Test of that Evening Standard article, as promised:
Lies, deception and the doctor who trapped me
THE cunning ploy to entrap Justine Durkin and prove that she was a potential child murderer began with a phone call. "Justine," said the consultant paediatrician at the other end of the line, his voice caring but grim, "I'm afraid tests show your daughter might have a life-threatening disorder. You need to bring her in for 24-hour monitoring.
I've booked a bed."
At that moment, the world of Justine Durkin, then a bubbly 23-year-old mother, imploded. Weeping uncontrollably, she packed her bags and headed into the hands of the doctors she hoped could save her sickly two-year-old daughter, Rosemary, who suffered from various unexplained ailments, including violent nocturnal coughing fits.
Waiting for her at the hospital was the eminent and then highly regarded consultant paediatrician, Professor David Southall. But, as she would discover - and as he would later testify in the family court - he was not being entirely honest with her. There were, in fact, no tests that showed a " lifethreatening disorder". It was all an extraordinary and elaborate con - cynical and cruel if it were to fail, brilliant perhaps if it were to succeed - dreamed up by Professor Southall to catch Justine attempting to harm or smother her child through secret video surveillance, and to prove his belief that Justine was a potential child murderer.
Totally unaware that Professor Southall was lying to her, Justine and Rosemary were shown into a carpeted private ward that was to be their home for the next five days. What Justine saw was monitoring equipment and a bed - Rosemary would be confined to it and attached to the monitors 24 hours a day - a second bed for herself, a television, and a chair.
But what she couldn't see were the hidden video cameras that would secretly record her every word and action for the next 120 hours. For Southall had a plan: he intended to use this videotape evidence to prove that she suffered from a condition called Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, a mysterious psychological ailment that involves harming - even killing - one's child to attract attention to oneself.
But when, after two days in the room, no incriminating evidence had been obtained, Professor Southall decided to up the ante. What he did next, Justine says, defies belief. Her complaint against Professor Southall is the subject of an upcoming public hearing by the General Medical Council into his purportedly " unethical" behaviour.
It spells more bad news for the professor who, this week, suffered a humiliating hammer-blow to his reputation when the GMC found him guilty of serious professional misconduct in accusing the husband of solicitor Sally Clark of murdering two of their baby sons. Professor Southall had made his diagnosis after watching a TV programme about the case, without having had any medical involvement with the Clarks whatsoever.
The GMC - ruling that Professor Southall had abused his position and condemning his behaviour as " inappropriate, irresponsible and misleading" - will deliver its verdict when it reconvenes in August. The panel has the power to strike off the paediatrician, although it is thought more likely to issue a public admonishment or suspend his registration.
Anything short of being stuck off, however, will trigger a purported eight more GMC complaints against Professor Southall, of which Justine's case is one. Some of the complainants hope to expose just how "inappropriate, irresponsible and misleading" the paediatrician's behaviour has consistently been, ruining their lives, and those of their families, in what they say are strikingly similar gross abuses of power.
They argue that Southall's behaviour in the Clark case was not a one-off, but evidence of a trend in which Southall would stop at nothing to prove he is right. (To this day, Professor Southall clings to his view that Stephen Clark is a killer.) But in Justine's case, although he refused to see it, the evidence that he had got it wrong was staring him in the face. After two days of covert video surveillance at the University Hospital in North Staffordshire, he had nothing to show for it. So what did he do?
"He called me out of the ward," recalls Justine, 34, speaking exclusively to the Evening Standard from her GBP500,000 18th-century farmhouse set in three acres of verdant Nottinghamshire countryside. "He sat me down, and told me that the word from Doncaster Hospital [where Rosemary had been treated before being referred] was that there did not seem to be anything wrong with Rosemary and that they thought I had been fabricating her illness.
"Southall was quick to assure me that he believed me, but he said they would need proof she was ill soon, because there was pressure on him for the use of facilities and that unless something happened quickly, it would be hard to counter the view that I was making it up. I did not realise it, but he was trying to entrap me. He wanted to goad me into manufacturing proof of her illness. He thought by putting that pressure on me, I would try to smother or harm Rosemary when no one was looking."
THIS extraordinary testimony - recounting entrapment techniques that even police officers would struggle to justify - is not even disputed by Professor Southall.
One week after the covert video surveillance ended, and without any concrete evidence of mistreatment, two social workers, armed with a written accusation of Munchausen's from Professor Southall, came to remove two-year-old Rosemary from Justine's care. They also took her son, Joseph, just four years old. At the time, Justine was living with her parents in Wroot, a small village in South Yorkshire, having recently become divorced from her husband, Nick Twiss, who was then a serving police officer in the North Staffordshire police.
A moment earlier, during our interview this week, she had been telling me that she has become "a tough old broad" and that "this lady don't cry", but now, as she recalls the moment Justine was taken, her eyes redden, her face collapses, and tears stream down her cheeks.
"Something in me died right there," she says. "I couldn't make sense of what was happening. One day I'm told my daughter has a lifethreatening illness, the next that I'm making it all up. Suddenly, these two social workers came to the door.
They told me there had been a secret child-protection conference and that, on the advice of Southall, my children were to be taken away.
They said they had already found foster parents.
"At first, I resisted. I refused to let them take her, but they said they would call the police. I said, please, at least let me be the one to hand her over, to settle her in."
For 11 months, until the case came to court, Justine's children lived with their foster parents.
Justine got to see them for two hours a week, but always with someone else there.
Then, in July 1994, came the court case heard in the family division.
At issue was nothing less than whether Justine would get her children back. For the first time, she got to see the extent of the evidence for Munchausen's against her.
Although we cannot divulge what evidence was given in court, the outcome was that the judge totally quashed Professor Southall's claim of Munchausen's as entirely unsubstantiated. Despite Justine being exonerated, the judge subsequently released the children into the care of their father. Justine would be able to visit her children under a supervision order, with the local authority acting as umpire between the parents should disagreement arise.
Justine was devastated.
Havingbeing subjected to what she believes is the modern equivalent of a medieval witch-hunt, and despite being found not guilty of anything remotely to do with harming her daughter, she had wound up losing her children to their father who lived two hours away.
For years, she was allowed only limited contact with her children.
She was confined, at first, to supervised contact of six hours a week, which developed over time to unsupervised weekends.
Justine was so shaken by what had happened that later, when she subsequently fell pregnant with her second husband, she had an abortion because she was terrified they would take the baby from her at birth.
"Once you have been accused of Munchausen's, once it's on your notes, even if you've been cleared, you never know what they will do to you," she says.
Again the tears stream. "That still hurts, to think I let Southall affect me to that extent."
BUT the cloud has a silver lining. Firstly, Justine fell pregnant a fourth time, and this time went ahead with the pregnancy, giving birth to Aidan, who is now six. And even more to the point - and this makes her beam with happiness - two years ago Rosemary came to live with her after pleading with her father.
While we are talking, Rosemary, now 13, who is the spitting image of her mum, wanders in and sits on Justine's lap. Soon, both of them are in tears.
"We have so much time to make up," says Rosemary, gulping between sobs.
"That man, Southall, has a lot to answer for. He took my Mum away. I think he should get his head sorted out. I don't mean to sound nasty, but every child needs their Mum. I'd like to meet him face to face and ask him: why did you do this? Why did you deprive me of my mother? He doesn't know how much pain he's put people through. It seems he'll do anything just to be proved right.
I hope he gets sent to prison. I want everyone to know what he did - not just to us - but other families too."