Torn apart by doctors' child abuse theory

A SCOTS mother whose children were taken into care on the basis of controversial medical evidence is fighting to regain custody, backed by the lawyer who helped quash the murder conviction against Angela Cannings.

The woman - known only as Mrs A - believes she and her family are the victims of a theory about child abuse that can no longer be trusted and medical evidence should be more vigorously challenged.

Mrs A lost custody of her children and was banned from all contact after it was claimed she may be suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, a condition in which adults harm children to get attention.

The theory was pioneered by Sir Roy Meadow, whose expert evidence in court has increasingly come under scrutiny. The paediatrician’s testimony on the separate issue of cot death was crucial in convicting Angela Cannings of killing her two baby sons.

At appeal, Cannings’ lawyer, Bill Bache, cast doubt on the validity of Meadow’s evidence and offered an alternative, genetic explanation for the deaths, as a result of which she was freed.

Mrs A is now being helped by Bache and she hopes his expertise will finally bring to an end her seven years of torment.

The woman, who comes from Glasgow but lives in the north-east of England, is among a dozen Scots whose children were taken into care because of a diagnosis of Munchausen’s.

Bache wants the files reopened on Munchausen children, many of whom were taken into care based on evidence from a single doctor, such as Meadow, or fellow Munchausen’s proponent David Southall. The existence of the syndrome itself is being questioned, and both Meadow and Southall are being investigated by the General Medical Council.

Mrs A’s case dates back to 1998, when her 10-year-old autistic son was sent for an assessment by Southall, who is based in Stoke-on-Trent. The boy had a history of other medical problems, and Mrs A also revealed to doctors that her own mother, the children’s grandmother, had lost three children 30 years previously to the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis.

She said Southall seemed more interested in her than her son and was also keen to interview her mother.

Mrs A claims he failed to take enough account of the fact that tests showed her son was suffering from a number of disorders, including cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and blamed repeated illnesses he had suffered on deliberate harm by his mother.

She said Southall then wrote to social services in the north-east England town where the family lived, telling them he suspected Munchausen’s by proxy and that he had concerns about the deaths of the grandmother’s children as well.

In 1999 the son was taken into residential care based on this evidence, and social workers later sought to include Mrs A’s nine-year-old daughter in the care order as well.

To avoid that, the grandmother took the girl secretly to Ireland, and then to a "safe house" in Stirling, arranged by two child welfare campaigners.

Police were alerted and when Mrs A and her husband drove to Scotland to meet up with the grandmother they were arrested and the daughter was taken from them.

Mrs A, her mother and her husband were all jailed in 2001 in connection with this "abduction" and the two campaigners, Penny Mellor and Stuart Carnie, were imprisoned for conspiracy to abduct a child.

Mrs A and her mother, who was then 63, spent 10 weeks in prison before being freed on an electronic tagging order, while her husband served three months. While she was behind bars, social workers obtained a further order banning any contact between Mrs A and either child.

She has not seen or heard from her son or daughter since and does not know where they are, except that they are in the care of the local authority.

Her son is now 16 and her daughter 14.

Now separated from her husband, Mrs A claims the trauma of losing the children has made her ill and unable to work and she now concentrates solely on trying to win them back.

"This has ruined my life," the 38-year-old said last night. "I have not seen my children for three years and the only thing I have left is fighting for them. I have never harmed either of them and I cannot understand how doctors can be allowed to get away with these things while no-one does anything about them."

She added: "This is no longer just about my kids. It’s about all the children affected in this way." Last night, Bache said he could not comment in detail on the case but was prepared to confirm his involvement.

He told Scotland on Sunday: "I will be assessing the evidence in this case and seeing if there may be grounds for seeking to appeal the findings which led to the care orders. I’m prepared to help in any way I can."

Angela Cannings’ victory followed that of Sally Clark, whose conviction for murdering her two baby sons was quashed last year, and Trupti Patel, who was found not guilty last summer of killing her three sons.

Bache said the large number of cases in which children had been taken from their parents based on Munchausen’s evidence pointed to a problem as big as the Cleveland child abuse scandal of the 1980s.

Then, based on a controversial examination technique used by paediatricians, dozens of children were placed in care after it was wrongly decided that they had been sexually assaulted.

"I suspect we may be looking at a huge panorama of injustice, because I have heard sufficient to make me think that the kind of evidence deployed [in these cases] is much the same as that in the Angela Cannings case, and those of Sally Clark and Trupti Patel," Bache said.

"If things have gone the way I suspect then the scale of injustice and depth of suffering here is probably one of the worst this country has ever seen." Southall was unavailable for comment.

A spokeswoman for the GMC confirmed it was investigating him, but refused to give further details.

Tall tales of illness?

PATIENTS who fake illness in order to gain attention from health professionals may be suffering from Munchausen’s syndrome, named after the tall tales told by the 18th-century Baron von Munchausen.

Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy was first coined by Roy Meadow in 1977 to describe a related disorder in which an adult, usually a mother, fakes or induces symptoms in a child because of an attention-seeking problem.

The most famous alleged sufferer of the condition is the former nurse Beverley Allitt.

She became Britain’s worst female serial killer of the century in 1993, when she was given 13 life sentences for murdering four children and attacking another nine in Grantham Hospital, Lincolnshire.

She poisoned one young girl and murdered her twin sister with an insulin overdose.

Sir Roy Meadow was called to give evidence at her trial and it was reported last year that Allitt might appeal against her convictions.

Despite the current controversy, however, many doctors accept that MSBP exists and some are worried that a backlash against Meadow and other paediatricians will lead to an increase in child abuse.