Part Fourteen: Think Dirty; Donna Anthony; The Consequences; Even Her Husband Believed She was Guilty;

"I NEVER CONVICTED DONNA ORIGINALLY. I ONLY THOUGHT THAT SHE HAD KILLED THE CHILDREN BECAUSE SHE WAS PROVEN GUILTY.

DEAN ANTHONY (DONNA ANTHONY'S HUSBAND) IN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE WESTERN DAILY PRESS)";
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"YOU GET THESE POLICE OFFICERS, THESE DOCTORS SAYING THAT SHE HAD BEEN MOLESTED, SHE HAD BEEN STRANGLED. THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE PROTECTORS OF SOCIETY AND ALL THIS STUFF. SO, YES, I BELIEVE SHE WAS. BUT I KNEW IT WASN'T ME."

WILLIAM MULLINS-JOHNSON TO THE ONTARIO COURT OF APPEAL;
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I was horrified to read, in this exclusive interview, that Donna Anthony's husband actually believed his wife must be guilty of killing their two sons because the jury had found her guilty. (See previous posts: Think Dirty: Donna Anthony) Parts Thirteen and Fourteen;)

I immediately thought of William Mullins-Johnson's testimony at the Ontario Court of Appeal to the effect that he believed Valin had been molested and then strangled - when we now know, years later - that his niece had died a natural death.

Asked by his lawyer (James Lockyer) if he thought that Valin had been molested and murdered, Mullins-Johnson replied: "You get these police officers, these doctors saying that she had been molested, she had been strangled. They're supposed to be the protectors of society and all this stuff. So, yes, I believe she was. But I knew it wasn't me."



Worse, Mullins Johnson told the Court that the murder charge had disastrous implications within his family - as it turned brother against brother.

"It split my family," he testified. "It had my brother thinking that I had killed his little girl. It had me thinking that my brother had killed his little girl."

As will be seen from the interview, these cases are graphic examples of the hellish implications of "thinking dirty" when investigating the deaths of infants.

"The former husband of convicted child-killer Donna Anthony last night said that the pain of losing his two little angels had never ended," the story began.

"As Anthony, who has always insisted she was innocent, won the right to appeal against her conviction, her former husband spoke exclusively to the Western Daily Press," it continued.

"Last night, Dean Anthony, 36, said his thoughts were always with his "two little angels", daughter Jordan, who died aged 11-and-a-half months, on February 1, 1996, and son Michael, who died aged four-and-a-half months the following March.

Donna Anthony, 31, of Yeovil, Somerset, was jailed for life in 1998 at Bristol Crown Court for murdering Jordan and Michael.

The case against her relied on evidence from the now-discredited paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow.

Anthony always claimed both children were victims of cot death, but her original appeal in June 2000 was dismissed.

However, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) yesterday gave her cause for hope.

It said it was sending her case back to the Court of Appeal after considering "new expert medical evidence".

Sir Roy Meadow had argued that one sudden infant death in a family is a tragedy, two are suspicious and three are murder unless proved otherwise.

His theory was that some mothers killed their babies to draw attention to themselves, a condition dubbed Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy.

But in January last year appeal judges dismissed his evidence in the case of Angela Cannings, from Wiltshire, who was jailed for life in 2002 for murdering her two baby sons.

Mrs Cannings, a shop assistant from Salisbury, saw her conviction quashed and, in the wake of her ruling, 297 other files were reviewed. Anthony's was among those given top priority.

Mr Anthony said: "There's not a moment I don't think about the children. You are always brought up to think your children will bury you. When you lose two, you think 'what's the point of living?'.

I never convicted Donna originally. I only thought that she had killed the children because she was proven guilty.

"Now if it is proven that the evidence that was given is incorrect then she has as much right as Angela Cannings to be released and to start a new life.

"Donna was like any other mum. Admittedly she suffered from the baby blues, but so do countless others.

"As far as I am concerned she took good care of the children, they were never without anything. I was away working a lot and I was not there when it happened.

"We were separated when Michael died, but I was shocked when Donna was arrested.

"At the beginning I would have liked to have asked her why, but all the way through Donna has insisted that she is innocent.

"They are saying now that Michael may have died of a chest infection -which would make one question whether Yeovil Hospital was negligent.

"Jordan was just at the stage of crawling and saying a couple of words when she died. I haven't experienced life with children more than a year old."

Mr Anthony, who is now single, added: "I would like to have more children, but that's in God's hands. It is a question of finding someone that I can tell about this and who will stand by me no matter what happens.

"The anniversary of Jordan's death was just yesterday. You can tell people what you are going through but you can't get comfort from that when you are crying in the night."

He said that if Donna wins the appeal he would only be in contact over family matters. "I was not allowed to contact her and I have no feelings for her," he added.

Anthony's solicitor George Hawks said: "I am very pleased for Donna, although it is only the beginning of the process, not the end.

"I don't expect she will be going overboard - I am sure she will be as relieved as I am, but she will recognise that we still have a major hurdle coming up with the appeal."

Anthony will be eligible to apply for bail, but last night no firm decision had been made on the matter."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

Part Thirteen: Think Dirty; Donna Anthony; A Moving Post-Script: "Look St All The Suffering Since Then."

”SHE WAS CONDEMNED BY THEORY BASED ON SUSPICION MASQUERADING AS MEDICAL OPINION, WHICH WAS COMPLETELY WRONG”, HE ADDED.

FELICITY MCCALL; FROM POST-SCRIPT PUBLISHED ON WEB-SITE DEDICATED TO FREEING DONNA ANTHONY;

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This moving "post-script" - described as a "Conviction Quashed Addendum - appeared on a Web-Site dedicated to freeing Donna Anthony under the heading: "Look at all the suffering since then."

It describes the horrific consequences caused to innocent parents, caregivers and their families when societies abandon reason, go on crusades, and rely on so-called experts like Drs. Charles Smith, Roy Meadow, and David Southall to achieve their misguided ends.

"On Monday, April 11, 2004, Donna Anthony finally walked free after the Appeal Court quashed her “guilty” verdict as unsafe and unsound," the post-script begins.

"The legal ruling was something of a formality; the crucial breakthrough had come 18 months earlier when the same court had cleared Angela Cannings of murdering her two babies," it continues.

"It had taken six years and sends the 31 year old out into a world where she is effectively homeless and has no family.

Her mother died when she was in prison.

Her husband, from whom she is divorced, had originally said he believed she had smothered her 11 month old daughter Jordan and a year later four month old Michael.

Throughout her questioning, trial and imprisonment Ms Anthony had maintained they were victims of cot death.

Her former husband now says he “accepts the appeal court’s judgement.”

Outside the Appeal Court, it was left to Donna Anthony’s solicitor, George Hawkes, to speak for her.

She was, he said “overwhelmed by her freedom”.

”She was condemned by theory based on suspicion masquerading as medical opinion, which was completely wrong”, he added.

Mr Hawkes said the whole episode” had completely shattered her life”.

“There are immense problems facing her out there which she has got to cope with, and she is going to need a lot of help and assistance” he added, as Ms Anthony, a silent, shadowy figure, was ushered into a waiting car.

The smiling young mother in the baby photographs reproduced at her trial seems a lifetime away. No amount of compensation can buy her back.

As the ruling was announced, newspapers were already reporting that the discredited paediatrician Sir Roy Meadow whose evidence had effectively sealed her conviction, has been paid £50,000 to testify in court.

The head of the Royal College of Paediatricians, Sir Alan Craft, says “lessons are being learned” from what he called “these difficult cases.”

