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#Post#: 41--------------------------------------------------
How social workers took away our children
By: Montraviatommygun Date: March 10, 2011, 6:46 am
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How social workers took away our children for 11 months without
a shred of evidence
By SUE REID
Last updated at 20:52pm on 9th May 2008
Enjoying the sunshine at a park near their home, the Aston
family cling closely to each other as if to make sure they will
never be prised apart again.
Jodie, a bubbly ten-year-old, entwines her arms around her
brother, Luke, who was 12 last Thursday, while both children
smile fondly at their parents, Craig and Donna.
Yet the happy scene is full of poignancy. Until very recently,
this Yorkshire couple were trapped in what a High Court judge
described this week as "every parent's nightmare".
For an interminable 11 months, Jodie and Luke were removed from
their home because their parents faced accusations from doctors
of the most hideous crime imaginable: sexually molesting their
own daughter.
They were permitted to visit their children only under strict
supervision, for just three hours a week. All letters which they
sent to Jodie and Luke were vetted by social workers - making
them feel like criminals.
What's more, they were cruelly ordered not to say "I love you"
to either boy or girl. Throughout this ordeal, the couple always
protested their innocence and were relieved beyond belief. When
Mr Justice Holman cleared them of any wrongdoing. He ordered the
children's return, insisting that his ruling be made public so
lessons are learned by doctors, social workers and lawyers
working in the child protection service.
In a landmark judgment, he warned that even two decades after
the infamous Cleveland child abuse scandal, parents are still
being wrongly accused of molesting their sons and daughters.
The Cleveland controversy was Britain's biggest and first mass
child abuse scare.
In 1987, 121 children were taken into state care in North-East
England over five months after abuse was diagnosed on the basis
of physical examinations carried out by a controversial
paediatrician called Marietta Higgs.
The parents were often wrongly condemned - just like the Astons
today - without their children being listened to or their family
background being taken into account.
The doctors in the Eighties had relied on the discredited sign
called Reflex Anal Dilatation (RAD), said to indicate sexual
abuse.
Last year, the controversial sign was condemned as unreliable by
the Government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, who
admitted that its use had led to mistakes in Cleveland.
Everyone hoped the lessons had been learnt from Cleveland. But
now the shocking extent of young Jodie Aston's ordeal is
becoming clear, it seems that is tragically not the case.
Mr Justice Holman said it was inevitable that Jodie was now
"emotionally damaged" by her experiences.
After the private hearing at Leeds High Court, he said: "Unless
there is clear diagnostic evidence of abuse (for example, the
presence of semen or a foreign body internally), purely medical
assessments and opinions should not be allowed to predominate.
Even 20 years after Cleveland, I wonder if the lessons have
fully been learned." The importance of this judgment cannot be
overstated. Jodie's father, a 33-year-old railway signals'
engineer, courageously agreed to talk for the first time about
the case.
He said: "I hope the judge's words will rein in doctors, and
help other parents accused of sexually abusing their children
without any real proof." What happened to the Aston family seems
incredible in 21st-century England. They are now seeking legal
advice in the hope that the General Medical Council, the
doctors' disciplinary body, will investigate their case.
Yesterday, Leeds' Safeguarding Children's Board launched a
review into Jodie's case, saying "all relevant, accurate facts"
must be taken into account in future child abuse inquiries.
Officials said it was too early to reveal how many other
children have been taken into care or even adopted, as a result
of suspected sexual abuse over recent years.
However, the Mail is aware of two other families in the city who
have had their children removed, largely on the basis of the RAD
testing technique, yet who insist they are entirely innocent.
The Astons' nightmare began when they took Jodie, then aged
eight, to Leeds General Infirmary's casualty department on a
Monday evening in August 2005. She had scraped her groin on a
small wall while playing with friends.
She was examined by doctors in Leeds at least eight times.
Photographs and videos - later shown in court - were taken of
her naked body again and again.
The girl was referred to the community paediatrics department at
the city's St James's University Hospital on the following
Thursday. Nothing was found to be amiss after an intimate
examination. But two months later, Jodie was changing into her
pyjamas after school when her mother saw a spot of blood on her
pants.
Jodie, who was prone to eczema and had visible raw splits in the
skin of her hands and arms, was again taken to casualty before
being referred for a second time to the paediatrics unit at St
James's.
The hospital has a busy child protection team, overseen by the
respected paediatric consultant Dr Christopher Hobbs.
Significantly, he is an original pioneer of the RAD technique in
this country. In June 1986, just a year before the Cleveland
controversy broke, Dr Hobbs and his colleague Jane Wynne
introduced young Marietta Higgs to this new way of diagnosing
child molestation during a Leeds' medical conference.
By looking at and probing a child's bottom, the paediatricians
claimed they could see if there was reflex anal dilatation and -
therefore - abuse.
Dr Higgs enthusiastically embraced the technique, provoking the
Cleveland crisis.
However, 80 per cent of the "victims" were later returned to
their parents because they had not been hurt at all.
Since then, the nagging doubts about the technique have grown.
Today, it is well-known that RAD can appear normally and
spontaneously in any child.
According to some paediatricians - notably an expert named
Professor Astrid Hegar from America, where RAD has been
abandoned in some states - half of all children who have not
been sexually abused show the same "tell-tale" sign when their
bottoms are examined.
That means, of course, that almost any family taking their child
to hospital or the doctor's surgery can be accused of child
abuse.
Yet in Britain, many child doctors - including Dr Hobbs - rely
on the technique as an important piece of many pieces in the
jigsaw of diagnosing child abuse.
Even before 1987 - at the height of the Cleveland crisis - both
Hobbs and Wynne were discovering high numbers of child sex abuse
cases in Leeds by using RAD.
