Southall struck off

[ElenyaTuesday]

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Southall

It is so extraordinarily patronising to say that we poor silly women don't know that some parents hurt their children, and that's why we don't like Southall. We don't like Southall because he was a dangerous mono-maniac, who saw Munchausens everywhere, and innocent people suffered horribly. He behaved completely unethically. He has been struck off for heaven's sake. That doesn't happen lightly.

i'm not saying htat.

i'm saying that imo it is too easy to sit on mn calling him evil and saying he deserves villification.

back in the real world people understand that there are gross mistakes made in healthcare all the time.

maybe his arrogance has lead to his making too many and he deserves to be struck off.

but as always i do think that the level of hate (not you in particular here edam) says more about the hater tbh.

no it doesn't happen very often at all.

i am in no doubt there are far more incompetant physicians that remain in business.

this is the result of a sustained hate campaign as far as i can see.

the involvement of the government in this case says it all to me

so sorry about all the terrible spelling and grammar.

You intervene on principle where you think you'll save lives. Some people do that break the rules knowing they will but morally feel they have to. But the real problem is not an expert witness who might or might not have got something wrong but the power given to people to remove children. We need open ness. I'd like to see transcripts on line of all interviews or at least a right for journalists to sit in court. I think family privacy should be waived in the interests of justice being done. That of course means allegations which are not proven and then dropped get into the public domain too which is a downside of open ness.

My father's view that the mildly abused child does better staying in its own home is probably right but we mustn't forget the dreadful damage a lot of parents do to their own children day after day all over the UK and those children do need protecting.

The Aborigine thing was dreadful although they certainly improved the outcomes of many of those children but that was only because of the damage caused to the original culture by the drugs and drink the whites introduced in the first place.

Sophable if that was a pop at me then spit ou there's a dear it's a bit late in the evening for subtlety for me!

I'd have said ostentatiously leaving a thread and then coming back to continue the attacks on people they disagree with says a lot about the person too.

Then again we could always stop going at one another and instead look at the FACTS of this case which are that David Southall seriously overreached his authority as a doctor and too it upon himself to become investigator, accuser and witness for the prosecution in child protection cases which led to many of the children of parents he pointed the finger at being taken into care. The fact that accompanying all this were experiments on children with some of the wards of court being used as research subjects is probably the most worrying aspect of this case and one which will hopefully be investigated further.

Xenia the expert witnesses ARE the problem often as because of the secrecy of family courts many theories are spouted unchallenged. There are very few expert witnesses in this field so we get the same old theories again & again. If the courts were open then outside doctors (paediatricians or whoever) could challenge views with their own research. Similarly good bits of evidence could be used to help cases in the future with similar details.

I agree Xenia, it's a much more a systemic problem than just that there are one or two bad apples. Openness is the way forward.
Incidentally, did anyone see the article in the Sunday Times today about a family whose child wasn't taken away in the end but who are going to court in May for the right to talk openly about it?

Re Southall, there are certainly people out there who are looking for as much dirt as they can on Southall. You might call it a hate campaign, but you might equally call it a tenacious attempt to bring him to justice.

I heard a mother on the radio a few days ago. Her baby son had episodes of apnoea after feeding. It was later found to be some kind of gastric-reflux thing that somehow affected his airway.

She found herself in a case conference being accused by Southall of harming her child. Southhall had also styled himself with a title well beyond his qualifications at the time (this was about 20 years ago.) She later found that, after the conference, he immediately recommended that the baby be removed from his family. He wasn't removed as the family fought the decision and won. Sounds like Southall has some self-esteem issues to me.

BUT.

I do agree though that there must not now be a knee-jerk reaction, as there was after Cleveland in the 70s (80s?) which results in children being left at genuine risk because doctors are scared to act.

oh elizabethh, stop being so waspish.

this isn't an attack on you stop acting as if it is.

i'm tired. sod david southall.

wayhey for you all that you are all so delighted he has been struck off.

i cannot share your delight. someone whose intentions were probably good having no career doesn't cause me joy whether or not it is a just result.

Agreed Elizabeth and as Edam pointed out...

at a time when he was already suspended from child protection work

Yes we're all tired Soph but as it is something important to us we are trying to debate it openly & with as many facts as possible and little digs at people you don't agree with don't help us stay on track.

Sophable
Good intentions don't make a good man. He may have started off with them but like politicians who become drunk on power he was corrupted.

fair enough candypandy

Do you not agree that these things are positive though Sophable? (from my earlier post):

' it will 1. stop him continuing to damage families and he really did need to be stopped and 2. it will make it more likely that rules are changed to stop similar things happening in cases which don't involve Southall and most importantly, 3. it will be the first step in a process of which may mean that some of the families who have had their children taken away may actually get to see them again.'

This is why it's a matter for celebration - not just Southall the individual (who can go and spend the rest of his life on a beach somewhere for all I care).

waht about all of the children that has helped.

what about the potential hesitation in others based on this verdict.

Stop being so passive aggressive Sophable. It's unbecoming.

I don't think he had good intentions. His actions say something completely different. He made a grieving mother reenact finding her son hanging dead in his bedroom and accused her either of murdering him or that he had undertaken autoerotic asphyxiation (he was ten). He accused parents who dared to question him of having MSBP.

The guy was out of control, as I've already said, and needed to be stopped. Your naive faith in the good intentions of a professional behaving in this manner is quite startling actually.

I think it's good to hear the other side. You have to really work out why you think what you think, well I do anyway, rather than it being a gut instinct. I still don't agree but it's good that someone puts the other pov.

the children he has helped - well, that won't be undone by the verdict.

calling you waspish is hardly passive aggressive elizabethh

i'm off to watch cranford, back later.

thanks candypandy.

The mother I heard on the radio is calling for a review of the thousands of cases he has worked on over the years. That's not to say that he has necessarily always been at fault - but it will be heartbreaking for those families who have wrongly had their children taken away and adopted.

I think if he'd had good intentions he'd have apologised to the people he'd hurt. Instead he plans to appeal the decision and appears to be surrounded by a coterie of paediatricians and social workers who are intent on continuing the public attacks on anybody who dares to criticise him.

The positive side of children he HAS helped is not excused by the ones who's lives he destroyed Sophable.

If anyone has done their research thoroughly & openly & consulted all his/her colleaugues & interviwed the families compassionately then there is no need for hesitation they will be backed up in their actions no matter how upsetting.

he is being backed up by his colleagues bossybritches.