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

Part Twelve (2): Think Dirty; Dr. Charles Smith's Notoriety Spreads to England; Alongside Meadow and Southall;

A recent post recorded Journalist Cassandra Jardine's observation that, "When the history of false allegations is written there will be a roll-call of honour for those who have taken a fresh look at the medical conundrums and questioned orthodox thinking."

One of the recipients of a place on this notable "roll-call of honour" is Dr. John Plunkett, a forensic pathologist, who Jardine describes as "an expert in childhood head injuries."

This is the very same Dr. John Plunkett whose reputation was demeaned in Court by Dr. Charles Smith, as detailed in a previous post headed: "Dr. Smith's Character: The Nasty Side: Part One: A Tendency to Cut Up Other Experts - So To Speak."

The post read in part as follows:

"In cross-examination by lawyer James Lockyer, who represents nine families affected by Dr. Smith's work, at the Goudge Inquiry, Smith also acknowledged that his characterization of Dr. John Plunkett in courtroom testimony was "uncharitable".

Dr. Plunkett's views on the harm that can be caused by accidental falls differed significantly from Dr. Smith's

Lockyer cited the following cross-examination of Dr. Smith;

"Are you aware of the work of a Dr. John Plunkett in this area?

Yes.

Do you know him personally?

No.

Just his work then?

Yes.

Have you reviewed his work?

I've seen his papers.

Do you have an opinion on his papers with respect to the force that may cause injury from an accidental fall?

I'm aware of a paper published recently that dealt with that, yes.

And do you agree with his findings?

No, I don't know anyone who does."

Dr. Smith told Lockyer that although he did not remember the specific testimony, "I do accept that this is what I said."

Let's put this in context;

Dr. Smith - who was a highly respected expert witness - (often referred to as the top forensic pediatric pathologist in the country) - had the right to say that he disagreed with Dr. Plunkett's findings.

But he went beyond that to state that Dr. Plunkett's work had been rejected by every other expert in the country, if not the world.

In short he denigrated Dr. Plunkett's work, by treating him as a pariah, whose opinion''s were not worth considering.

Not nice."

It's bad enough that Dr. Smith saw his role as helping the prosecution witn its case;

It's bad enough that Dr. Smith's evidence helped the authorities charge and convict innocent parents and caregivers;

But it is utterly cynical and outrageous that he would get in the witness box and demean true experts, who unlike himself, approached their work with integrity and scientific detachment.

Here is the previous post for those readers who may have missed it:

"From time to time this Blog has taken a look at Dr. Charles Smith's character as demonstrated through the evidence called at the Goudge Inquiry," the post began;

"One of the prime indicators of a rather nasty side was Dr. Smith's apparent confrontation with an Ontario Provincial Police Officer after being pulled over at night for speeding in which he made a big deal with the officer about how important he was - and threatened to cut off his office's services to dead children in the area if she persisted in giving him the ticket," it continued;

The officer was so upset about the incident that her superior brought it to the attention of Dr. James Young, who was then Ontario's chief coroner. (See previous postings: Goudge Inquiry: The OPP (Ontario Provincial Police Letter): Parts One to Four: December, 2007);

Another indicator of a nasty side is his attitude to some of his counter-parts in the world of pathology, as revealed from court transcripts.

Like Dr. Sukrita Nag, for example.

Dr. Nag is the neuro-pathologist who performed the autopsy on baby Dustin at Kingston General Hospital on November 18, 1992;

Here is what Dr. Smith had to say about Dr. Nag at the Dustin's father's preliminary hearing on charges of manslaughter and failure to provide the necessities of life.

"This is a botched autopsy," Doctor Smith told Court.

"The report of this autopsy, the paper that this autopsy is written on is not worthy of filing as an exhibit.

It should be filed in the garbage can.

I'm sorry to say it, but I would not accept this report from a resident in pathology. I don't care who signed their name to it.

It is wrong from the word "go."

If you look at the demographics on this report, the information is wrong.

Whoever signed this report either did not read the hospital chart, did not read the report before they signed it or they did not care.

I don't know which of those explanations is correct."

Dr. Smith also told the defence lawyer that he would say these things directly to Dr. Nag if she were present in court.

Something is very wrong with this picture.

Dr. Smith could have drawn the judge's attention to defects in Doctor Nag's work - as was his job - without humiliating her publicly by suggesting it was garbage.

Here was Dr Charles Randal Smith, who has been criticized by independent experts for the sub-standard quality of his autopsy reports in numerous cases, chastising a colleague who had been assigned the solemn task of performing an autopsy on a deceased child.

Having attacked the professional competence of Dr. Nag, Dr. Smith then went on to lie under oath about Judge Patrick Dunn - the judge who had severely criticized his work in the Amber case - saying that Judge Dunn "in fact told me on more than one occasion -- private conversations -- how hasty he was with the work I had done and others had done, at the hospital."

(Dr. Smith acknowledged during his evidence at the Goudge Inquiry that this alleged conversation with Judge Dunn never occurred.)

Dr. Smith agreed with Commission counsel Linda Rothstein that his characterization of his colleagues work was "uncharitable."

In cross-examination by lawyer James Lockyer, who represents nine families affected by Dr. Smith's work, at the Goudge Inquiry, Smith also acknowledged that his characterization of Dr. John Plunkett in courtroom testimony was "uncharitable".

Dr. Plunkett's views on the harm that can be caused by accidental falls differed significantly from Dr. Smith's

Lockyer cited the following cross-examination of Dr. Smith;

"Are you aware of the work of a Dr. John Plunkett in this area?

Yes.

Do you know him personally?

No.

Just his work then?

Yes.

Have you reviewed his work?

I've seen his papers.

Do you have an opinion on his papers with respect to the force that may cause injury from an accidental fall?

I'm aware of a paper published recently that dealt with that, yes.

And do you agree with his findings?

No, I don't know anyone who does."

Dr. Smith told Lockyer that although he did not remember the specific testimony, "I do accept that this is what I said."

Let's put this in context;

Dr. Smith - who was a highly respected expert witness - (often referred to as the top forensic pediatric pathologist in the country) - had the right to say that he disagreed with Dr. Plunkett's findings.

But he went beyond that to state that Dr. Plunkett's work had been rejected by every other expert in the country, if not the world.

In short he denigrated Dr. Plunkett's work, by treating him as a pariah, whose opinion''s were not worth considering.

Not nice.

Dr. Plunkett was not the only researcher who Dr. Smith denigrated.

There was also Dr. Charles Ferguson - a Winnipeg expert who was one of the many defence experts in the Amber case who took strong issue with Dr. Smith's conclusions that Amber had been shaken to death.

Judge Dunn was extremely impressed by Dr. Ferguson's evidence;

"Turning now to the Canadian specialist called by the defence. Dr. Charles
Ferguson graduated in medicine in 1957, and he's been a pediatrician since 1968," Dunn said in his decision on the Amber case;

"He's currently Director of the Child Protection Centre in Winnipeg Children's Hospital.

Dr. Ferguson has lectured on the mechanics of injury. I consider Dr. Ferguson to be an expert in forensic investigation.

This amazing man, and I say so with great respect, has testified in court proceedings over one thousand one hundred (1,100) times.

I was very impressed by his experience, by his careful method of approaching new or
dubious evidence; by his common sense and by his fairness in looking at all
sides of an issue."

But to Dr. Smith, Dr. Ferguson was merely "an expert from Winnipeg who's regarded as a 'paid mouth'."

As the following transcript of evidence from the Goudge Inquiry shows, Lawyer Lockyer was infuriated by Dr. Smith's characterization of the Winnipeg researcher.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER; Do you remember saying that, sir?

