The doctor who destroyed families: Southall struck off for accusing parents of killing their children

12 April 2012

Condemned: Professor David Southall yesterday

He claimed one mother drugged and hanged her ten-year-old son with a belt, and he infamously interfered in the case of solicitor Sally Clark, accusing her husband of killing their two sons on the strength of a television documentary.

Yesterday his high-flying career was in ruins after he was barred from medical practice with immediate effect, and castigated for his complete failure to apologise and his "deep-seated attitudinal problems".

"Your misconduct is so serious that it is fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered medical practitioner," said Dr Jacqueline Mitton, chairman of the General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel.

He blushed slightly and took a long gulp of water as he learned his fate.

Afterwards he remained defiant and unapologetic, saying he was considering an appeal.

"The decisions I took were in the best interests of the children involved," he said.

Southall, 59, has gained international renown for groundbreaking research during his career, which took in the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke, the Royal Brompton in London and hospitals in Wales, the Home Counties, Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley.

He had already been suspended from child protection work in 2004 over his "high-handed intervention" in the Sally Clark case.

He was called before the GMC again over a further series of allegations, which were found proven last month.

Five mothers whom he wrongly accused of deliberately hurting, and in one case killing, their children, gave evidence to the hearing.

Scroll down for more...

Dee McLean and Ben, who is now brain-damaged

Their accounts gave a chilling insight into the consequences of so-called "sleep study" tests that he conducted on 4,500 of his young patients during the eighties and nineties.

Police forces in the Midlands, Wales and London are investigating if children were inadvertently harmed or may have died during his experiments, where patients were allegedly deprived of oxygen and given small amounts of carbon dioxide, ostensibly to find the cause of cot death.

Here, SUE REID reports on those five tragic cases...

BEN MCLEAN

Ben was three when his smiling picture appeared in a fundraising brochure for Great Ormond Street Hospital, where he was being treated for an illness affecting his breathing. He was a bright child and was expected to recover and lead a normal life.

Today he is 21, goes to a special school and struggles to say a few simple words.

He walks with the rolling gait of a drunk, testimony to the brain damage his parents fear is irreversible.

Ben spent a year of his childhood in care, taken from his family at the age of five because paediatrician David Southall accused his mother and father of deliberately trying to hurt him.

The doctor alleged they suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), a theory unproven in science in which parents are said to harm their offspring to gain attention for themselves.

Today Dee McLean and her husband David say Ben underwent controversial breathing tests overseen by Dr Southall, when he was deprived of oxygen, and given small doses of carbon dioxide, which left him brain-damaged.

As a result of these claims, South Wales Police are investigating his treatment by Professor Southall's medical team at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

Dee, a former nurse, says: "He was a changed child after the tests in 1981. He couldn't concentrate. He couldn't walk properly."

It took a year-long battle in the High Court before they won Ben back from care.

What other tests were conducted on him during that time the McLeans do not know. But he was never the same child again.

LAWRENCE ALEXANDER

Lawrence is now 21. He spends most of his days in a darkened room listening to Radio 4. He cannot eat normal food and is 80 per cent physically disabled.

At the age of 14 he was struck by muscle weakness which led to his body sustaining severe cell damage usually seen only in cancer patients after chemotherapy.

Yet he has found the strength to search through his medical records and discover he underwent tests conducted by David Southall.

Scroll down for more...

Janet Alexander and Lawrence, who is disabled

Lawrence first became ill seven weeks after being born. He would often gasp for air and turn blue: signs of sudden infant death syndrome or cot death.

At first doctors thought he was epileptic. At five months he was referred to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

His mother, Janet, recalls: "We were told Dr Southall, a cot-death expert who worked not far away at the Royal Brompton Hospital in Chelsea, could help Lawrence.

He was transferred there for one month and Dr Southall began to insist on exhaustive tests.

"We quickly became suspicious that Dr Southall was using our son as a guinea-pig and we told him that we were going to take him home."

It was then that the paediatrician invited Janet and husband, Robin, to a meeting to discuss Lawrence's progress.

"We found social workers from Kensington and Chelsea Council and their solicitors, sent by Dr Southall,' says Janet.

"One social worker told me, 'You need help as parents. There is nothing wrong with your child'.

