I know you should not judge by appearances, but 'Mrs B' doesn't look like a child killer. To use old-fashioned language, she is motherly - a plump, rosy-cheeked woman of Kent, whom nature seemed to have created to raise children.

Kent social services soon put a stop to that. In 1999, Mrs B gave birth to a daughter. The child suffered fits that would have baffled previous generations of doctors, but which modern doctors could label with an impressively scientific name. Two concluded that Mrs B was poisoning the girl because she was an attention-seeker suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. First, they claimed she had fed her tranquillisers. There was no trace of tranquilliser in the child's blood, hair or urine. Then they claimed she had injected her with water from a flower bowl or lavatory. One of Britain's foremost toxicologists said the idea that either could have caused fits was nonsense. The family paediatrician said he found the allegations absurd. The evidence was so feeble the police didn't investigate.

No matter. In 2003, the Family Division of the High Court, sitting in closed session, upheld the decision to take the girl from her mother and send her to live with relatives 200 miles away. Curiously, since the authorities had declared that Mrs B was an insane and depraved woman, the courts allowed her to keep her other two daughters. I don't know how to explain this - maybe it's a miracle - but they survive in rude health.

The Family Division might have been designed to allow miscarriages of justice. Judges need only find the case against parents proven 'on the balance of probabilities' rather than 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Reasonable questioning of their decisions by outsiders is next to impossible because it is a contempt of court to reveal what has gone on.

 

Full Story: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1657274,00.html

 

Harman's sister attacks Hodge over child cases

The Sunday Times December 04, 2005

Sian Griffiths http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1903339,00.html

 

SARAH HARMAN, the lawyer suspended last week for passing court documents to her sister when she was solicitor-general, has launched a scathing attack on Margaret Hodge, the former children’s minister.

Harman claims Hodge, now a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, has failed numerous parents whose children have been taken into care by councils on the basis of unfounded evidence.

She attacks as “craven, absolutely craven” Hodge’s decision to let councils investigate such cases themselves after doubts emerged about the reliability of expert evidence indicating possible child abuse.

In December 2003 Angela Cannings was cleared on appeal of murdering her three babies, who she insisted were the victims of cot death. Her conviction was overturned after evidence given by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the now discredited paediatrician, was challenged by Canning's lawyers.

In December 2003 Angela Cannings was cleared on appeal of murdering her three babies, who she insisted were the victims of cot death. Her conviction was overturned after evidence given by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, the now discredited paediatrician, was challenged by Cannings’s lawyers.

After she was cleared, many parents whose children had been taken into local authority care as a result of expert medical evidence hoped decisions on their cases might also be overturned. There are, however, tight legal restrictions on publicising such cases and many parents felt their plight was being ignored.

Sian Griffiths - Sunday Times Full Story: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1903339,00.htm