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I don't remember, but I recognize that that was uncharitable, yes.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Outrageous, isn't it, an outrageous thing to say? It's not just uncharitable. I'm not going to let you get away with that.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: That was certainly a view that was -- that was held of him, but it's un --

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: By you.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: -- uncharitable. I am -- well, I held that view, yes. You could ask others.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Well, perhaps I should ask Justice Dunn.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: The -- no, you keep going with your questions. I was going to --

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I was going to sort of try and understand your question here, but keep going, I'm sorry. Well, I -- I acknowledged that my testimony was not helpful.The issue as to Shaken Baby Syndrome in this case is an issue that I think many people could debate for years.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: What does that mean? our testimony was not helpful: What on earth does that mean? You -- you mean -- doesn't it simply mean that your testimony had the potential to lead to a miscarriage of justice? "Unhelpful" is an odd word to
use, Mr. Smith.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: No, I -- I believe that that's a correct word.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Mm-hm.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I certainly recognize that --

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: All right.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: -- I was dogmatic and defensive, yes...";

Dr. Smith has acknowledged in his evidence that he believed his duty was to help the prosecution win the case.

How dare he suggest in court that Dr. Ferguson was a hired gun?

Dr. Smith's ultimate degradation of a colleague while giving evidence in court would appear to be his comments on Dr. Rex Ferris, his nemesis.

Dr. Ferris is a forensic pathologist, whose opinion that Sharon had been savaged by a dog - and not by stab-wounds from knives and scissors as Smith had opined - had helped exonerate the child's mother.

The transcript of lawyer Lockyer's cross-examination of Dr. Smith about his characterization of Ferris to the Court tells all - including his failure to mention his involvement with Ferris in Sharon's case and his provision of misleading information about Ferris to the Court;

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: And then at the bottom of this page, sir, you're asked about Dr. Ferris:

"Are you aware of Dr. Rex Ferris?

Yes.

Do you respect Dr. Ferris' work?

No.

And may I ask why not?

I don't know anyone in the area of pediatric forensic work in Canada who respects his work in the area of pediatric forensic work."

At line 15:

"Is there perhaps, Dr. Smith, a publication or a particular case in which you've been involved in that leads you to say you don't respect Dr. Ferris' work?"

Your answer to that should've have been, Yes, shouldn't it, don't you think?

DR. CHARLES SMITH: Well --

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Sharon's case.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I'm...

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: But you didn't say that, did you?

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I -- I had not --

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Chances are the cross-examiner wouldn't have know about Sharon's case at this point in time, but you sure did -- and Dr. Ferris' involvement in it.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I'm sorry, what's your question?

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: I say your answer to that question --

DR. CHARLES SMITH: Mm-hm.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: -- should have been "yes". Is there, perhaps, a publication or a particular case in which you've been involved in that leads you to say you don't respect Dr. Ferris' work?

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I -- I answered it as best I --

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Mm-hm.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: -- remembered it at that time.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Well, let's see how you answered it:

"My struggle with the question, Your Honour, is whether it will get me in trouble legally if I answer it.

Q: What kind of trouble? Liable and slander, says the Court." And then the Court says: "Is there something you can have an intellectual disagreement with while still respecting another doctor's ability so it wouldn't be considered to be some kind of professional attack?" And you said: "Obviously, I know Rex Ferris." And then you say: "I mean James Ferris is his proper name, and I've known him for twenty 20) years. I've never seen him give an opinion on a pediatric case in which
I think he is close to reasonable. He doesn't practice pediatric forensic pathology." There's a real irony to that, isn't there, because nor did you? And then you go on: "He was excluded from doing so in British Columbia for many years before he lost his position in pediatric forensic pathology in British Columbia." nd that's simply not true, is it, sir.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: No, that's what I understood.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: He just changed positions. He just moved on in his life.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: No, that's not what I -- what I was referring to, as best I can recall.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: "And his knowledge of pediatric pathology, in general, is not of a level that I think he has any special expertise in the area." I mean as you read this kind of statement by you now, sir, under oath, it must make you shiver,
17 doesn't it? Like you could be describing yourself, couldn't you? You could say -- you -- you'd say that about yourself now. You have no special expertise in the area; any more than anyone else.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: No, I believe I have expertise in pediatric pathology, in general.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Now you're talking bout pediatric forensic pathology, sir; that's the -- that's the phrase that you've been using, isn't it, as you testify?
Do you see that? line 4, line 7, right? And then you say at line 15 "I just happen to think that in pediatric forensic pathology, I have no respect for Dr. Ferris' opinions. I cannot give you any statements about his work in adult forensic pathology. It's the area that was car -- his career and he worked in that for
decades before retiring, but in the pediatric realm, I do not respect his opinions though he is a very nice man."

MR> JAMES LOCKYER: Do you remember saying that, sir, about this man?

DR. CHARLES SMITH: No, I don't, but I read it, and I accept that I made those statements.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: To me, that just shows the arrogance of yourself, sir, in the days that you were testifying as a purported pediatric forensic pathologist, am I right?


DR. CHARLES SMITH: I -- I do not interpret that to be arrogance.

MR. JAMES LOCKYER: Mm-hm.

DR. CHARLES SMITH: I was asked an opinion. I was asked a question about Dr. Ferris. I answered it truthfully, but very uncharitably and unkindly, but I answered truthfully the question that I was asked."

Dr. Smith's willingness to disparage genuine forensic pathologists and others who disagree with him tells us a great deal about his character.

But it is the fact that he disparaged them from the witness box when he was selling the Crown's case - with the risk that an innocent parent or caregiver could be sent to jail - that disturbs me the most.

This is about more than Dr. Smith's assault on the reputation of some professionals.

It's about miscarriages of justice - and how easily they can be caused;"

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

Part Twelve; Think Dirty; Dr. Charles Smith's Notoriety Spreads to England; Alongside Meadow and Southall; Powerful Telegraph Story;

"SIR ROY AND SOUTHALL ARE UNREPENTANT BUT, IN CANADA, THERE HAS BEEN AN INQUIRY INTO THE ACTIONS OF DR CHARLES SMITH WHO WAS FOR TWO DECADES ONE OF CANADA'S TOP FORENSIC PATHOLOGISTS. HE TESTIFIED IN 45 CASES DATING BACK TO 1991, TO CHILDREN BEING SUFFOCATED, SODOMISED AND SHAKEN. MANY OF THOSE PARENTS HAVE SINCE BEEN EXONERATED. 'I BELIEVE I HEARD WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR,' HE ADMITTED AT THE INQUIRY IN JANUARY."

CASSANDRA JARDINE: THE TELEGRAPH;

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In 2003 Sally Clark was released from jail after being falsely accused of murdering her two sons.

She never recovered from the trauma and died a year ago, effectively of a broken heart.

Cassandra Jardine looks at how such a gross miscarriage of justice could occur, asks whether lessons have been learnt, and places Dr. Charles Smith in the ranks of notorious British "expert witnesses" such as Drs. Roy Meadow and David Southall;

Jardine has written many times exposing the madness which has led to innocent British parents and caregivers being wrongly convicted of killing children.

This moving story ran in the Telegraph on March 16 of this year, under the heading, "Has Sally Clark's case changed attitudes to infant death?"

"Exactly a year ago Sally Clark died, aged 42, while her solicitor husband, Steve, was on a business trip," Jardine's article begins.

"At an inquest her death was ascribed to acute alcohol poisoning resulting from her grief and 'enduring personality change after a catastrophic experience," it continues;

"In other words she never recovered from the nightmare that began on December 13, 1996, when her first son, 11-week-old Christopher, stopped breathing.



