Archive for GMC
The GMC has admitted that it should not have banned David Southall from working as a doctor because it wrongly applied its new rules retrospectively according to the BBC but he remains barred from undertaking any child protection work. He faces a further disciplinary hearing in Manchester from 12th May in relation to breathing tank experiments.
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The following aticle by Gabby Hinsliff appeared in the Guardian on the 13th April 2008As the GMC convenes over a child’s death, doctors are experiencing a growing sense of persecutionPaediatricians fear that they are facing a backlash because of their work with children, the medical regulator has been warned, as the controversial doctor struck off the register for wrongly accusing a mother of killing her son faces a new hearing over experiments on premature babies.A spate of cases which have been heard by the General Medical Council have raised fears that doctors working closely with children will find it hard ...
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Three out of four judges and lawyers make no checks on the qualifications of expert witnesses, whose evidence can be crucial to a finding of guilt or innocence, research suggests.The first study of its kind shows that the training of expert witnesses to give evidence is still patchy and unregulated, creating a continuing risk of miscarriages of justice.The research, by City University, London, comes after a High Court ruling on Friday that upheld findings of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council against Alan Williams, a Home Office pathologist. Dr Williams, 58, conducted post mortem examinations for both of ...
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The following article by appeared in the Sunday Observer on 9th December 2007.The GMC decision to strike this doctor off the medical register exposes its ignorance and leaves professionals in despair, says senior paediatrician Nigel SpeightLast week’s decision of the General Medical Council to strike distinguished paediatrician Dr David Southall off the register is causing shock waves throughout the profession. Paediatricians are in despair at the controversy their work is attracting, and are worried about participating in child abuse cases. Junior doctors contemplating career choices will surely shy away from paediatrics in future. Already there is a practical consequence to ...
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The following article by Sian Griffiths appeared in the Sunday Times on 9th December Haunted by the nightmare of the secret family courtsAfter being suspected of child abuse, the Ward family are out to change the family justice systemWhat do you think? Leave your comments in the box at the bottom of this pageWhen hospital staff pulled the curtains around her son’s bed and asked: “Poor little baby. What have you been doing?”, Victoria Ward knew something was suddenly very wrong.A week earlier the Ward family, who live in Cambridge, had been at the height of their happiness. According to ...
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The following article by Ross Clark appeared in the Times on the 8th December 2007This year I was suspected of child abuse over an incident involving my daughter. I learnt some lessons I wasn’t surprised to hear the words “miscarriage of justice” and “Professor David Southall” mentioned in the same breath this week. What shocked me was how many in his profession wanted to paint him as the victim. Many parents will have been relieved to see Southall struck off by the General Medical Council for what it described as his “deep-seated attitudinal problems” and his “lack of insight” into ...
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Controversial paediatrician Dr David Southall has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct and struck off the medical register. The General Medical Council decided last week that he had abused his position by accusing a mother of drugging and murdering her son. The GMC said Dr Southall had a “deep-seated attitudinal problem”. It is the second time in three years Dr Southall has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct. The GMC found that Dr Southall’s actions added to the distress of the mother – Mandy Morris, from Shropshire – whose 10-year-old son Lee hanged himself in 1996. Dr ...
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A controversial paediatrician was found guilty of wrongly accusing a grieving mother of drugging and murdering her son. Dr David Southall claimed the mother killed her ten-year-old son after he was found hanged with a belt.He then accused the woman of harming her surviving son and urged social workers to take him into care.The General Medical Council ruled that Southall had “abused” his position and his actions had “added to the distress of a bereaved person”.Its fitness to practise panel is yet to decide whether he is guilty of serious professional misconduct, which could lead to him being struck off ...
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A controversial paediatrician inappropriately accused a bereaved mother of killing her son, the General Medical Council has found. The GMC decided Dr David Southall abused his position by accusing the woman of drugging and hanging her son. It will now decide whether Dr Southall is guilty of serious professional misconduct, and whether to strike him off the medical register. It will first hear statements in mitigation from Dr Southall’s lawyer. The GMC panel decided that Dr Southall’s actions added to the distress of the mother – identified only as Mrs M – whose 10-year-old son hanged himself in 1996. Dr ...