According to the doctors' research, published in the medical
journal The Lancet, 94 boys and 243 girls were diagnosed as
sexual abuse victims in a previous two-year period. The paper -
still quoted in medical literature - says that eight in ten of
the boys, and a quarter of the girls, had "anal signs".
Astonishingly, in half of all cases, the abusers were deemed to
be the children's natural father and - even more bizarrely -
five per cent were women. A quarter of the Leeds adults involved
were convicted by the courts. The two doctors wrote at the time:
"Sexual abuse is emerging as a major child and mental health
problem." So it was against this background - in a city whose
medical establishments were at the centre of the RAD debate -
that Jodie Aston was taken by her mother to hospital. It was the
first of many visits and, during one, on November 24, 2005, she
met Dr Hobbs.
Although he did not physically examine Jodie, at the end of the
appointment he and a fellow paediatrician said that they
suspected child abuse. It was a terrible moment for Jodie's
mother, Donna.
She says today: "I couldn't believe it. I began to cry. I walked
out of there not knowing what to think. Jodie saw that I was
quiet, and thought she had done something wrong. I waited in the
car park for Craig to come and pick us up.
"I asked Jodie if her Daddy had done anything to her. She said
"no" and I believed her. But when I got in the car, Craig saw
that I had been crying. He asked me what was wrong and I just
mumbled something about child abuse because I didn't want to
upset Jodie." At home, after the children had gone to bed, Donna
had to ask her husband a question that no wife should have to.
Craig said he had not touched his daughter.
"I was being accused of something worse than murder," Craig said
this week.
"From that point, we began to watch the children like hawks.
"We did not allow them even to go to the shops nearby. Luke said
we were treating them like babies," added Donna, 34. However,
the family remained under suspicion. Donna was told by the
authorities that she was also considered the potential abuser of
her daughter.
The following March, Jodie faced another assessment with Dr
Hobbs. Just a few weeks earlier, she had again come home with a
small blood spot on her pants.
This time, the paediatrician conducted a physical examination,
which included RAD. He wrote in his report afterwards: "I feel
that the time has come for me to involve social services,
because I am concerned about the possibility that she may have
been sexually abused."
The family were trapped. The doctors ignored Donna's suggestion
that eczema might be the cause of the blood spots. Meanwhile,
social workers began visiting the family regularly.
Overwhelmed with worry, Craig and Donna were advised to get an
independent second medical opinion on Jodie's condition.
Therefore, their GP arranged for a doctor called Ruth Skelton to
examine their daughter. This proved to be a disastrous move.
Dr Skelton had been trained by Dr Hobbs. As Mr Justice Holman
commented in his judgment: "In my view, the selection of her was
deeply regrettable. Dr Skelton lacked the complete independence
that is required for a second opinion in these sorts of
circumstances.
"She was being asked to review the previous opinion of someone
who was a more senior colleague, then working daily at the same
hospital, and who had been her own teacher."
It emerged that Dr Skelton had discussed Jodie's case with Dr
Hobbs before the so-called independent examination took place in
March last year.
Dr Skelton concluded that she could spot RAD. According to her
report, she said that Jodie had "been sexually abused
chronically, over a long period, both anally and probably
vaginally . . . I feel that this child is not protected at all
at present." Both Jodie and her elder brother, Luke, were taken
away from the parents the same day. It was arranged that they
would live with their maternal grandparents, aged 77 and 78,
three miles away from their home in Armley, a suburb of Leeds.
Donna still finds it hard to relate the story as she sits with
the children and Craig in the family's neat sitting room.
She says: "The social workers came at 9.30am to tell us they
wanted to remove Jodie and Luke. It was a Thursday. Jodie and
Luke were at school. They never came home for almost a year.
"I packed a few things for the first night: toothbrushes,
pyjamas, a big bear toy that was Jodie's favourite. Then I had
to come home alone.
"Craig was in a worse state than me. I thought he was going to
harm himself. We woke up in night crying. We hugged each other
because it was as if the children were dead."
This week, she said: "There were more tears, but we had to cope
for the sake of the children. On Christmas Day last year, we
were only allowed to see them for one hour." Yet the family's
fortunes were changing.
Craig's lawyers had instructed the American paediatrician,
Professor Hegar, to give her views. She has examined 40,000
children for suspected abuse during a 28-year career. She
believes that a family's history - and a host of other factors -
are vital when deciding if a child has been molested.
Professor Hegar studied the medical reports and photographs of
Jodie. She said: "I believe that the medical examiners in this
case have relied heavily on Reflex Anal Dilatation as diagnostic
of sexual abuse.
"This is a common finding in up to 49 per cent of children who
have not been abused. There is no research ... that supports the
use of RAD as a sensitive or specific finding for sexual abuse."
Professor Hegar also suggested that dermatologists should
examine Jodie to find another cause of her bleeding. One skin
expert diagnosed that a small split in her skin, caused by
eczema, may have produced the suspect spots of blood on Jodie's
underwear.
Her crucial views were also heard by video link during the
hearing into Jodie's case. Afterwards, Mr Justice Holman said
Donna and Craig Aston are intelligent, responsible parents.
During the hearing, he met both their "bright and well-mannered"
children, giving them chocolate biscuits and talking to them for
nearly an hour.
Jodie told him that no one had touched her at home, or at
primary school. Her brother Luke declared, quite spontaneously,
that it was "all a big mistake".
He added: "We have got the best mum and dad. Why would they
abuse my little sister?"
Both of the Aston children said they loved their parents dearly
and only wanted to go home. Now, at last, thanks to an
enlightened judge, they have finally got their wish.
But how many other families who suffered similarly disgraceful
misdiagnoses, more than 20 years after it had been presumed the
lessons of Cleveland had been learnt, are still fighting to
clear their names?
(HTM) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=565183&in_page_id=1879
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