Professionals Against Child Abuse

The GMC have included Mrs Penny Mellor on their panel looking at producing guidance for Paediatricians. This caused widespread indignation in safeguarding circles.

PACA wrote a response which was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and we are awaiting a reply from the GMC. The letter is produced in full below.

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Published 21 July 2010
Reference/Cite as: BMJ 2010;341:c3884

Open letter to Professor Peter Rubin, chair of the General Medical Council

You must know that the inclusion of Mrs Penny Mellor on the General Medical Council Expert Group on Child Protection¹ which has been set up in the wake of David Southall’s successful appeal, is an affront to paediatricians and other professionals involved in child protection work.

On 9 May 2010 we wrote to you and Mr Dickson congratulating you on setting up an expert panel to review what is expected of doctors involved in child protection. We had stated: “We have long argued that child protection is an area of medicine made uniquely difficult because the parents of children [or their appointed advocates, that is, those who complain about doctors to the GMC] cannot be assumed always to be acting in the best interests of their child. It is difficult for lay [fitness to practise] panel members, or medical panel members who do not have personal experience of child protection work, to understand this professional environment.”

We are astonished that you consider Mrs Mellor an appropriate person to contribute to this group, given that she has:

• Made false allegations against numerous paediatricians, other doctors, and nurses about their involvement in child protection cases, even to the extent of accusing doctors of sexual abuse of children and paedophilia and comparing one paediatrician to Josef Mengele
• Reported such professionals to their employers, regulatory bodies, politicians, and in the media, in some cases wrecking their professional lives
• With others, led a misguided and hostile media campaign against internationally acclaimed paediatricians who were central to the recognitionand diagnosis of fabricated and induced illness (FII, previously known as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy), which contributed to your fitness to practise panels’ decisions to order the names of Professor Sir Roy Meadow and Professor David Southall OBE to be erased from the medical register in 2004 and 2007 respectively. After much damage to child protection work, these decisions were found to be erroneous: Professor Meadow was reinstated to the medical register by the High Court and Professor Southall by the Court of Appeal
• Created an environment in which doctors are now turning their back on child protection work for fear of being targeted in the above way
• Been convicted herself of “conspiring to abduct a child,” Judge Whitburn concluding:
  

  … you have been a self-appointed advocate for those, amongst others, whose children are taken into care on the basis of what was known as Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxy, now known as Fictitious Illness Syndrome. Your view was that this was a misdiagnosis, designed to cover up medical negligence. Impervious to debate, convinced you are right, you have traduced, complained about and harried dedicated professional people working in this difficult area. I do not punish you for that, let me make it clear, however tiresome and eccentric your views are, the toleration afforded to you who expressed them, by those who hear them, is part of the price we gladly pay for living in a liberal democracy.

  What is unforgivable is the way in which you manipulated for your own … purposes, the genuine distress of the [XXXX] family … I have no doubt … that you were the architect, the Svengali of the whole plan. As the Court of Appeal Criminal Division pointed out … those who act as you and they did commit a serious offence, especially where what is done is to thwart the orders of the Court in respect of a child or proceedings taken in respect of a child, by removing the child from the jurisdiction of theCourt and assisting the continuing absence of that child from the jurisdiction.

  What you are being punished for is orchestrating an abduction of a child, in part at least for your own propaganda purposes; an abduction which lasted over a month… The very least sentence I can pass upon you, Penelope Mellor, is two years’ imprisonment.” [Her sentence was later reduced on appeal to 18 months' imprisonment.]

But not least, we cannot understand how you can appoint Mrs Mellor to the expert group when she herself has been engaged by parents whose complaints you are currently hearing in a fitness to practise panel in relation to David Southall. We believe that the GMC and its fitness to practise panels have already been unduly influenced by the campaign Mrs Mellor has been a major contributor to. Now she may again exert undue influence and make false representations within your expert group.

We have no objection to the inclusion of critics in the expert group, but by including Mrs Mellor and giving her credence, we consider that the GMC denigrates the work of doctors involved in child protection.

Cite as: BMJ 2010;341:c3884

John M Bridson, retired paediatrician, and chair², Martin Samuels, paediatrician, and member², Nigel Speight, paediatrician, and member², Catherine Williams, retired academic lawyer, and member²

Competing interests: The authors are members of PACA (Professionals Against Child Abuse), www.paca.org.uk. PACA was set up to support professionals, to share information, and to try to provide a more positive view of safeguarding in the media and as a result enable children and families to receive better care.

References

1. Dyer C. Child abuse experts “astonished” that convicted doctors’ critic is in guidance group. BMJ 2010;341:c3788. (14 July)

2. PACA (Professionals Against Child Abuse), www.paca.org.uk