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This article by Lois Rogers appeared in the Times (here) on 18th November under the title The expert as judge and jury.After a host of miscarriages of justice based on discredited expert witnesses, calls are growing for radical reform of their use in court, writes Lois RogersYet another woman was sent to prison last week, following expert evidence that she had shaken to death a baby in her care. Keran Henderson, a 42-year-old childminder, was said to have killed 11-month-old Maeve Sheppard, by shaking her so violently she was left blind and brain-damaged. The infant died in hospital a few ...
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The following article by James McCarthy appeared in the Wales on Sunday newspaper on the 9th September 2007A banned paediatrician whose evidence helped convict Sion Jenkins is being investigated by police for his part in an alleged child assault.Professor David Southall, who lives in Staffordshire, gave evidence at the former deputy headmaster’s trial nine years ago in which he was found guilty of murdering 13-year-old foster daughter Billie-Jo in 1998.Mr Jenkins, whose parents live in Aberystwyth, was acquitted of the crime in 2005 after spending six years in jail. He was retried twice but a jury failed to reach a verdict on ...
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The Sunday Telegraph reports that John Hemming, the Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley, has applied to the High Court for permission to pass on details of 90 alleged miscarriages of justice in family proceedings to the General Medical Council, Solicitors’ Regulatory Authority and the Bar Council.
This development follows claims in the same newspaper that judges, lawyers and politicians are renewing their efforts to open up the family courts to scrutiny. Last month the Ministry of Justice published a consultation paper in which it proposed the continuation of the reporting restrictions in cases involving children.
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The Times has published the judgement in full of the GMC v Meadow: judgment in full Neutral Citation Number: [2006] EWCA Civ 1390Case No: CO/5763/2005
Essentially the judgement re-instates Sir Roy Meadow Meadow the paediatrician struck off by the General Medical Council for giving misleading evidence that helped to convict Sally Clark of murdering her two children. By a majority it backed a High Court ruling that he was not guilty of serious professional misconduct, clearing Sir Roy’s name. But the Appeal Court also ruled that the GMC was right in claiming the right to discipline expert witnesses, so both ...
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Acccording a Press Release on PRLEAP MP’s have requested information. The release states:- Have you or a member of your family been accused of MSBP/FII? Do you know of someone who has? Have you been threatened with an accusation of MSbP / FII?If so, a cross-party group of Members of Parliament needs your help.According to a 104-page report forwarded to the DfES Minister Beverley Hughes, innocent parents are being falsely accused of abusing their children and threatened with having them taken into care. The report highlighted a number of harrowing cases in which parents seeking help have been falsely accused of ...
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Attorney General in Court over Meadow ruling The Attorney General will today appeal against the ruling of Mr Justice Collins that the GMC should not have struck off Professor Sir Roy Meadow. That judgment (see Meadow v General Medical Council [2006] EWHC 146 (Admin)) extended the protection witnesses have from being sued for negligence or defamation over evidence they gave in court to also barring disciplinary proceedings against them. The Attorney General will argue that the public needs protection from experts who stray beyond their areas of expertise in court.The Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Auld and Lord Justice ...
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There is an excellent article in The Times (2nd Mar 2006) written by Camilla Cavendish “Since the High Court overruled the General Medical Council and reinstated Professor Sir Roy Meadow it has been 12 days and counting. Yet the implications have not yet been fully understood. You can get away with being wrong, the judgment seems to say, as long as you were wrong in good faith. You should not be disciplined by your professional body, even if that body deems that you have broken its rules. Pull up the drawbridge. The GMC drew a different distinction when it found Sir ...
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According to a BBC newsreport the GMC is to seek leave to appeal against a High Court ruling giving expert witnesses immunity against disciplinary action. The ruling was made in the case of paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow, who had given evidence on cot death risk in the Sally Clark murder case. The General Medical Council believes the ruling sets down a new principle of law, the BBC has learned. The GMC says it could affect the work of all regulatory bodies.