Sally and Stephen Clark outside the Court of Appeal in January 2003. Sally was released from prison after serving more than three years for killing her two baby sons;

Mothers never get over the death of a baby, though they may move on.

For Sally - once a bright and capable solicitor - even that was not possible.

Two years later her second child, Harry, who was eight weeks old, also died suddenly.

From that moment Sally received not sympathy but condemnation.

Paediatricians decided - in line with what was then current thinking on child abuse - that two deaths in a family was suspicious and a Crown Court jury found her guilty of murdering both of her sons.

'Die, woman, die,' other prisoners shouted out as she climbed into the prison van.

What happened next made legal history.

In January 2003, after serving three and a half years of a life sentence, Sally was freed.

The defence at her second appeal revealed that Harry's body had been riddled with the bacterium staphylococcus aureus, which would have caused a form of meningitis - information that the prosecution pathologist Dr Alan Williams had not shared with Sally's defence at her trial.

As she left the High Court, Sally declared, 'There are no winners here.'

Others charged with similar crimes, however, hoped that lessons would be learnt from what was called in the Court of Appeal 'one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent years'.

The way the medical evidence was presented to court was 'shoddy', said Dr Sam Gullino, a forensic pathologist from Florida, who prepared a report for Sally's second appeal.

'Sound medical principles were abandoned in favour of over-simplifications, over-interpretations, exclusion of relevant data and the imagining of non-existent findings.'

For a short while it looked as if the tide had turned.

Inherited disorders were found to explain other babies' deaths: three other mothers, Trupti Patel, Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony, accused of shaking or smothering their own children, were found not guilty or had their convictions quashed.

Meadow's Law - named after Prof Sir Roy Meadow - was discredited: no longer were two cot deaths in a family to be deemed suspicious and three murder unless proved otherwise.

Summing up at Cannings' appeal in December 2004, Lord Justice Judge said that courts should not convict on disputed medical evidence alone: 'It is better for some of the guilty to go unpunished than for innocent women to be jailed.'

But, the cheers were short-lived.

Fast-forward three years to last November.

Once again the scene is a courtroom.

This time the woman on trial is mother-of-two Keran Henderson, a childminder who was looking after 11-month-old Maeve Sheppard at her home in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, in March 2005 when - according to Keran - the child suddenly went floppy.

Maeve died in hospital two days later, and Keran was accused of having caused Maeve's death by shaking her violently, having lost her temper over a dirty nappy.

As the verdict of guilty was delivered, Keran let out a piteous wail.

'If you could hear, as we did, the sound of that woman's grief you too might think her honest,' Mike Seckerson, the foreman of the jury, said.

But it wasn't this alone that caused him to reveal his 'disgust' at the way the trial was conducted.

He and the other medically unqualified jurors were bombarded by information from a dozen medical experts.

The majority of the jury 'listened to expert opinion and thought it evidence', leaving Seckerson with the unhappy task of delivering a majority verdict with which he disagreed.

Seckerson is not alone in fearing that yet another terrible miscarriage of justice has occurred.

Jack Straw, the minister for justice, has been inquiring solicitously about Keran's comfort in prison, says her husband Iain, who is campaigning to bring his wife home to their nine- and 14-year-old sons.

Neighbours have rallied around in support of a woman who had been a respected childminder for seven years, ran the local Beaver Scout group, helped elderly neighbours and was always up for any charity event.

Neither of her own children has ever suffered at her hand.

Significantly, Maeve had been in and out of hospital during her short life, yet none of this counted.

Someone had shaken the child, medical experts concluded, on the basis of certain signs.

'As an ex-policeman, I can't get my head around the fact that people are found guilty without any real evidence,' Iain says.

'There's no CCTV footage, no witness statement or weapon with fingerprints or blood. I think doctors are scared of saying, I don't know what happened.'

He is shocked that no one from the police or the CPS that he encountered was medically trained.

'I know the pressure is on the police to get results, to find someone guilty, but I wasn't even asked for my statement. Nor did they question the other children who were in the house that afternoon, who went home calm and happy. Would they have behaved like that if Keran had flown into a rage?'

Keran is not the only person in prison for a crime that might never have occurred.

Suzanne Holdsworth, another childminder, is three years into a life sentence for causing the death of two-year-old Kyle Fisher who also, she says, went floppy.

Doctors have compared the bleeding in his brain with injuries that would occur as the result of being thrown from a car at 60mph, yet he was not bruised and the banisters against which she supposedly battered him bear no traces of DNA.

Chaha'Oh-Niyol Kai-Whitewind is in prison for suffocating her son, though her appeal may reveal natural causes as an alternative explanation for his nosebleed and blood found in the lungs.

Criminal convictions for harming children are just the visible tip of the iceberg.

A far greater number of cases, where the evidence is insufficient for a criminal trial, are heard in the family courts, where on the 'balance of probabilities' parents are deemed to have harmed or (yet more vaguely because of 'personality disorders') be capable of harming children who are then removed from them, often at birth.

Information about family court cases is hard to obtain.

Proceedings are secret so no one knows which experts are saying what, though observers note clusters of similar cases involving certain consultants.

Parents claim that they are being accused of emotional and physical abuse on the basis of theories or syndromes that are not as foolproof as is claimed.



Angela Cannings, with her husband Terry. She was jailed for life for murdering her two baby sons, but had her conviction overturned in 2003

In the year since Sally Clark died, those facing family court proceedings have at last acquired a champion in the form of the Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming who set up Justice for Families after his girlfriend's baby was nearly taken from her because she had once failed to report a stillbirth.

His office at the House of Commons contains files on more than 200 individual cases, which he uses to identify patterns and lobby for changes in the law.

'I hear of a new case almost every day,' he says.

'Smothering' has gone out of fashion as an accusation.

So has 'salt poisoning', which Ian and Angela Gay were accused of.

The couple were released from prison in 2006 when it was shown, at appeal, that their foster son Christian Blewitt suffered from a faulty osmostat, which allowed his body to accumulate fatally high levels of sodium.

They had not, as was claimed, force-fed him teaspoons of salt.

There remain, however, two controversial medical diagnoses: shaken baby syndrome (SBS), a cluster of symptoms deemed to indicate shaking; and metaphyseal fractures, which are fractures at the ends of the long arm and leg bones, believed to denote that a child's limbs have been wrenched.

Events usually start with a paediatrician or radiologist who flags up the possibility of non-accidental injury (NAI).

Social workers and police officers then look for evidence, sometimes ignoring information about good character or happy family life.

And often solicitors acting for the defence are 'supine', says Bill Bache, who having successfully represented Angela Cannings and the Gays is now working on Keran Henderson's appeal.

Bache, like Hemming, has many suggestions for improving the system: a thorough multi-disciplinary discussion of possible causes of injuries or illness before cases proceed being one of them.

At the heart of the problem, he says, lies 'angled dogmatism' on the signs and symptoms of abuse and a willingness by some doctors to give opinions outside of their areas of expertise.

'I am handling 35 cases of parents accused of child abuse at the moment,' he says. 'All medical conundrums.'

The drive to hold parents accountable for abusing children began in 1962 when a Colorado paediatrician, Dr Henry Kempe, published his research into 'battered child syndrome'.

Drawing on 302 cases of abuse of children under three, he concluded that 'beating of children is not confined to people with a psychopathic personality or of borderline socioeconomic status'; parents often denied causing the injuries but 'to the informed physician, the bones tell a story the child is too young or frightened to tell'.

This information was shocking.

