Professor David Southall could face the end of his career after a further reprimand from the General Medical Council

Controversial paediatrician reprimanded again

Extract from The Guardian:

"Leading paediatrician Professor David Southall could face the end of his career after the General Medical Council found yesterday that he inappropriately accused a distressed mother of drugging and then murdering her 10-year-old son.

The GMC tribunal will sit again today to decide whether Southall's behaviour constitutes serious professional misconduct and if so, what the penalty should be.

Southall has faced a series of inquiries by the GMC into allegations brought by parents of children taken into care on the basis of his evidence of abuse.

He was banned from child protection work for three years after he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in 2004 for accusing jailed solicitor Sally Clark's husband of murdering their children on the basis of remarks he made on a television programme. Clark was later freed on appeal and has since died.

Yesterday's hearing concerned a woman referred to only as Mrs M, whose older son had been found hanged in 1996. Southall was asked to prepare an independent report for Shropshire county council in 1998, after concerns about the safety of the younger son, then eight years old, led to him being taken into care.

The GMC panel found that Southall went beyond his remit in accusing M of killing the older boy.

Giving evidence by video link from Adelaide, where she now lives, M said Southall had repeatedly asked her how the older boy died and she demonstrated using a pencil and a shoelace. She told the panel that Southall looked at her and said "very clever" in a sarcastic voice.

The boy was found hanging from a curtain rail. Southall said to her, she continued, sobbing: "I put it to you that you killed your son by injecting him, hanging him up, leaving him there and then ringing an ambulance.""

I hope that the GMC decides on the severest penalty for this foolish, dangerous man, who has caused grieving parents and families such great, needless, unjustified further suffering.

Paediatrician, David Southall, will not contest application to extend the ban on his working with child abuse victims.

Banned paediatrician bows to GMC decision - Guardian

Extract:

"The paediatrician who accused the husband of solicitor Sally Clark of murdering their children will not fight moves to extend his ban on working with child abuse victims, his lawyer said today.

David Southall, 59, was forbidden from working on child protection cases for three years after he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in 2004.

A review meeting held today at the General Medical Council (GMC) headquarters in Manchester heard the doctor would not contest an application to extend the ban for 12 months.

His lawyer, Alison Foster QC, said the doctor would "freely accept" restrictions banning him from working on child protection cases.

He was severely criticised by the GMC for contacting the authorities after watching a Channel 4 Despatches documentary about the case in April 2000.

Despite having no previous involvement with the investigation into the deaths of the couple's children, Dr Southall told police it was "beyond reasonable doubt" that Steve Clark murdered his sons, Christopher and Harry.

The doctor was branded irresponsible by the disciplinary panel which investigated the case following a complaint from Mr Clark."

I hope the GMC continues to extend its ban on this arrogant, foolish man, who has caused so much needless distress to so many people.


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Another case of a mother whose baby son was taken away after she was wrongly accused of harming him. The medical evidence was "fundamentally flawed".

Child abuse case drove mother to abortion

Extract:

"Last week, a High Court judge said that the parents had experienced a "nightmare" after a "false finding by a court".

The family, from Oldham, cannot be identified for legal reasons. In court, the child was referred to only as K.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Ryder said: "The parents bore an almost intolerable burden of being unjustly accused of inflicting serious injury on their infant son. They lived for 12 months with the opprobrium and suspicion of friends and neighbours."

"The judge pointed out how a senior neuroradiologist, Dr Wellesley St Clair Forbes, had used language which was "too absolute" in relation to the possible cause of the baby's alleged injuries.
The case emerged as victims of miscarriages of justice prepared to unveil a campaign aimed at changing the way medical evidence is considered in court.

Among those at the launch at Westminster this week will be Angela Cannings, who spent 18 months in prison after being wrongly convicted of killing two of her children, both victims of cot deaths; and Ian and Angela Gay, cleared in a retrial this month of poisoning their adopted son with salt and shaking him. The couple served 15 months in jail after being convicted of manslaughter in 2005.

The event will begin with a minute's silence for Sally Clark, the solicitor who died two weeks ago. She served three years in prison for murdering her two babies before her conviction was quashed and she was freed in 2003."

"A circuit judge, Judge Newton, repeatedly refused the parents' requests for a second expert opinion from a doctor.

When the opinion was -finally obtained from Dr Neil Stoodley, a consultant -paediatric neuroradiologist, in July 2005, he called Dr Forbes's findings "fundamentally flawed" and "incapable of withstanding logical analysis". "

A sympathetic article about Sally Clark and her suffering.

No redemption for Sally Clark - article in The Daily Telegraph

Extract:

"Sally Clark walked out of prison four years ago, but she was never set free. Not in her head. Not in her own mind, where the demons still raged and screamed, even though the persona she showed to the outside world was bland and contained. The ordeal of being wrongly convicted for the murder of her two baby sons, then serving more than three years of a prison sentence and being released only on her second appeal was one that Clark could not recover from.

Who could? The look on her face, as she stood outside the High Court in January 2003, told its own story. In her moment of vindication, when it was proved that her sons had been cot death victims all along, Clark did not look triumphant or happy."

The death of the solicitor Sally Clark, wrongly convicted of murdering her 2 baby sons,has led to calls for support for miscarriage of justice victims

Call to support prisoners freed on appeal

Extract:

"The sudden death of the solicitor Sally Clark, who was wrongly convicted of murdering her two baby sons, has prompted calls for government support for miscarriage of justice victims. Mrs Clark, 42, was found dead at her Essex home on Friday. A postmortem will be carried out today.

John McManus, one of the founders of the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, said people who left prison after their convictions were overturned needed specialist counselling. "The death of Sally Clark is the day we have been waiting for and dreading," he said.

"Something like this was bound to happen. People like Sally Clark go through hell after being released. We don't know how she died yet. But it will have been stress-related - you can be sure of that.""

Friends of Sally Clark, who died on Friday, have attacked the authorities for failing to support her after she was freed from prison.

Sally Clark was 'let down' by authorities - Observer article

Extracts:

"Friends of Sally Clark, who died on Friday, yesterday attacked the authorities for failing to support her after she was freed from prison.

Clark was wrongly jailed for the murder of her two sons and was later cleared. Angela Cannings, who was also falsely convicted for the murder of her two sons and was close to Clark, launched an angry broadside against health and social service teams for leaving the former solicitor to cope without professional help."

"Penny Mellor, a friend of the Clark family, said that Mrs Clark's time in prison had left a stain on the rest of her life. She was assaulted by other prisoners and lived in fear that they would try to poison her food. 'If you've been convicted as a child killer you become a focal point for all the hatred in prison,' Mellor said.

Mrs Clark, 42, was found guilty of murdering her sons, Christopher and Harry, but was cleared by the Court of Appeal in 2003 in a landmark ruling that highlighted serious flaws in the use of evidence provided by expert witnesses. She was found to have been wrongly convicted of the two murders after medical evidence emerged which had not been presented at her trial.

Professor Sir Roy Meadow gave evidence during her trial, claiming that the probability of two natural unexplained cot deaths in the family was 73 million to one. That figure was disputed by the Royal Statistical Society and other medical experts, who said the odds of a second cot death in a family were around 200-1."

I wonder whether Professor Sir Roy Meadow ever even apologised to Mrs Clark or the other women whose lives he destroyed when he wrongly accused them of murdering their babies? - I doubt it.

Victims of medical negligence also get little or no help from the authorities, and the so-called complaints procedures are just a waste of time and effort for the complainants.