A MISCONCEIVED AND MISGUIDED
MEDICAL AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION
Introduction
It is claimed that Fabricated and
Induced Illness in Children is a form of child abuse whereby it is said a carer,
usually the mother, fabricates a child’s illness and thereby causes the child to
receive invasive and unnecessary medical treatment or actually administers a
noxious substance to the child thereby causing the child to be ill. It is
further claimed that the motives of the carer (mother) in carrying out such acts
are to gain the attention of medical and health professionals for themselves.
This Paper attempts to disentangle
the mythology and false representations which underpin this claim and to attempt
to provide a reasoned and rational view of the situation.
1. Why was FII/MSBP created?.
There can little argument that
there is an extremely high rate of errors in the diagnosis and treatment of
illness by the medical profession. Many thousands of people are caused
additional suffering and even death every year due to such the errors,
incompetence, and negligence of medical and health professionals. Government
statistics show that the deaths of between 15 and 20% of people who die in
hospitals, are due to iatrogenic causes.
It must be said however that
medical and health personnel are probably no less and no more likely to be
incompetent, or negligent, or prone to making errors than other professionals or
tradesmen or in fact any other group of the population.
In the last half century,
Westernised societies have however, developed what is termed a `Blame Culture’
whereby if anything goes wrong and an individual suffers harm as a consequence,
then inquiries are begun to find out who is to blame or has been at fault for
creating or allowing such an event to take place. The individual who suffers
harm is also encouraged to seek redress by way of restitution and/or
compensation by legal or other means such as making a formal complaint against
the person who has made the error. The seemingly only contradiction to this
blame culture is in the case of car smashes, the majority of which are clearly
due to the negligence or incompetence of an individual, but which are
euphemistically termed `accidents’ implying that no one was at fault but that it
came about by an `Act of God’ or simple coincidence.
Denial of fault where error or
negligence has led to harm to another person and which has been caused by an
individual or an organization, is encouraged by insurance companies. They
instruct motorists never to admit fault after a motoring `accident’ and have
even instructed local government departments not to admit fault where
individuals have suffered harm as a consequence of the actions of their
employees. The Glaswegian defence of the `WazNaaMe Syndrome’ is very common.
In this context, FII/MSBP has
become a very clever device for medical and other professionals to avert blame
for their incompetence or negligence as it immediately throws blame onto the
parent (usually the mother), and identifies the parent immediately as being
capable of gross deceit and misrepresentation. A defence by a parent against
such an accusation by a powerful and respected professional is extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to disprove. The parent is labelled, stigmatised,
and completely disempowered in a moment. In most cases the professional is not
required to even prove their accusation. It is sufficient that they merely
mention their accusation at a meeting with other professionals who are reluctant
to challenge such an assertion and readily accept its authenticity and to
thereafter apply it in their contacts and practices with the parent.
In medicine, physicians are seen
and want to be seen as omniscient and omnipotent and their professional culture
encourages this.
This is the backcloth to the
misconception of FII/MSBP.
FII/MSBP was first conceived by
Professor Sir Roy Meadow in 1977 in a Paper written for the Lancet of which he
was the then Editor. Although it has been subsequently claimed that this was
based on `research’ by Meadow, there is little no evidence in the Paper of any
scientific research methodology and it can at best be described merely as an
anecdotal study of two cases in which Meadow was involved and his conjectures,
assumptions, and assertions regarding the illnesses of the children involved can
be queried and seriously challenged.
This was not done at the time and
the Paper was merely accepted by the medical and social work professions and in
the absence of discussive debate and counter arguments, it was given the
authority of having been `Peer Reviewed’. Several other `theories’ of child
abuse by Meadow have come under intense scrutiny recently in the British legal
system and his evidence to Courts has variously been described by those Courts
and other leading medical and statistical professionals as “manifestly wrong and
grossly misleading” and as “misrepresentations”.
2. Why has FII/MSBP been so readily accepted among
professionals?.
The vast majority of the population want, and are conditioned
by the educational systems, to believe what they are told. “But it’s in the
(news) papers” and “My teacher/boss/ friend in the pub says so” is a very common
statement which illustrates this mass gullibility.
This mass gullibility can extend on occasions to entire
populations such as occurred in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and more recently
in the use of the threat of `Weapons of Mass Destruction” to justify the
invasion of Iraq. Even when the facts are known, many people still believe in
the original statements. Propaganda based on half-truths and distortions without
clear and convincing evidence is a very common tactic of governments,
comfortable in the knowledge that if a statement is made with sufficient
authority and conviction, few will disbelieve it and will accept it regardless
of whether it has any basis in fact.
It is only a very small proportion of people who will seek
out and consider with reason and logic the facts and other supportive and
corroborative evidence in most given situations.
The same is equally true in the professions. Professionals
are no more nor less likely to question a medical theory of child abuse than
would the general population and once such a theory has gained a degree of
acceptance amongst professionals, their educators, and professional
associations, then it is accepted as a standard.
Few will seek to obtain and understand whether or not there
is valid and indisputable factual evidence to support the theory and whether or
not it is supported by careful research and reasoned rational and logical
argument. This has occurred on numerous occasions in child protection work.