It had always been accepted that psychopaths, addicts, sociopaths or even women suffering from post-natal depression could harm children.

Kempe was saying that apparently normal, loving people could be abusers.

His research changed the role of paediatricians; it became their task to spot hidden abuse.

Identifying the signs provided a useful career opportunity for ambitious doctors in the 1970s and 80s.

Dr John Caffey in the US wrote the first influential paper establishing SBS in 1973.

In Britain, Prof Sir Roy Meadow, author of the ABC of Child Abuse, rose to fame on the strength of his 1977 academic paper on Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP) - children made ill by attention-seeking adults - based on the behaviour of two mothers, one of whom had (Sir Roy claimed) poisoned her toddler with salt, while the other had contaminated her child's urine sample with her own blood.

Knighted in 1996, Sir Roy was soon lecturing on the hidden epidemic of abuse and appearing as an expert witness.

By the time he gave evidence at Sally Clark's trial, Sir Roy claimed to have found 81 cot deaths which were in fact murder though, unfortunately, he destroyed the data.

He told the court that he could think of no natural explanation for either of the Clarks' children's deaths and quoted the case-clinching statistic that the chances of two cot deaths in one family was one in 73 million - a figure arrived at by multiplying the incidence of one death (1:8543) by itself.

It later emerged that the chance of a second death was more like one in 120 because there could be an underlying defect.

Though struck off by the General Medical Council in 2005 for 'gross professional misconduct', he was reinstated the following year.

The other leading light in the drive to unearth hidden abuse in Britain was Prof David Southall.

Working on aspects of MSbP in the late 1980s and early 90s, he videoed parents whom he suspected of suffocating children.

Thirty-three parents or step-parents were prosecuted, though the evidence may have been unreliable: clasping a child to the chest could, for example, indicate feeding rather than smothering.

The Clark case was also his undoing when, having merely seen Steve on tele?vision, he stated to police that it was 'beyond reasonable doubt' that Steve had murdered his sons.

A three-year ban from child protection work followed in 2004; in December 2007 he was struck off for, among other charges, concealing the medical records of some 4,500 children.

Sir Roy and Southall are unrepentant but, in Canada, there has been an inquiry into the actions of Dr Charles Smith who was for two decades one of Canada's top forensic pathologists. He testified in 45 cases dating back to 1991, to children being suffocated, sodomised and shaken. Many of those parents have since been exonerated. 'I believe I heard what I wanted to hear,' he admitted at the inquiry in January.

But the fall from grace of some of the theorists of abuse has not made as much difference as expected.

The term 'noble cause corruption' has entered the language.

The tainted term MSbP has fallen into disuse, only to be replaced by another set of initials, FII - Factitious or Induced Illness.

Real abuse is still being missed, as in the case of Victoria Climbié, partly because social services are busy investigating false allegations.

Change is slow, says Penny Mellor, who campaigns against non-scientific medical syndromes such as MSbP, because a small coterie of expert medical witnesses are sticking to theories that have been undermined by subsequent research.

'We have pathologists who don't have adequate training and experts who are so busy being experts that they have little time to keep up to date.'

Sir Roy's portrait still hangs in the London offices of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

'Why not? He is a past president,' says Prof Terence Stephenson, the dean of the medical school at Nottingham University and the college's vice-president for science and research.

He is one of the doctors who has adopted attack as the best form of defence in response to the fall of Sir Roy and Southall.

Speaking as Professionals Against Child Abuse, they argue that doctors are being victimised by parents and the media who deny the reality of child abuse.

'Protect doctors to protect children,' he wrote to the Prime Minister in February, following a report on the case of Jessica Randall, whose abuse at the hands of her father was missed by 30 professionals.

False allegations campaigners consider Prof Stephenson a 'hawk' who has appeared in 50 cases: he prefers, he says, civil cases where a single expert witness is jointly appointed.

'In criminal cases you have to be willing to be countermanded and cross-examined' - although later he says that 'an expert is only tested by being challenged by another expert'.

Stephenson comes across as a pleasant man, driven by a passionate belief in his cause.

'I have two children. If someone were to accuse me of harming them I would be heartbroken. But our role at the Royal College is to do what's best for children. Child abuse is still under-diagnosed.'

I want to question him about evidence that casts doubt on current orthodox thinking.

Diagnosis of SBS is based on a triad of symptoms: subdural haemorrhages, retinal haemorrhages and cerebral edema (swelling of the brain).

The triad is important because regardless of other evidence, such as the absence or presence of bruises, these symptoms - particularly retinal haemorrhages - are used to diagnose abuse.

Sally Clark would never have been put on trial had Harry not been found (erroneously it transpired) to have bleeding behind the eyes.

Equally, Jessica Randall was never put on the 'at risk' register because MRI and eye scans showed no retinal haemorrhages.



Jay and Trupti Patel after Trupti was found not guilty of murdering her three children;

Dr Jennian Geddes, a neuropathologist, has suggested in the Court of Appeal that the triad need not arise from shaking.

Choking could be an alternative.

'She admitted in court that it was only a hypothesis,' Prof Stephenson says dismissively.

(The same could be said of the theory that the triad always denotes shaking.)

There is research, too, which shows that the triad can result from a fall from only 3ft, as from a bed.

'Fewer than three per cent would get retinal and subdural haemorrhages,' he replies.

But are children who fall from beds always tested?

We move on to the other contentious area - meta?physeal fractures. Stephenson appears equally dismissive about possible alternatives to a diagnosis of abuse.

'I've seen hundreds. They are extra?ordinarily rare in real, witnessed accidents.'

Yes, but they are also hard to see and radiologists won't look for them unless the possibility of abuse has been flagged.

When I suggest that paediatricians, especially those appearing regularly as expert witnesses, appear to have fixed minds, he counters by making a derisive comment about Dr Colin Paterson, a pathologist struck off by the GMC (General Medical Council) for suggesting for the defence in 30 cases that children could suffer from temporary brittle bones, resulting in multiple fractures.

Some pathologists believe he had a viable theory, but the wrong causation. Stephenson says, 'There's no evidence to back up temporary brittle bones.'

Isn't there?

Infants are being diagnosed with rickets resulting from vitamin D deficiency due to insufficient exposure to sunlight. 'Only in ethnic minorities.' Not according to research from Birmingham University, which states that one in eight Caucasian children has rickets.

'No doubt there are grey areas,' he concludes. 'If we only reported cases where we were absolutely right we would miss lots of cases. Society wants us to err on the side of caution. If society wants us to, we could go back to the situation pre-1962 and turn a blind eye.'

The problem with grey areas is their tendency to become black and white.

The doctors who see a child in hospital believe absolutely in what their colleagues have published - that what they are seeing is child abuse - and alert social workers and police.

They in turn hire expert witnesses who believe in the abuse diagnosis.

The result is costly.

'Money is certainly wasted pursuing these cases, but I'm more concerned about the human cost,' says Bill Bache, who speaks of distraught parents not allowed to be left alone with their dying child in hospital because they have fallen under suspicion; couples often forced to live separately and encouraged to blame one another; and children denied the comfort of family life.

Yet some children do die of natural but unidentified causes.

Cot deaths, for example, dropped from 30 to seven per week after 1990, when parents were advised not to put babies to sleep on their fronts.

Though they may not acknowledge it, doctors can also cause harm by giving inappropriate treatment.

The routine practice of resuscitating children by putting them on a drip is one that worries Penny Mellor, who campaigns on behalf of parents who claim to be wrongly accused of child abuse.

'If they aren't dehydrated, putting more fluids into them can cause swelling of the brain and bleeding,' she claims.

