How a crusader against abuse provoked the anger of accused parents
Near the beginning of A Very Dangerous Doctor, next month's Cutting Edge documentary on Channel 4, there are a few seconds of grainy footage that are among the most shocking to be broadcast on TV.
They show mothers smothering their youngsters – one using a T-shirt to stop her child breathing, another holding a hand over her child's mouth and nose and a third lying prone across her child's face while its tiny arms and legs thrash frantically as it struggles for air. They were taken by covert video surveillance of women whose babies were being investigated in hospital for breathing difficulties.
The secret videos, introduced by Prof David Southall more than a decade ago for detecting abuse, proved doctors were looking in the wrong place. The problem lay not with the children but the parents.
Dozens were convicted as a result and their children removed to safety. Dr Southall was hailed by colleagues for "thinking the unthinkable" – that parents could harm their children. He became an expert in Munchausen's syndrome by proxy (now called fabricated or induced illness), in which mothers injure or poison their youngsters to gain doctors' attention.
But like many doctors working in child abuse, he soon felt the anger of parents who claimed they were wrongly accused.
For more than a decade they have campaigned against him and his colleagues, filing thousands of complaints and triggering investigations by hospitals, the GMC and police.
Four appear in the Cutting Edge documentary, including Justine, suspected of smothering her two-year-old daughter Rosie. The child had been kept in hospital, hooked up to monitors for five days with nothing to do but watch a Thomas the Tank Engine video over and over again.
"To me that was tantamount to child abuse," Justine says. But she lost her daughter, who was taken into care and not returned for a decade. She has since campaigned for more than a decade to have Dr Southall struck off.
He remains unmoved. "The lies told by parents doing this to their children are continuous," he says. "I remain of the view that I did the right thing for all the children involved."
There are 47 cases pending against him, according to the film, (although the GMC said it did not recognise this figure) and the Medical Defence Union has spent £750,000 defending him – and is still doing so.
In 2004 he was found guilty of misconduct by the GMC and suspended from involvement in child protection work for three years after he accused the husband of solicitor Sally Clark of murdering her children on the basis of a TV interview he had given. Following that verdict, 53 UK paediatricians wrote to protest that the GMC verdict "conflicted with child protection laws and guidance for professionals".
Filmmaker Leo Regan says the dispute between Dr Southall and parents is unlikely ever to be resolved.
But in a tribute to his skill, both sides say his documentary, which they have seen, is fair.
Dr Southall's critics say he did not just test the boundaries, he crossed them and was overzealous in his conviction that children must be protected at all costs. Like many pioneers attacked for their beliefs, he deals in absolutes and is unrepentant. Hope now rests with the GMC's working group and the new guidance it is due to provide to doctors involved in child protection. GMC chief executive Niall Dickson says: "We need to build confidence in what will always be a difficult area of practice."
'A Very Dangerous Doctor' will be shown by Channel 4 on 12 May at 9pm
Controversial child doctor could be struck off for a second time
PA
Dr David Southall was originally struck off in 1996 after accusing a mother of drugging and killing her 10-year-old son
ENLARGEBritain's most controversial expert in child protection will this week face a disciplinary hearing before the General Medical Council that could see him struck off for a second time.
Professor David Southall, regarded as a pioneer in the detection of child abuse by his supporters but as a dangerous doctor who ripped families apart by his detractors, is also the subject of a Channel 4 film to be broadcast next month that explores one of the longest and most emotionally charged battles in British medical history. Meanwhile, a working group of the GMC is to produce new guidance for doctors involved in child protection – regarded as the toughest job in medicine, where both intervening and not intervening can lead to tragedy. A draft version of the guidance is due to go out for consultation in the summer.
The developments will focus attention on how the abuse of children can be prevented in Britain in the 21st century. Two children die each week, often murdered by their parents, and hundreds of others endure physical and sexual assaults leading to long-term harm.
There are few crimes to equal abusing a child, but one is falsely to accuse a parent of committing such a crime. The dilemma faced by paediatricians working in child protection is how to steer a course between wrongly diagnosing abuse while avoiding missing it altogether. Dr Southall, formerly a consultant paediatrician at the North Staffordshire hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, was struck off the medical register in 2007 after being found guilty of serious misconduct for allegedly accusing a mother of drugging and murdering her 10-year-old son, who died in 1996.
He had denied the mother's claim that he had accused her of murder, insisting that he had raised it as one possible scenario to explain her son's death. His account was backed up by a social worker who had been present during the interview, but the GMC panel chose to believe the evidence of the mother. It concluded Dr Southall had an "attitudinal problem" and that this, combined with his "lack of insight into the multiplicity" of his failings, made erasure from the medical register necessary. But, in May last year, the High Court overturned the GMC's decision, arguing it was based on "flawed" reasoning, and Dr Southall was restored to the register. However, the GMC had also found that Dr Southall had breached patient confidentiality and kept special case files separate from the main hospital records. The High Court instructed the GMC to resolve these issues, and the hearing, which could lead to Dr Southall being struck off again, has been adjourned three times owing to the illness of a panel member and is now due to resume on Wednesday.
The GMC's original decision to strike Dr Southall off the register alarmed the paediatric community because it appeared to demolish a key part of their defence against false accusations – the presence of an independent professional witness.
The Royal College of Paediatrics said "nothing should deter professionals from acting in the best interests of vulnerable children" and that "cases such as this have caused considerable concern in the paediatric community".
The GMC responded by announcing an expert group "to review the guidance for paediatricians who practise in this critically-important area of healthcare", chaired by Lord Justice Thorpe, a family court judge.