Satanic Ritual Abuse, Repressed Memory Syndrome, Shaken Baby Syndrome, the Anal
Dilatation Test, the use of anatomically correct dolls in aiding the disclosure
by children of sexual abuse and many others, have each and all been readily
accepted into child protection work and it has not been until
scientifically-based research has been undertaken which has disproved the
theory, that some degree of caution has been used in its implementation. Even
when theories of child abuse are seriously challenged by science or are
otherwise called into question, many professionals still continue in the belief
in their existence and continue to use the theories in their practice. Despite
the obvious lessons to be learned from the Orkneys/ Nottingham/ Rochdale
Scandals and the subsequent research which found no evidence to support the
theory, Satanic Ritual Abuse is still promoted and used by sectors of the child
protection system and most recently was a major factor in the Isles of Lewis
Child Protection Scandal.
Several professionals who exercise a degree if academic
rigour and scepticism and many people accused of FII/MSBP have drawn parallels
between the theory and belief in FII/MSBP and the story of the Emperor’s New
Clothes and it is difficult to deny the correlation. Others have drawn parallels
to mediaeval `Witch Hunting’ with accusations requiring little more than finger
pointing at the accused and a Kangaroo Court system for conducting their trials
and with very strong undertones of misogyny. Although it is sometimes pointed
out that some FII/MSBP accusers are female, the Witch Hunting leaders were males
who used gullible females as their instruments to make accusations.
Or child protection workers `go into denial’ to use a common
term which child protection workers use themselves to describe the behaviours of
some alleged child abusers. This has been evident in the aftermath to the
national scandal following the Clarke/ Cannings judgements where the medical
evidence of Meadow and others was found to be seriously flawed and misleading.
Despite such clear and convincing evidence of misrepresentations and by the
sound evidence of other professionals, there are leading members of the
paediatric and social work professions who are still `in denial’ that their
colleagues were wrong or that any wrong was done, seeing the entire incident as
a campaign by accused child abusers to discredit them and a media campaign of
vilification against them.
The same occurred after the Cleveland Scandal with small
groups of child protection professionals still maintaining that they were
“right” and that the children in Cleveland were all sexually abused, that there
were children abused by mysterious adults in the Orkneys, Rochdale, Nottingham,
and the Isles of Lewis during satanic rituals. Some adherents to the theory of
Repressed Memory Syndrome still claim its authenticity and maintain an ongoing
blind devotion to its tenets. This is often despite overwhelming and
scientifically-based research contradicting those theories or the serious
questioning of those theories by eminent other professionals.
The vast majority of professionals cannot accept that they
can be or are `Wrong’ in some instances and even when they are proved to be by
clear and convincing evidence, they avert accountability by `Blaming the
System’, This has been very apparent in almost every Public Inquiry into a
child’s death whilst under the care and supervision of child protection workers
during the last thirty years, including the most recent in Britain, of a child
named Victoria Climbie’.
3. How can situations which have
been created by FII/MSBP and other unsound and misapplied theories of child
abuse be prevented in the future?.
At the moment, any theory of child abuse can gain acceptance
and be applied almost overnight by professionals engaged in child protection
work and are readily accepted by Courts, whether or not such theories have
validity or utility and have been painstakingly researched and verified and
validated by other researchers. This has led to many thousands of children in
Britain and other countries of the world being caused severe and long-lasting
harm by a system designed to offer them protection from abuse and despite
international and national conventions and laws to protect their rights. It has
also led to their families being devastated and destroyed.
What is urgently required are :-
1.
Governments must put in place as a matter of urgency a system whereby all
existing and new theories of child abuse are subjected to a stringent system of
verification and validation by an accredited national body before they can be
introduced into child protection practice. Authentication by government
departments such as happened with FII/MSBP is no substitute for painstaking
research using scientific methodology;
2.
Courts should be encouraged to return to the fundamental legal
requirements that cases are decided on the basis of facts and that theories,
labels, and profiles of accused child abusers are prejudicial to a fair and just
hearing and judgement and should not therefore be admitted into a judicial
hearing, nor perhaps into pre-trial procedures such as Child Protection
Conferences;
3.
Governments and the responsible departments of government, must regularly
and consistently consult with consumer/ service user groups representing parents
who have been falsely accused of child abuse in order to ensure a balanced
knowledge and understanding of the problems and flaws in the legislation,
Regulations, and Guidance's governing the child protection systems.
The lives and happiness of millions of children and their
families in Britain are far too important to be entrusted to the vagaries and
vicissitudes of a deeply-flawed, erratic, and dysfunctional child protection
system which currently operates.
ByCharles
Pragnell
May 02, 2006
Diploma in Social Work and Letter of Recognition in Child Care
Expert Witness – Child Protection
and Social Care Consultant
and Child/Family Advocate.
Please read...
Family Law and the Dire consequences for Children
Petition answered with Spin and Sophism
The Silence of the Media Lambs!
Doctors in a Dilemma
Are you an `Appropriate’ person?
Childrens Plan
State Terrorism
The Seriously Unhealthy State of Paediatrics
RAD – the Return of a Nightmare
Persecution of Children and Families
Why I am Petitioning the Prime Minister
Vaccines and Child Abuse Accusations
Why did Sally Clark Suffer and Die?
Perverse Reversal of Child Custody
Child Protection in Kangaroo Courts
Fabricated and induced illness in Children
A History of Man’s Inhumanity
A System out of Control
Forced Adoption
