JAYDEN WRAY CASE
Shaken baby sin-drom
The death of baby Jayden Wray in 2009 from complications linked to rickets and
the decision to charge his innocent parents with murder exposed staggering
incompetence and bloody-minded intransigence at the
Metropolitan Police, two
London hospitals, and among forensic pathologists and social workers at
Islington council.
Jayden's parents were acquitted in December and the case prompted much media coverage. But what escaped scrutiny is the role of the police in driving a prosecution which came close to ending in a massive miscarriage of justice. Central to the scandal is so-called "shaken baby syndrome" (SBS). Following the deaths of Victoria Climbie and Baby P, police and social workers are terrified of taking the flak for another child protection failure. This has led to the automatic assumption that all small children with broken bones must be victims of abuse - and a failure to consider other possible causes.
The Jayden case revealed Knacker's unhealthy dependence on a small number of influential pathologists and other specialists who adhere to SBS dogma, and the lengths the Met is prepared to go to secure the conviction of suspected parents. The Met convinced itself and the press that baby Jayden was another Baby P - and that this time there would be no catalogue of blunders. Knacker began by trying to influence the direction of the postmortem by getting in place a pathologist likely to support a charge of murder. The Met sent at least three delegations of officers of ever-increasing rank to put pressure on the deputy coroner for St Pancras, Dr Shirley Radcliffe. They demanded Knacker's own choice of pathologist, Professor Tony Risdon (see Eye 1285), a well-known supporter of SBS and a member of a strange collective called Forensic Pathology Services (FPS). Little is known about FPS. Not registered as a limited company, it has premises on an industrial estate in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. As it appears to file no company accounts, it is impossible to see how much public money it receives via Knacker. It is thought to be a significant amount. It has a contract with the Met and other forces to provide forensic pathologists for postmortems and as "expert witnesses" at trials where parents are accused of abusing or murdering their children.
Its members are almost all adherents to the SBS theory. Knacker's over-reliance on FPS has caused dismay to a number of coroners in London and the South East. In the Jayden case, the St Pancras coroner's office rebuffed the Met's bullying and decided - despite threats of an injunction - to appoint Dr. Irene Scheimberg [ a Jew - see Irene Scheimberg - Transcript Summary ] as the postmortem pathologist. She is one of the few paediatric pathologists in London, specialising in postmortems on babies. In the past three years her unit has conducted around 2,000 such autopsies, of which Scheimberg has conducted half personally. She is also sceptical of SBS, so she is not favoured by the Met and the pathologists at FPS. Having failed to get Risdon, detectives insisted that another pathologist, Dr Nat Carey, attend the autopsy. The deputy coroner agreed. Knacker also wanted to subcontract examination of the baby's eyes to ophthalmologist Dr Richard Bonshek, another who supports the SBS theory. But the coroner's office insisted the eyes were also examined by Professor Phil Luthert, probably the UK's most brilliant eye pathologist and a much more neutral figure in the SBS battle. The coroner's office also ignored the Met's insistence that neuron-pathologist Dr Safe Al-Sara, another SBS believer, also participate. Predictably the pathologists split along party lines. Bonshek was convinced that Jayden's retinal hemorrhage was the result of trauma, possibly inflicted; Luthert was much more equivocal. Carey declared it categorically a case of SBS, stating there was "prima facie evidence that this is an example of paediatric head injury of the shaking/impact type". Scheimberg disagreed completely. She found no evidence of trauma or any external injury consistent with shaking and discovered the rickets that had eluded three consultants at University College Hospital and two consultants plus three radiologists at Great Ormond St. She also insisted on testing the mother who was found to have severe vitamin D deficiency. Not surprisingly, Knacker sided with Carey, Bonshek and the parents' accusers at GOSH and UCH - and so a case that should never have gone to court ended up more than two harrowing years later being thrown out by a judge at the Old Bailey.
Private Eye | Official Site
A beautiful baby?
Tony
Risdon Whines After Being Caught Out
Alleged expert moans about being distrusted.
Met Accused Of 'Campaign' Against Shaken Baby Witnesses
QUOTE
Three leading pathologists have accused the Metropolitan
Police of attempting to discredit them as expert witnesses in so-called Shaken
Baby court cases.
About 250 Non-Accidental Head Injury (NAHI) cases go to court every year,
with the outcome often relying on a expert testimony from pathologists. The Royal College of Pathologists has called for an inquiry into the
claims. Responding to the allegations, the Met said the force was "completely
committed to the judicial process". The scientific debate over NAHI has grown increasingly acrimonious over the
past 10 years...........
