Networked Knowledge - Media Report

Dr Southall UK homepage
Article on Australian miscarriage of justice cases
Article on UK miscarriage of justice cases
Article on USA miscarriage of justice cases

On 4 December 2007 Claire Truscott of The Guardian reported “Southall struck off for misconduct”.  

The paediatrician David Southall has been struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) for serious professional misconduct after wrongly accusing a grieving mother of drugging and murdering her 10-year-old son. Southall's career is over after a GMC panel found he was guilty of "multiple failings over an extended period". Southall had been employed by North Staffordshire hospital until the case and will now have to leave his post unless he appeals the decision within 28 days. The ruling means he can never work as a doctor in Britain again. Southall showed no emotion as the decision was made. Southall was investigated over a series of cases dating back to between 1989 and 1998.

Six cases were looked at by the GMC, the most serious for inappropriately accusing one mother, referred to as Mrs M. Other parents accused him after their children were taken into care on the basis of his evidence of abuse. He had previously been banned from child protection work for three years after he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in 2004 for accusing the jailed solicitor Sally Clark's husband of murdering their children on the basis of remarks he made on a television programme. Clark was later freed on appeal and has since died. Today's hearing concerned Mrs M, whose older son was found hanged in 1996.

Southall was asked to prepare an independent report for Shropshire county council in 1998 after concerns about the safety of Mrs M's younger son, then eight years old, led to him being taken into care. The GMC panel found Southall had gone beyond his remit in accusing Mrs M of killing the older boy. Giving evidence last week by video link from Adelaide, where she now lives, Mrs M said Southall had repeatedly asked her how the older boy died and she had demonstrated using a pencil and a shoelace. She told the panel that Southall had looked at her and said "very clever" in a sarcastic tone. The boy had been found hanging from a curtain rail. She told the panel that Southall said to her: "I put it to you that you killed your son by injecting him, hanging him up, leaving him there and then ringing an ambulance."

During his six days of evidence, Southall said he had been trying to protect the younger son and had been concerned because the family had burned the curtain rail. Southall said he had been trying to investigate the death in a "forensic manner", and insisted: "I wanted to be correct." He said he had also been concerned about what he had considered to be gaps in the police investigation and the following inquest, which returned an open verdict. The GMC also found Southall had wrongly removed documents relating to Mrs M's case and that of another family, taking them from London's Royal Brompton hospital to the North Staffordshire hospital NHS trust when he changed jobs and adding them to a "special file" of child abuse cases that he kept.

The GMC panel said he had "damaged the integrity" of hospital medical records by his actions. Patricia Hamilton, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said afterwards that she was "saddened and disappointed" by the 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," she said. "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. "This is clearly defined in the government's document Working Together to Safeguard Children. 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."

Top of Page