It suddenly clicked that we were in a dangerous situation.

"They were saying we made up Lawrence's illness - that we were deliberately harming him."

Janet was told she must sign papers to give social workers legal rights over Lawrence's care.

"I was afraid if I did not allow my son to become a ward of court I would lose him forever."

Crucially, she would no longer be allowed to see him at night. Janet, a former nurse, was forced to stop breast-feeding.

So was it then, as the Alexander family have told the GMC, that Lawrence underwent tests that ruined his health?

Lawrence says: "I believe that my mother and father were labelled as child abusers by Dr Southall because they tried to stop his experiments on me.

"We now know about the so-called 'sleep studies' carried out by Dr Southall.

"What impact that had on my health we will never know."

LEE MORRIS

Lee committed suicide in June 1996 when he was ten. Bullied at school, he hanged himself by his belt from a curtain rail at the family's three-bedroom home in Oswestry, Shropshire.

Last week his mother, Mandy, gave video evidence from Australia against Dr Southall at the GMC.

The paediatrician was found guilty of abusing his position after she revealed that he refused to accept Lee had taken his own life.

Scroll down for more...

Mandy Morris with surviving children Dale and Ellie

Instead, he had accused her of killing her own son.

For Mandy, it has been a painfully long wait for justice. "We had lost Lee, but Dr Southall's allegations that I had killed him ripped the heart out of my family.

"Had we not been so strong, and clung together, he would have ground us into the dust."

There was no suicide note and, at Lee's inquest, a coroner recorded an open verdict.

But seven months later, in January 1997, as Mandy, her husband, Simon, and their younger son Dale, then eight, were moving house, they were dealt a second blow thanks to the involvement of Dr Southall.

Social workers and police officers arrived at their home and demanded that Dale be taken to a foster family.

Dr Southall had become involved in the case after being alerted via one of her colleagues at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, where she worked as a cleaner.

He had declared - without even meeting her - that she "almost certainly" suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy.

When Dr Southall met Mandy he insisted she had murdered her eldest child.

He suggested she had stolen drugs from the hospital, drugged Lee and waited until he was unconscious before stringing him up with his belt.

He concluded that her youngest child was also in danger - which resulted in Dale being placed with a foster family.

It took two months of court hearings for the Morris family to get him home again.

A police investigation was opened and then closed, but locally, fingers were still pointed at Mandy.

"I couldn't believe this was happeningto me,' she says. Today the Morris family have another child, Ellie aged eight.

"All we want to see now is this doctor stopped from ruining another life," says Mandy.

MICHAEL

The son of Janet Davies, he was six when he was referred to Professor Southall by his GP, who described the little boy "as the most allergic person I have ever seen".

The paediatrician was asked to see if Michael should have a nighttime breathing monitor and he was admitted to North Staffordshire Hospital, Stoke on Trent.

He had not been there long before Professor Southall wrote in his notes:

"Agreed that mother is exaggerating symptoms. Example of fabricated illness (MSBP). Need social service strategy meeting." Luckily, his advice was ignored.

Three years later he tried again, writing to child protection social workers in Berkshire, where the family lived, suggesting that Michael was in danger of suffering harm from his mother.

The boy's name was put on the at-risk register and at a case conference Professor Southall reiterated the claims that Janet was deliberately making up his illness.

Janet Davies gave evidence to the GMC and is seeking redress through the European Court of Human Rights.

HANNAH BOZIER

Hannah was a toddler when she suffered 25 unexplained breathing attacks. Her mother, Sharon, was advised to take her from their

South London home for an assessment with Professor Southall at the Stoke hospital where he was researching the cause of cot deaths.

Scroll down for more...

Sharon Bozier with her husband and Hannah

The professor said that Hannah must be removed from the family home because he feared Sharon was making up the attacks and, therefore, deliberately harming her own 18-month-old child.

The Boziers objected but Hannah, now a teenager, was taken into care for eight months.

Professor Southall said that Sharon, then 30, was suffering from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy.

The family spent £2,000 fighting to get their daughter back in which they sought the views of two other paediatricians.

Both said Hannah was suffering from a life-threatening and genuine illness that was not caused by her mother.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in