WATCHDOG 'STRIKES OFF' SENIOR PAEDIATRICIAN
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A disciplinary panel has struck a senior paediatrician off the medical register after a year-long investigation into allegations of misconduct.
According to charges brought by the General Medical Council, Professor David Southall was found, according to the GMC verdict, to have abused his professional position and acted inappropriately when interviewing a woman about the death of her 10-year-old son, who hanged himself in 1996. He is said to have accused her of drugging and murdering him.
The GMC's Fitness to Practise Panel investigation centred on children in his care in the 1980s and 1990s.
Panel Chairman Dr Jacqueline Mitton told Dr Southall: "The panel has concluded that you have deep-seated attitudinal problems and that your misconduct is so serious that it is fundamentally incompatible with your continuing to be a registered medical practitioner."
She added: "The panel is particularly concerned by your lack of insight into the multiplicity of your failings over a long period."
The panel also noted that Dr Southall has never apologised to the Clark family or the mother, who was referred to as Mrs M, for his false allegations of murder in their cases.
In a statement read on Dr Southall's behalf by his solicitor Anne Ball yesterday said: "I'm disappointed by today's decision because I have always maintained that the decisions I took were in the best interest of the children involved. In common with all doctors working in child protection I have often had to make difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions but the welfare of the children was always paramount in my mind.
"I have nothing further to add save that I am taking legal advice about the prospect of an appeal."
Patricia Hamilton, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: "The RCPCH is saddened and disappointed to learn of this judgment.
"David Southall has made a major contribution to child health both nationally and internationally and has been a strong advocate for children during a distinguished career.
"Sadly there are circumstances where parents may have harmed their children, and in these situations health professionals have a statutory duty to act on their concerns and look after the best interests of the child.
"We are very concerned that paediatricians and social workers will be deterred from undertaking child protection work, and that children and young people may come to harm."
Dr Southall was immediately suspended from the medical register but has 28 days to lodge an appeal.
The panel had also found that he removed medical notes to create "special case" files on children, potentially putting them at risk.
Dr Mitton told the paediatrician: "You have a responsibility and a duty as a doctor to ensure that medical records are readily available to colleagues as and when required. Failure to do so can result in serious consequences."
The mother of one of the boys to receive a special case file, identified only as Child H, was at yesterday's hearing.
Afterwards, she said: "Obviously we felt that Dr Southall needed to be erased from the medical register. He has done a lot of damage to the families that will never be repaired.
"We want a public inquiry on how this was allowed to continue for so long."
Dr Southall worked as a consultant paediatrician at London's Royal Brompton Hospital from 1982 and held the same post at North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent in 1992.
He was banned from working on child abuse cases for three years in 2004 after the GMC ruled he had been irresponsible by claiming Mr Clark had murdered his young sons.
Days after the verdict, Professor Southall broke his silence, blaming the media for making him a "hate figure" after the verdict.
In his first interview since losing his case at the GMC on Tuesday, Prof David Southall insisted he had not "abused" parents and had only been interested in protecting children
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was a "vindictive campaign" against doctors who were trying to prevent parents from hurting their offspring and passing it off as illness.
"With the help of the media, and I have to say this, there has been out there a vindictive campaign which has made hate figures out of the paediatricians involved in this kind of work," Prof Southall said.
The GMC found Prof Southall guilty of serious misconduct for confronting the mother of a 10-year-old boy who hanged himself in 1996 with the possibility that she had drugged him and strung him up by his belt.
However, the paediatrician said that his actions had to be considered in the context that one child was killed by their parents every week in the UK.
He said he had put a series of "scenarios" to the mother - known as Mrs M - when he interviewed her, but denied that he had directly accused her of murdering her son because he had already "discounted" the idea in his own mind.
"I understood only too well how serious it was for this mother, sitting there listening to these scenarios, which is what they were," he said.
"These things are part of an interview, that paediatricians regularly discuss with parents when a child presents an injury."
Prof Southall added: "We have a balance always, whenever we are involved in child protection, of doing the best we can for the child - which is the paramount concern - and avoiding where possible the suffering of the parent.
"I don't like to see the parents suffer... but we have to, as a paediatrician involved in child protection, put the children's interests first and foremost above all else, and do our best to minimise the suffering caused by the accusation (part) of the process."
He also expressed concern over "serious flaws" in the GMC system, claiming that panel members lacked the expertise necessary to judge cases involving child abuse.
"They have had no training in child protection before they are discussing such serious issues with doctors. I think this is where the problem is. It's not doctors against doctors. It's the fact that the regulatory body has not had sufficient training or understanding of the child protection process."
Prof Southall said he was considering an appeal against the GMC ruling.
"I hope I will not have to give up medicine completely," he added.
The governing body had already banned Prof Southall from working on child abuse cases for three years in 2004 after he wrongly accused the husband of Sally Clark of murdering their two sons.
Mrs Clark was originally convicted of their murder but later freed after evidence from another paediatrician, Sir Roy Meadow, was discredited. She died earlier this year.
SEW News understands that the allegations that formed the basis of the GMC charges against the paediatrician came from observations that Professor Southall made in an expert report in childcare proceedings.
ENDS