ByCharles
Pragnell
December 10, 2007
The Royal College of Paediatrics and
Child Health [RCPCH) and several prominent U.K. paediatricians have given their
unqualified support to Dr. David Southall, despite the fact that Mr Southall has
been found to have guilty of serious professional misconduct by the General
Medical Council on two occasions in recent years. It must be presumed therefore
that the RCPCH are fully in support of Mr. Southall’s conduct on those occasions
and that they view his actions as acceptable conduct in the paediatric
profession.
In the past the RCPCH have argued
powerfully that patients of paediatricians should not be allowed to complain
about the paediatrician’s conduct or incompetence or alternatively that such
complaints should be automatically treated as frivolous or vexatious. They now
add to this by arguing that even if such complaints are proven, then the
paediatrician should be exonerated or at the least completely pardoned for
his/her misconduct. The only argument the RCPCH can put forward for such a
system is that finding paediatricians guilty of serious misconduct will deter
other doctors from undertaking child protection work. They have already
convinced the Courts that paediatricians should not be accountable for any
professional misconduct when they are giving evidence to Courts and they use the
case of Victoria Climbie’ to illustrate their point that children are suffering
yet in that case there were 13 agencies, including health and medical workers,
who already knew that Victoria Climbie’ was at serious risk of harm..
Who made paediatricians God for eternity
that they should be viewed as unable to do any wrong?. If this is the state of
paediatrics in the U.K. that paediatricians should be beyond reproach and
completely unaccountable for any harm they may cause, then paediatrics really is
in a serious state.
Why should the principle that `no-one is
above the law’ and is responsible and can be held accountable for their conduct,
not apply to paediatricians when it applies to monarchs and other State
Leaders?. To place any individual or group above the law is the first step
towards tyranny and the accompanying harm to others.
The case against Mr. Southall is part of
a much wider malaise which has infected the child protection services in the
U.K. and has illustrated yet again the deep-seated and problematic operations of
the child protection system in the UK. And the British government continue to
keep their heads in the sand regarding the very serious problems and
dysfunctional operation of the child protection system in the U.K.
How many more children such as Victoria
Climbie’ must die while child protection `professionals’ prevaricate and dither
instead of taking incisive action and yet on the other hand, persecute children
and parents where allegations of abuse are at the least spurious and of
extremely dubious merit, and at worst are malicious and totally unfounded?. The
worn-out cliché’s of `Damned if we do, and damned if we don’t’ and `Lessons have
been learned’ are no longer acceptable as responses from those professionals
when the very system designed to protect children and keep them safe from harm
has in fact become the worst and most prolific perpetrator of child abuse and
is increasingly destroying families around Britain. Some families who are
entirely innocent of the crimes they are alleged to have committed against their
children and others who merely require help in coping with the needs of
chronically sick or disabled children or appropriate education provision for
their children but because of the serious shortcomings and incompetency's in the
agencies charged with providing those services, they are blamed by those
agencies for causing their child’s sickness or disability.
The frequent Public Inquiries into child
deaths and in Court and GMC proceedings over recent years have all painfully
illustrated that the child protection system and the associated legal system is
deeply-flawed, erratic, and dysfunctional and in urgent need of a major
overhaul. Unfortunately changes to the system which have emanated from those
Inquiries and Proceedings have been piecemeal and whilst some have led to minor
improvements, many have caused even greater problems. Many parents who have
experienced the punitive interventions of the child protection system feel that
there is a witch-hunt against them and that their human rights and those of
their children are frequently abused and violated and that they are the
unwitting victims in a governmental inspired social engineering experiment.
Their children have been removed from their care on the basis of fabricated,
embellished, or distorted evidence or the flimsiest of such evidence and their
children removed from their family into a government-supported system of
substitute parental care and they have been permanently excluded from their
children’s lives.
Many of these parents have shared their
harrowing experiences with each other because of the increasing advances of
technology and the worldwide availability of discussion forums, but there is no
orchestrated campaign against the professionals involved, only individual fights
for truth and justice in their individual cases. If all of those parents were to
gather into a single organisation they would undoubtedly become an irresistible
force for change.
If doctors and any other child
protection professionals are becoming discouraged from undertaking child
protection work then it is they who must examine how to put their house in
order. It is the unprincipled, egotistical and tyrannical professionals who are
creating the problems, not the parents.
Bringing actions against rogue
professionals is almost impossible for these parents as those professionals have
such little accountability under the law, their professional standards
authorities, and under their employment contracts and it is this lack of
accountability which has enabled such rogue professionals to flourish knowing
their employers and a small minority of their colleagues will always support
them under a mantra of “My professional colleague, right or wrong” as in this
case with the RCPCH and the small group of paediatricians. Similarly employers
of doctors and social workers are blindly defending their employees in order to
protect themselves from any subsequent claims for damages which might arise from
the improper actions of their employees.
But before any changes to the child
protection system can be enacted there must be a full and open major Inquiry
which gives the opportunity to these parents and their children to fully state
their experiences as the small number of parents have been able to do at the GMC
Hearings against Mr. Southall. The GMC Hearings in regard to Drs. Meadow,
Southall, and San Lazaro are merely the tip of a massive iceberg of discontent
at the serious miscarriages of justice and abuses and injustices which are daily
perpetrated on children and families by social work and medical practitioners
engaged in the child protection system. No family is immune or protected from
these rogue professionals and as has been shown, even taking a seriously ill
child to a hospital or medical centre can result in horrendous consequences if
the doctor lacks the knowledge to diagnose the child’s illness or disabilities
or has another agenda of research and development for his/her own purposes.
The real danger which is now occurring
is that many parents are not taking their sick and disabled children to doctors
and other medical practitioners because of their great fears that they will be
precipitately accused of causing the child’s illness and disabilities with no
means of defending themselves against such charges and they are terrified that
they will forever be deprived of the right to love and care for their own
children. Ultimately therefore it is of no matter whether paediatricians or any
other doctor are reluctant to engage in child protection work as parents will no
longer be bringing sick, disabled, or injured children to receive help and
treatment from medical professionals but will be seeking other forms of
treatment or self-treating or simply watching painfully as their children
suffer.
ByCharles
Pragnell
December 10, 2007
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