Now, senior consultant pathologists have accused the Metropolitan Police
and others of an orchestrated strategy to discredit them as expert witnesses
for parents and carers accused of murdering their children. Dr Waney Squier,
Dr.
Irene Scheimberg [ a Jew - see
Irene Scheimberg - Transcript Summary ], Dr Marta Cohen say their evidence
is based on a speech made by Detective Inspector Colin Welsh, a lead
investigator with the Met's Child Abuse Investigation Command.
The BBC has obtained a version of the speech made at the 11th International
Shaken Baby conference in Atlanta, September 2010. In this speech, DI Welsh referred to a meeting in 2008 attended by
representatives of the police, medical experts and CPS officials at which the
"impact and effect of contradictory expert evidence" was discussed. The Met
has confirmed the meeting took place but said it was standard procedure
following an acquittal in a court case. According to a note by a Seattle-based lawyer called Heather Kirkwood, DI
Welsh talked about the failure of a number of high profile Shaken Baby
prosecutions and stated the number one problem as "defence expert testimony".
He suggested as tactics to question everything about them - qualifications,
employment history, testimony research papers presented by these experts, and
even going to their expert bodies "to see if we turn up anything". DI Welsh is also reported to have referred to "judicial inexperience",
using the term "so deal with back door" apparently in reference to relaying
concern to judges about expert witnesses. A police spokesman confirmed that DI Welsh had given the speech but added
that The Metropolitan Police Service "is completely committed to the judicial
process and would never seek to improperly influence it". Complaints The pathologists, however, say they were all the subject of inquiries by
outside bodies initiated by the Metropolitan Police and others. Dr Squier, who works at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, was the
subject of two separate inquiries last year. The Human Tissue Authority investigated a complaint that Dr Squier may have
retained human tissue, a criminal act if true. The accusation was found to be
without foundation. The complainant was identified as an officer with the Met. DI Welsh appeared as an "interested party" in a second inquiry by the
General Medical Council into Dr Squier and Dr Cohen. The GMC inquiries resulted in both doctors being brought before emergency
Interim Orders Panels, but proved inconclusive. The Human Tissue Authority also conducted an inquiry into Dr Scheimberg
following a complaint from a colleague based at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
She was also cleared. Professor Tony Risdon often acts for prosecution teams and made his
complaint about Dr Scheimberg based on information from a third party but
which he personally could not verify. He declined to comment when approached
by the BBC. Investigation call Dr Squier defends the evidence she gives, saying a court "should be able to
hear evidence for both prosecution and for a defence and that anybody who has
a valid and sincere opinion should be given the opportunity to express that
opinion in court". "And it appears to me that there has been an attempt to remove from the
courts all of those people who are willing to challenge the mainstream
hypothesis, even if those opinions are sincerely held and are based on a lot
of day-to-day experience and are based on a thorough grounding in the current
evidence available in the scientific literature." A spokesman said the Metropolitan Police Service had registered concerns
"about certain practices of a doctor in December 2009" but declined to comment
on the reasons. "We are aware of a report registered by the National Policing Improvement
Agency with the General Medical Council regarding two doctors. The MPS has
co-operated with a request from the GMC in June 2010 to provide any relevant
information," the spokesman added. Professor Peter Furness, President of the Royal College of Pathologists,
expressed concern about the allegations of a campaign. "The allegations that there has been a systematic attempt to intimidate
people from presenting their honestly held views to a court should be
investigated," he says. "I would normally suggest that should be investigated by the police, in
this case at least some of the allegations it appears the police have been
involved in it. "There are processes for conducting investigations into police activity. It
sounds to me from what I've been told that those mechanisms should probably be
used. "My concerns about this are as a private citizen not as president of the
Royal College of Pathologists. I think anybody who feels the process of
justice is being illegitimately subverted ought to feel concerned and ought to
try to do something about it." The BBC approached a significant number of pathologists who act for
prosecution teams. They all declined a request for an interview, some saying
they too had been the subject of threats and complaints.
Vitamin Deficiency Brings Back Forgotten Diseases
Doubt over 'shaken baby' theory
that has sent dozens of ...
UNQUOTE
The
prosecution witnesses claim that they are the victims of threats but give no
reason to believe. The defence witness really are being threatened by police.
That is another issue apparently.