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Professor Sir Roy Meadow will begin a High Court challenge tomorrow against a decision by the General Medical Council to strike him off.The 72-year-old paediatrician was found guilty last July of serious professional misconduct over evidence he gave in the trial of Sally Clark, who was convicted but later cleared of murdering two of her babies. Sir Roy is appealing against the decision of the GMC and its punishment of removal from the medical register.His lawyers are expected to argue at a three-day hearing in London before Mr Justice Collins that a GMC fitness to practise panel was wrong to ...
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Dr Quentin Spender, a senior lecturer and consultant in child & adolescent psychiatry was reprimanded by the GMC for concluding that one his patients has had been sexually abused by some, or all members of her when he had insufficient information on which to draw that conclusion.Dr Spender was also criticised for forming and expressing a view as to the likelihood that a boy had sexually abused another boy when he had insufficient information for drawing such conclusion. In a critical judgement the GMC stated that the Panel might have gone on to consider a more serious sanction but in ...
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According to letter sent to the British Medical Journal the GMC needs to develop a strategy and and deal with vexatious complaints fast “ The letter is written by 18 eminent medical practitioners including Prof. Sir Roy Meadow (now struck off) and David Southall (now found guilty of serious professional misconduct), multiple complaints by a small vocal pressure group are vexatious rather than frivolous, so more easily recognised; the law has long known how to deal with vexatious litigants, but, unfortunately, the GMC seems to lack any such mechanism.” Isn’t it somewhat ironic that this group of eminent doctors should now complain about being wrongly ...
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The General Medical Council has struck off paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow after his “misleading” evidence in the Sally Clark case. The GMC announced on Friday that Sir Roy had been found guilty of serious professional misconduct. Sir Roy had stood by his evidence, but admitted his use of statistics at Mrs Clark’s 1999 trial was “insensitive”. Mrs Clark was convicted of murdering her two sons, but she was exonerated after an appeal in 2003. The GMC said Sir Roy’s conduct had been “fundamentally unacceptable”.
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This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T. website on 26th April 2005Thanks to all those who participated in the San Lazaro vigil organised by F.A.C.T. at the General Medical Counsel hearing in Manchester on 25th April. It was good to see people from Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, and North and South Wales. The majority were care home cases but there were others from domestic and psychotherapy cases, a doctor – adult female patients case, a gay adult relationship recast as paedophilia case, and a employer – employee case. The B.F.M.S. sent someone to report on the hearing and a ...
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Shieldfield – Justice at last?This item was first published on the F.A.C.T. website on the 20th May 2005IntroductionNo BFMS member can be unaware of the scandal of the two falsely accused Newcastle nursery nurses, Chris Lillie and Dawn Reed, whose fight for justice seemed to be at and end with the appearance before the GMC of Dr Camille De Sam Lazaro, the consultant paediatrician on whose ‘expert evidence’ the allegations against them were based and from which grew an unstoppable bandwagon of victimisation involving social services, children’s charities, parents, psychologists, therapists and the press. The harrowing story from the time ...
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Item first published on F.A.C.T website on 13th May 2005This press release was issued by F.A.C.T on the 13th May 2005 in response to the GMC decision not to find Dr San Lazaro guilty of serious professional misconduct following her admissions that she made exaggerated and inaccurate statements in the Shieldfield nursery nurse case. RELEASEThe decision of the General Medical Council’s ‘Fitness to Practice Committee’ not to regard Dr San Lazaro’s admitted conduct in exaggerating and distorting the facts, and misdiagnosis in child abuse investigations not only calls into question her conduct but also that of the General Medical Council ...
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This item first appeared on the F.A.C.T. website on the 16th May 2005Judgement handed down by Fitness to Practise Panel (Conduct)Session dated 25 April – 13 May 2005St James’s Buildings, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 6FQDr Camille De Sam LazaroDr Lazaro: At the material times you were practising as a Consultant Paediatrician at the Lindisfarne Centre, The Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where you specialised in the area of child abuse.You have admitted that in 1993 and 1994 you examined 53 children from Shieldfield Nursery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, following allegations of sexual abuse at the nursery. Your records in relation to the children included ...
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