More information is needed to protect the innocent - children, parents and, indeed, doctors.

Slowly it is emerging.

When the history of false allegations is written there will be a roll-call of honour for those who have taken a fresh look at the medical conundrums and questioned orthodox thinking.

Some Americans will feature:

0: The forensic pathologist Dr John Plunkett, an expert in childhood head injuries;

0: Dr Patrick Lantz, who has been looking at retinal haemorrhages;

0: the biomechanics expert Dr Kirk Thibault, who has looked at the resulting impact when a child has a fall or is shaken;

0: and Dr Chuck Hyman, who has investigated a link between short umbilical cords and weak bones.

British experts will be on that list, too:

0: The chemical pathologist Dr Glyn Walters, who gave evidence about alternative causes of death in the Clark and Gay cases;

0: the neuropathologists Dr Waney Squier, Dr Jennian Geddes and Dr Helen Whitwell, who have found that oxygen deprivation, possibly from choking, can cause brain swelling and bleeding;

0: the geneticist Prof Michael Patton, who has looked at defects that can cause cot death;

0: the ophthalmologist Gillian Adams, who was has raised doubts about retinal haemorrhages being solely indicative of shaking;

0: Prof Nick Bishop, who is investigating why some children fracture easily;

0: and Dr Paul Johnson, who has asked courts to take obstetric history into account.

It is not easy standing against the tide, says Dr Squier, a prosecution witness at the trial of Keran Henderson.

She identified brain damage but said there was no evidence that the child had been shaken, which led to tense discussions among the medical experts.

'As a pathologist I describe what I see,' she said. 'It's not my business to say what caused an injury if I don't know.'

Despite her caution, a dozen experts who were prepared to theorise about shaking won the day and Keran Henderson is now serving a three-year prison sentence.

I asked her husband Iain whether he thinks that, even if exonerated, she will emerge, like Sally Clark, a broken woman.

'I don't know if she'll survive,' he replied.

'She went to prison eight years after Sally Clark. Prisoners aren't stupid, so she hasn't been given such a hard time. I'm hoping that hers is the case that brings about real change.'

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

Part Eleven: Think Dirty; Trupti Patel And The Rotten Courts Of Salem: (Simon Jenkins);

Trupti Patel's acquittal prompted one of the most powerful pieces of journalism I have ever read.

It is written by Simon Jenkins who edited The Times from 1990-92 and then went on to contribute a twice weekly column until 2005.

Jenkins, who was knighted for his services to journalism in 2004, was formerly political editor of The Economist and Editor of The Evening Standard.

The column, under the heading " Trupti Patel and the rotten courts of Salem," ran in The Times on June 13, 2003.

"I am walking down the street when out of a sewer swirls a giant black tentacle, waving in my face," Jenkins began.

"It is the ancient Britain lurking beneath the pavement, a place of primitive prejudice which nobody has the guts to reform," he continued.

"It keeps trying to claw the 21st century back to a foetid swamp of cruelty and unfairness.

Along its ghastly surface are rows of suckers, called lawyers.

Yesterday one such tentacle wrapped itself round my brain.

It was the Trupti Patel child murder acquittal.

I realised that modern Britain is ruled by a Government that still throws mothers into jail if they are unlucky enough to have babies that die suddenly.

Civilised countries regard such incidents as personal tragedies, not cause for a state lynching.

In Sweden or Germany, even if the mother is guilty, she is given sympathy and treatment, not handled as a common murderer.

The courts of justice are the same as tried the Salem witches.

They summon juries to pass public judgment on these wretched women, calling in aid a witch-finder general, the hawkish Professor Sir Roy Meadow.

He has no time for classic jurisprudence.

To him a mother is guilty unless “proven otherwise”.

Two cot deaths are suspicious and three are murder.

To hell with any genetic propensity to multiple deaths. This is to be tabloid justice.

New Labour must stand tough on dead babies.

Mrs Patel was Sir Roy’s latest target.

She had a healthy baby and was frantic on the death of their second child.

She and her husband became cot death experts, purchasing copious monitoring equipment.

After a second cot death, the desperate Mrs Patel conceived again and had doctors constantly examine and monitor her baby girl.

When she died after just 22 days, her chest monitor failing to work, Mrs Patel’s attempts at resuscitation broke some of the baby’s ribs.

This and her subsequent acute withdrawal inclined the Crown to prosecute her, in part for “bottling up her grief”.

This mother was acquitted with little thanks to science.

Sir Roy has always been the darling of the prosecution in cot-death cases through his talent for plucking at the emotion of juries.

The case swung Mrs Patel’s way only after her grandmother flew in from India to report on her own loss of five infants to cot death, which she put down to “God’s doing”.

In 1999 Sally Clark had no such luck in her encounter with forensic medicine.

She spent more than three years in jail before winning her release on appeal.

Like Mrs Patel, Mrs Clark saved herself from life in jail only by dint of middle-class determination.

Sir Roy is said to possess the courtroom presence of Judge Danforth in Arthur Miller’s Salem witches play, The Crucible.

He can whip any jury into finding these women guilty.

His fancy theory of “Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy” holds that parents harm their children to draw attention to themselves.

It convinces any jury understandably eager, when asked, to find someone to blame for a child’s death.

Sir Roy is now under (leisurely) investigation by the General Medical Council for his abuse of statistics in Mrs Clark’s trial.

He claimed that her chances of being innocent were 73 million to one against, a figure considered crucial in sending her to jail.

Yet she was clearly innocent and found so on appeal.

Sir Roy’s figures were so palpably wrong that the Royal Statistical Society wrote to the Lord Chancellor to complain.

Nothing was done.

Instead the Crown has continued to use Sir Roy to convict women in such cases.

The system is rotten.

In British trials experts are paid not to help the court with impartial evidence, as is customary in most other countries.

They are paid to lend a veneer of objectivity to one side in the argument.

The hope is that 12 good citizens, the jury, can dig out the truth from this melange of professional bias and emotion.

It is theatre, not justice.

Angela Canning, an otherwise respectable woman, found herself jailed for life last year after the cot deaths of her two children, with Sir Roy appearing against her.

She is in prison awaiting an appeal which is as tardy as the GMC’s investigation of Sir Roy.

Five other mothers are known to be in jail after jury trials for multiple child deaths.

Countless more have had their surviving children taken away from them.

John Batt, a solicitor now campaigning against these imprisonments, describes cases on his books in Glasgow, Hastings, Nottingham, Worcester, Hull, Cardiff and Winchester.

“In each case,” he told The Times, “there was no previous history of abuse and all the friends and relatives say they were loving parents.”

In each case, the Crown produced the same stage army of “child abuse experts” to give evidence against them.

I do not doubt that a very few parents kill their children deliberately.

Such people are sick and need treatment.

Where they have other children, these must be protected, usually by removing them from harm. I cannot see what is achieved by sending the mother to prison for life, except her final destruction.

Even removing the children is a serious matter.

The case of William and Michelle Carter, taken up by the London Evening Standard, saw all four children taken into care after one became sick, in what appears to be a witch-hunt by Sir Roy and Wandsworth Social Services.

This was despite pleas from all who knew the couple, teachers, doctors, even the police, that they could have meant their children no harm.

Mrs Patel did not hurt her first child, whom she loves.

She and her husband were not violent criminals but respectable people enduring the appalling trauma of seeing three children die.

The prosecution case relied on the extraordinary thesis that Mrs Patel was having one child after another to satisfy a craving for murder.

It told the jury to ignore her remorse since it was “an intention to kill that came to Mrs Patel in one moment and left her the next”.

