this should have prompted a review'' of the investigation. Peter Nelson, one of the men accused, said: ''This has been absolutely heart-breaking. I nearly killed myself because of this.'' He spent almost two weeks in prison on remand where he was threatened with murder and male rape. Nelson wants the handling of the case to be subject to a public inquiry.

The Sunday Herald has been passed police transcripts of interrogations with some of the accused. They include police claims that there is medical proof that the three children - who can only be referred to as coming from Family X - at the centre of the case were definitely sexually abused.

The mother of the children made claims of their sexual abuse prior to arrests being made in October last year. She and the children's father are no longer together.

The children of Family X are currently in the care of Western Isles Council social workers and are considered ''vulnerable''. Nobody - at the moment - is facing any charges relating to their sexual abuse.

The failure of the investigation means that despite evidence of the children being abused there is little or no chance that the children's abuser or abusers will ever come to trial as the children would be seen as unreliable witnesses in the wake of the collapse of the Lewis case.

Penny Campbell, the wife of Ian Campbell who was also one of the Lewis accused, has now set up an organisation called False Allegations Action Scotland and is calling on MSPs to mimic Westminster and establish a cross-party working group to monitor abuse investigations. ''Many families are being destroyed by false allegations of abuse made by malicious accusers,'' she said, adding that she believed investigators were ''obsessed with an erroneous belief in widespread organised ritual and satanic abuse rings''. She said this meant prosecutors ''repeated the same mistakes over and over again''.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell

Truth suppress'd, whether by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com

If you hold the mouth of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb

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Publisher : Sheila Steele

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injusticebusters court advice :

How to walk yourself through the justice system

 

Why you should dump your preliminary hearing (written July 1998 and still valid)

 

Sermonette: The Naked Truth -- (You will find links to many more sermonettes in the sidebar on this page

Another target of Dueck's malice: : Wilf Hathway

Our activism contributed greatly to the good vibes which happened around the civil trial.

Index to the stories on this website

This is not regularly updated so if you are looking for a particular story and you have a name or keyword, please use the site search engine(at the bottom of the page) which IS regularly updated

Index to Saskatoon Police stories

This is a pretty good scrapbook for the 1998-2002 period.

Inquiry into the malicious prosecution of David Milgaard untanling 36 years of Saskatchewan police and Crown misconduct: : Opening day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |

 

Stephen Williams: Canadian writer subject to Stasi-like treatment by Canadian police

Terry Arnold: : Snitch a suicide?

RCMP scenario stings: Brian Hutchinson starts digging

Gary wells: Faulty eye-witness testimony

 

Tulia, Texas

Gilmer, Texas

Willie Upshaw

Wrongfully convicted in Canada

Foster Parent false accusations

Martensville

Don Smith obscenity trial: an obscene conviction

James Lockyer

Hurricane Carter

Johnny Cochran speaks up for Bill Sampson

Vopnis

Abdulai Mohamed

The Terrible Story behind the Atif Rafay and Sebastian Burns convictions

Trial set for June 15

We know part of this disclosure is a forged statement and perjured affidavit from a Winnipeg cop

The Crown is still fighting Fred Poirier -- and they are losing. Secret Commissions Case from Northern B.C.

 

 

2005: In the United States the proven wrongful convictions just keep coming at us!

Canadians who have been wrongfully convicted because of improper investigations combined with zealous Crown

A round-up of wrongful convictions in Canada

Robert Baltovich

Michael Burns

Sebastian Burns

Rodney Cain

Wilbert Coffin (hanged, 1953)

Jason Dix

Jim Driskell

Jody Druken

Randy Druken

Hugues Duguay

Michel Dumont

Peter Frumusa

Walter Gillespie and Robert Mailman

Clayton Johnson

Yvonne Johnson

Herman Kaglik

Darren Koehn

Kulaveeringsam "Kulam" Karthiresu

Stephen Leadbeater

Donald Marshall

Chris McCullough

Michael McTaggart

Felix Michaud

David Milgaard

Guy Paul Morin

Shannon Murrin

Jamie Nelson

Greg Parsons

Benoit Proulx

Atif Rafay

Louise Reynolds

Thomas Sophonow

Gary Staples

Billy Taillefer

Steven Truscott

Joe Warren

Leon Walchuk

 

AIDWYC

Innocence Project (Canada)

Innocence Project (U.S.)

Northwest Law Center on Wrongful Convictions

 

Kirstin Lobato

Jeffrey Scott Hornoff

Willie Upshaw

Hurricane Carter

Guildford 4

Birmingham 6

Amirault

Houston

U.S. wrongful convictions: Exonerateed

Laurence Adams

Ludrate Burton

Stephen Cowans

Wilton Dedge

Albert Johnson

Kenneth Marsh

Dwayne McKinney

James Bernard Parker

Peter Reilly

Peter Rose

Sylvester Smith

Clifford St. Joseph

John Stoll

Marty Tankleff

Wilton Dedge

Ray Krone

 

Still working on it:

Dennis Deschaine

Dennis Perry

Tim Sandfort

 

 

 

 

Blogging

Blogging has been in the news. It is the new, trendy thing with 40,000 new blogs being created each day. I established a blog for this website last September and it is now "taking off." These are a few of the pages with ongoing discussions.

Tasering Mary Lutz

Saskatchewan Centenary

Quint Blog discussion

Rotten apples in the Saskatoon Police

Blogging for choice

Michael Cardamone witch hunt

Implement recommendations of public inquiries

Stealing from the poor

Vancouver's killer cops

Tisdale rapists appeal

Winnipeg police misdeeds

Milgaard Inquiry

Chief Sabo: can he be trusted?

The Old Boys' Club Must Go!

Vancouver activists

John Hudak: Falsely accused mountie

City of intolerance

Constable Larry Lockwood: Exciteable!

Eric Cline

This is a great way for like-minded people to communicate and share our views. It is easier than making a website and marginally more difficult than a forum.

People who want to contribute simply have to punch the "comment" link and they will be taken to a page with a box which allows them to write their comment, preview and post it. It takes a while for the comment to show up and some people get impatient and repost. That's fine, I trash the duplicate posts and no harm done.

Please, please give it a try. The internet is distinguished from other media in that it is really and truly interactive. Blogging makes it possible to express your viewpoint even if you don't have a computer. You can go to the library or a friend's place or an internet cafe. Once you've mastered the basics (and believe me, if I can do it, you can do it) you will be participating in one of the most democratic -- and potentially powerful -- media the world as we know it has ever seen.

Come on. Don't be shy. Join the Weblog World! -- Sheila Steele, March 20, 2005

Toronto Police paid out $30M in secretly resolved claims over last five years