Hi,

This kind of shows the attitude of those experts determined to keep this myth going…

‘Shaken baby’ cases rarely prosecuted

A new study by a Sydney doctor has found fewer than half the people who inflict head injuries on children are charged for their crime.

Dr Amanda Stephens studied 68 children treated by the child protection unit at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney between 1997 and 2005.

Prosecutions were launched in only 27 cases - less than half. Twenty-three were convicted of crimes ranging from neglect to murder, and almost all had confessed to injuring their child.

Dr Stephens says the main reason for the lack of charges is it is often difficult to identify the perpetrator. (Hang on I thought they confessed - also your sayng that someone DID do it - how do you know - aspart from the confession of course)

She says families generally close ranks (I can’t think why - maybe its because you call them child abusers or killers) Doctors call them Non Accidental Head injuries and that can pose other challenges for authorities.

“If you don’t know who did it and you are not able to sort of make that decision, it can be very hard to decide whether that child should be returned to the family or whether they should be removed,” she said.

“Obviously removing children results in risks as well because you are sticking them in foster care etcetera,” she said.

Dr Stephens says all of the children she was able to trace after the study had problems, ranging from blindness to mild development delay.

But she says greater prosecutions would not help reduce the incidence of Shaken Baby Syndrome.

“In many cases it is possible to work particularly with the non-offending parent to try to keep that child within the family and to give that family support,” she said.

So which parent do you pick to prosecute, draw lots? OR what???

Dr Stephens’ position is endorsed by the chairman of the Abused Child Foundation, Dr David Wood, who is also the head of paediatrics at Brisbane’s Mater Children’s Hospital.

“Whether you prosecute to raise the profile of child abuse and its adverse consequences or you really just try to improve the community’s awareness that child abuse is everybody’s business, then it becomes everybody’s business to step in and help a family that is having difficulties,” Dr Wood said.

I think business is the key word - its big business for some, and they cloud it ll for all the genuine ones out there…

Its amazing how these Doctors, see it, say it and its a done deal…without ever having to prove as thing!

Hi,

Whilst surfing the ‘tinterweb’ thing, found this oldie but goodie from the witch trials that were Cleveland, I had forgottenthat 2 people had killed themselves in jail…now ask how many people were brought to account for their deaths….you won’t need to count too much.

Anyway few comments in the next article I thought you may like…

This shameful episode in mass hysteria, as we now know, became known as the ‘Cleveland Scandal’; the president of the British Paediatric Association, John Forfar, condemned Dr Higgs’ technique, carefully stating what every qualified doctor should have known anyway: that new diagnostic methods had to become carefully established within the profession before being routinely used, an inevitably cautious and lengthy process requiring the presentation of scientific evidence, publication in peer-reviewed professional journals and critical discussion in scientific meetings (26). Interestingly, and barely imaginably from today’s perspective, amongst the first to express scepticism about the sheer deluge of child sexual abuse incidents supposedly being ‘uncovered’ in Cleveland were the police. This was, of course, before they had set up new organisations – police forces within police forces, with highly arcane (and deeply questionable) ‘specialist’ knowledge-bases and media-savvy self-promotional ambitions - to launch child porn/paedo-slaying witch-hunts.

Britain’s most senior female judge, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, concluded her government-appointed inquiry with severe condemnation of the social workers’ techniques. Of the 121 cases identified by Dr Higgs as obvious examples of sexual abuse, only four resulted in successful prosecution. 80 per cent were dismissed by the courts on the grounds that the accusations were plainly false. Two defendants hanged themselves in Durham gaol.

Chillingly, the award-winning investigative journalist Richard Webster suggests that Butler-Sloss’s conclusions have actively paved the way for further abuses rather than curtailed them. Her report criticised naïve, over-zealous and under-qualified individual professionals, not the ideology of ‘disclosure’ or the use of ‘disclosure therapy’ as such, with the result that the inquiry censured merely the most egregious abuses (such as the most flagrantly intimidating leading questions and the grossly inept use of anatomically correct dolls). She advocated more inter-agency ‘working together.’ But working together on a fundamentally flawed premise is likely to multiply injustice and abuse, not limit it.

Butler-Sloss did not have at her disposal the work of the ground-breaking research into children’s suggestibility by psychologists such as Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck (their work was the winner of the prestigious William James Book Award in 2000) (27), nor was she to know that subsequent scientific assessment of the reflex anal dilatation test would show it to be without any empirical foundation: 121 families were irretrievably shattered on the basis of groundless bull*bleep*. But most disturbingly of all, as Webster brings out in his article, “The unintended outcome has been that the very people responsible for the Cleveland affair have been able to perpetuate their practices and are now established in universities and at the centre of the child protection system as experts, policy advisers and trainers.” (28)

In repudiating disclosure therapy, we do not have to suppose that every traumatic memory is false. Clearly, the children dragged from their beds in the Cleveland scandal were cruelly abused by professionals acting in the grip of a fanatical delusion and it is most important that the viciousness facilitated by such catastrophic paranoia is not forgotten

I haven’t forgotten and will do what I can to make sure those that need to be reminded are reminded!

Iain

Hi,

Beaking news a case from the South Coast, a family court case is set to be withdrawn after months and months of pain for the family concerned.

The only ‘expert’ used was Stoodley, who was used in our nightmare, the defence teams representing Mum and Dad (they have to have their own teams) called more.

Its like our case in reverse. We didn’t call many experts, but as someone has said before me, being innocent is actually not enough - how sad is that?! But there you go, we are not the first and probably not the last, but I am damn well sure that it will be harder for them to con juries and the like in the future.

Thankfully more and more people are starting to stand up, after being put through this nightmare, there are a lot of us out there and I do hope they all decide to stand up and say ‘no more’. The Prosecution experts are making many enemies out there…

Your time is up boys….

You can give in gracefully or go down with the ship…your call

Tomorrow hopefully will see the formal withdrawal of this case and allow the family to move on and get on with living.

Stay safe and not long to go now just over two months before our turn… can’t wait….

Hi,

Sat in the car this morning I heard on LBC Radio, that a teacher is going through the mill for dragging a child out of their class after he refused to stop telling a racist joke. He is now potentially ruined for life. What do you do,let the little so and so go on? They need more training and support I can see before long that all classrooms and teachers will be fitted with cctv.

Then on tonights news stories about child protection, can’t recruit staff and there is a high level of sickness. Very sad. There needs to be some bits sorted out but it can be sorted.

I wouldn’t want to do their jobs at the mo, they need more support, training and protection. As there are other government bodies who get a lot more support.

The shocking cases of the evil woman from Plymouth show how we need to be on guard, but not paranoid. Not everyone out there is like that. So many things to sensibly sort out no knee jerks. Which reminds me (well part of that last message does) I hear certain experts will no longer be used by the Police/CPS.

About time to if its true. But we don’t need newer versions coming in and giving their unproven theories either, try not to go frying pan to fire! Check them out. Before letting them loose.

Its been weird listening to the tv and radio of late, and we folks are as bad, as so many times people say things like ‘we have an expert coming in to talk about….’. Everyone is an expert….but are they?

Anyway there are other cases ongoing so spare a thought for those being subjected to this nightmare.

Meanwhile, our new doggie addition has been with us over a week now and is settling in well, we don’t know much about her background but she is responding well to training. And has become a much loved member of the household, I am training her to sniff out with her expert nose - dodgy experts. She seems to go mad when she is near the copies of the experts reports submitted by the dark side, thats working then!

Stay safe