I know such lawyers claim to be only role-playing, to be putting a case, however implausible, before the mercy of the jury.

Perhaps Sir Roy is no more than playing a role too.

Perhaps the whole system is a game of seeing how much public money can be spent on putting women in jail, which Britain does more than any country in Europe.

If so, the system is inhuman and ludicrously inappropriate.

The adversarial system, the distortion of evidence, the onus to prove innocence and the hyping of juries are all medieval and barbaric.

From what I have read, all cot-death convictions involving Sir Roy’s evidence should be considered unsafe and those imprisoned released at once pending review.

Some may consider the Patel verdict a vindication of jury trial.

That is rubbish.

This was a rare case of a jury acquitting in a child murder case only because that case was utterly groundless.

Normally juries, always bound by emotion, convict in such cases.

Attempts by the Government to limit the jury system are being fought by barristers because juries are their Common Agricultural Policy, encouraging lucrative overproduction of trials.

The judicial system appears immune to reform, even by the recent, supposedly radical Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg.

Mrs Clark’s release in January led to pleas for a reform in the use of criminal courts for such cases.

These pleas were ignored. The release coincided with another investigation into a child tragedy.

The Climbie tribunal confronted an administrative failure, of inadequate, ill-led and frightened officials who “allowed” a girl to die at the hands of her guardians.

What happened next was instructive.

Those involved in the Climbie case were castigated and personally destroyed by the tribunal.

The Clark cot-death team were let off scot-free, living to fight another day, including the trial of Mrs Patel.

I find it hard to disagree with those who claim government operates a double standard.

Local government is treated as run by peasants who can be traduced at will.

The judiciary is run by toffs, who can commit any malpractice they like.

Cot deaths should clearly be handled by an examining magistrate in chambers, as in Scandinavia and elsewhere.

The hope is that yesterday’s apparent upheaval in the governance of the judiciary may lead to such a reform.

I doubt it. The new “Constitution” Secretary, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and the Prime Minister are still lawyers and lawyers are powerfully attached to territory.

Their loyalty to the majesty of the courtroom is as medieval as their love of the adversarial joust.

I cannot see Britain’s judicial Establishment allowing a handful of weeping women and wrecked families to erode their precious turf.

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

Part Ten: Thinking Dirty; Its Role in The Decision To Charge Trupti Patel With Murdering Her Babies;

"NURSES WHO VISITED MRS PATEL AT HOME HAD REPORTED THAT SHE SEEMED DISTANT AND REFUSED HELP.

IN FACT, MRS PATEL WAS DESPERATELY TRYING NOT TO BECOME AN OVERANXIOUS MOTHER.

TO JENNY THOMAS, CHAIRMAN OF THE CHILD BEREAVEMENT TRUST, THIS WAS A PERFECTLY NORMAL PROCESS OF EMOTIONS FOR AN ASIAN FAMILY WHO HAD SUFFERED SO MANY DEATHS.

TO THE POLICE, HOWEVER, WHO CONSIDERED HER REACTIONS ABNORMAL, IT WAS A CAUSE FOR SUSPICION."

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"DURING THE TRIAL IT EMERGED THAT THE BABIES PROBABLY DIED FROM A RARE, NEWLY DISCOVERED GENE DISORDER KNOWN AS LONG QT SYNDROME, WHICH MISSES A GENERATION BEFORE STRIKING AGAIN. MRS PATEL’S 80-YEAR-OLD GRANDMOTHER TRAVELLED FROM INDIA TO REVEAL HOW SHE HAD LOST FIVE OF HER 12 CHILDREN. THREE OF THOSE DEATHS WERE LINKED TO THE DISORDER."

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HELEN STUDD: THE TIMES ON-LINE;

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As I learned more about the Patel case, I wondered how many other parents and caregivers were wrongfully charged with killing children - in the absence of concrete evidence - because a pathologist or social worker made unwarranted social assumptions about their character.

The role that false assumptions played in the Patel case is described by reporter Helen Studd in a story which appeared in the on-line version of The Times on June 12, 2003, under the heading: "Grieving mother learnt to keep her tears private."

The story appeared under the sub-heading: "Cultural differences left neighbours with the impression of a cold and heartless woman."

"The lonely tears of Trupti Patel, heard by neighbours through the walls of her house, belied her appearance as a cold, heartless mother unmoved by the deaths of three babies," the story began.

"Mrs Patel’s childhood in an Asian community had taught her to keep her grief private, even from her own mother, while her success as a career woman only reinforced her image of outward self-control," it continued.

"To a large extent, it was the cultural differences between her reserved upbringing and the more emotionally demonstrative British society that landed her in the dock at Reading Crown Court.

While those with experience of the bereavement process recognise that Hindu families grieve differently, Mrs Patel’s dearth of public tears appeared unfeeling to outsiders.

Thames Valley Police refused to believe that three cot deaths in one family could be anything other than murder.

Three ordinary cardboard boxes stacked in a wardrobe at the marital home bear the names of Amar, Jamie and Mia.

Inside are their birth and death certificates together with photographs, imprints of their feet, copies of their fingerprints and locks of hair.

Mrs Patel’s family emigrated to Britain from the Punjab in 1965 and she was born in Bolton, Lancashire, two years later.

Her childhood was a mixture of Asian and Western influences. She won a place at the town’s grammar school, developing a love of chemistry.

She studied pharmacy at King’s College London, and Greenwich Hospital.

While working towards her pre-registration qualification at Greenwich in 1990, she was introduced to Jayant Kumar Patel, a recently qualified electronics engineer, by a mutual aunt.

After seven months together the couple decided to get married.

Before the wedding she gave up her job in Greenwich and moved back to Bolton to help her parents with the preparations.

The marriage took place at a register office in Bolton, followed by a traditional Hindu ceremony, in June 1991.

After the wedding, the couple moved in with Mr Patel’s parents, whom she had met only twice before the ceremony.

For two years she lived in a house with her in-laws.

Mrs Patel soon began to find life cramped and lonely, with her husband working 200 miles away in Maidenhead, so, in 1993, the couple moved south, buying a modern three-bedroom semi-detached house, now worth £250,000, near Mr Patel’s workplace.

“It was nice to have space and privacy,” she told police. “We were very happy together.”

Mrs Patel threw herself into her career as a pharmacist at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, soon rising to the position of dispensary manager in charge of 13 staff.

The couple began to discuss the possibility of having children.

After one last exotic holiday together to Hong Kong, Malaysia and Bali, they started trying for a family.

After Mrs Patel became pregnant, a year later, she suffered a miscarriage.

Only three months later she was pregnant again.

Her first child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was born by emergency caesarean after a 20-hour labour in 1995.

She was disappointed to learn that she would be unable to return to work on a part-time basis.

“I have no high goals,” she told the police. “I had achieved what I always said I would achieve. I did not want to go higher up the ladder.”

As her next three children died one by one from cot death, she became increasingly unable to cope.

With each death, she became increasingly resigned, afraid to grieve too long in case she was going against divine will.

Second Part;

She was also determined to get over the babies’ deaths quickly in order to prevent her feelings of grief passing to the next child.

Publicly, she threw herself back into work, while privately she was devastated and would spend long hours in tears.

Neighbours could hear her crying after her husband had left in the mornings.

Even during her trial, she gave the jury only occasional glimpses of her real feelings, when she could no longer control her weeping.

Her son Amar was the first to die, in 1997.

Mrs Patel found he had stopped breathing when she went to wake him for his feed.

Mrs Patel, who had trained in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, tried frantically to save him, helped by a 999 operator she telephoned.

But Amar was dead within the hour. The cause of his death was given as sudden infant death syndrome.

Mrs Patel became subdued, which to outsiders appeared as if she did not care.

Before she conceived again, she attended a conference in London into cot deaths and investigated monitors available to detect respiratory problems in babies.

Before her next baby, Jamie, was born in 1999, Mrs Patel changed the carpets and curtains at home, fearing that dust mites might have been responsible for Amar’s death.

Two weeks after Jamie’s birth, his father found him “lifeless” in his carrycot.

The panicking couple battled to revive him.

A helicopter took the baby to hospital, where doctors fought for 12 hours to save his life, but he died from a massive fit.

Again, the death was attributed to sudden infant death syndrome.

While Mrs Patel was pregnant with her fourth child in 2000, she began eating organic foods.

Mia was born on May 14, 2001, at Wexham Park Hospital. Mother and baby were monitored around the clock.

Mia was transferred to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, for specific heart, breathing and sleep-pattern monitoring. A week later she was allowed home.

A breathing monitor was placed under her cot mattress to signal an alarm if she developed problems.

Mrs Patel was unhappy with the device and wanted a more sophisticated version to strap to Mia’s chest.

Her fears over the performance of the device later proved well-founded.

After only a few days Mia began to vomit and Mrs Patel took her to the family GP, who said her condition would improve.

Back home Mr Patel took photographs of his wife cuddling Mia in bed.

Hours later, Mrs Patel found the baby apparently lifeless in her cot. The alarm had failed to activate.

Mrs Patel raced down stairs, clutching Mia, desperately forcing short breaths into her limp baby. The 22-day-old baby died at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

This time, a post-mortem examination found four broken ribs in the baby’s chest.

Nurses who visited Mrs Patel at home had reported that she seemed distant and refused help.

In fact, Mrs Patel was desperately trying not to become an overanxious mother.

To Jenny Thomas, chairman of the Child Bereavement Trust, this was a perfectly normal process of emotions for an Asian family who had suffered so many deaths.

To the police, however, who considered her reactions abnormal, it was a cause for suspicion.

During the trial it emerged that the babies probably died from a rare, newly discovered gene disorder known as long QT syndrome, which misses a generation before striking again.

Mrs Patel’s 80-year-old grandmother travelled from India to reveal how she had lost five of her 12 children.

Three of those deaths were linked to the disorder."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com

Part Nine; Think Dirty; Trupti Patel; Another Victim Of "Meadow's Law;"

"AFTER THE TRIAL STARTED, TWO KEY PROSECUTION WITNESSES WHO HAD EXAMINED MIA'S BODY AND HAD DISPUTED MRS PATEL'S CLAIM THAT THE FRACTURED RIBS WERE CAUSED BY HER ATTEMPTS AT RESUSCITATION, SAID THAT THEY WERE NO LONGER SURE. PROFESSOR RUPERT RISDON, A PAEDIATRIC PATHOLOGIST, WROTE TO THE JUDGE SAYING THAT HE HAD FOUND EVIDENCE OF RIB FRACTURES CAUSED BY RESUSCITATION IN THREE CHILDREN THAT HE HAD EXAMINED IN THE PREVIOUS MONTH ALONE, AND NATHANIEL CAREY, A HOME OFFICE PATHOLOGIST, SAID HE COULD "NO LONGER STATE CATEGORICALLY THAT THE RIB FRACTURES WERE NOT DUE TO RESUSCITATION."

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Trupti Patel went through the hellish experience of being charged with killing three of her babies on the opinion of Sir Roy Meadow.

As the author of a note in Wikipedia pointed out: "Sir Roy's dictum that "one sudden infant death in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder unless proven otherwise" became known as "Meadow's Law."

"Meadow's Law" unfortunately did not take into consideration that Patel might suffer from an undiscovered genetic defect: Her maternal grandmother had lost five children in infancy,

"Trupti Patel is a qualified pharmacist from Berkshire, England, who was acquitted in 2003 of murdering three of her children," the note begins.

"The three children were Amar (5 September 1997–10 December 1997), Jamie (21 June 1999–6 July 1999), and Mia (14 May 2001–5 June 2001)," it continues.

"Trupti Patel was born into a family of Punjabis who had moved from India to England.

She spent her childhood in Lancashire, and attended grammar school.

She then went to study at King's College London, where she gained a B.Sc. in pharmacy.

Around this time, she met her future husband, Jayant, a qualified electrical engineer who later worked as a business analyst for British Telecom.

They were married within seven months, and their first child, a girl, was born in 1995.

Their second child, a boy, died unexpectedly at the age of two months, in December 1997.

Eighteen months later, another boy died aged just fifteen days.

Postmortem examinations yielded no explanations for the deaths, but a daughter who died at the age of twenty-two days in June 2001 was found to have four broken ribs.

A police investigation was started, which led to Trupti Patel's arrest in May 2002. She was charged with the murder of her three babies.

The case, which was heard at Reading crown court, was one of a number of famous court cases in Britain in which mothers who reported more than one cot death were accused of murder.

It was also one of a number of cases in which evidence was given by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a controversial paediatrician whose testimony helped to convict Sally Clark, Angela Cannings, and Donna Anthony of murdering their babies; all three women were cleared on appeal.

Sir Roy's dictum that "one sudden infant death in a family is a tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder unless proven otherwise" became known as "Meadow's Law",[3] and his claim that the likelihood of two babies dying from natural causes in the same family was one in 73 million prompted the Royal Statistical Society to write a letter of complaint to the Lord Chancellor, stating that the figure had "no statistical basis";[4] other experts said that when genetic and environmental factors were taken into account, the figure was closer to one in 200.

Sir Roy Meadow, giving evidence for the prosecution, listed four indications of Mrs Patel's guilt. One was the injuries suffered by the third child to die.

Mrs Patel's explanation was that the rib fractures had resulted from her attempts at resuscitation.

The second and third points were that the children had had several medical examinations, and had been well until shortly before their deaths.

The fourth point was that three consecutive children had died, and that, according to Sir Roy, "in general, sudden and unexpected death does not run in families."

One of the defence witnesses was genetics specialist Professor Michael Patton, who testified that several cot deaths in the same family could be caused by an undiscovered genetic defect, and that the chances of experiencing more than one cot death could be as high as one in twenty.

The court heard evidence that Mrs Patel's maternal grandmother had lost five children in infancy, but that her remaining seven children were "alive and well".

By the time the case came to court, Sir Roy's claims about the likelihood of a second cot death in the same family had been largely discredited.

Sally Clark's conviction for the murder of her sons had been overturned some months earlier, and Angela Cannings's guilt was disputed by many.

After the trial started, two key prosecution witnesses who had examined Mia's body and had disputed Mrs Patel's claim that the fractured ribs were caused by her attempts at resuscitation, said that they were no longer sure.

Professor Rupert Risdon, a paediatric pathologist, wrote to the judge saying that he had found evidence of rib fractures caused by resuscitation in three children that he had examined in the previous month alone, and Nathaniel Carey, a Home Office pathologist, said he could "no longer state categorically that the rib fractures were not due to resuscitation."

On 11 June 2003, at the end of a six-and-a-half week trial, thirty-five-year-old Trupti Patel was acquitted of all charges.

She announced shortly after her acquittal that her husband would have a vasectomy, as they were unwilling to take the risk of having another child.

A court order had been imposed on her after the death of Mia in 2001,[10] forbidding her to be alone with her, or to cook for her, and that order remained in force following her acquittal."

Next Posting: "Part Nine: Think Dirty: How a misunderstanding of cultural differences led to Trupti Patel being charged with murdering her babies."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;