We've written a number of times about the scandalous treatment of innocent parents when accused of mistreating their children. Social workers, medics and the CPS are so alarmed at the prospect of being criticised for inaction in cases of genuine child abuse that they are happy to persecute almost any parents on the flimsiest evidence. It's as if they genuinely believe the ridiculous mantra that always crops up - “if it saves the life of just one child ...”
What these addle-brained do-gooders ... no, let's correct that; they're not do-gooders, they're just guarding their own backs ... what these addle-brained so-called “experts” fail to recognise is that their actions don't save the life of just one child. Only today the papers carried the story of the conviction for murder of a 37-year-old Scottish mother who was found guilty of “wilfully ill-treating, neglecting and abandoning the toddler and exposing him in a manner that was likely to cause him suffering or injury to his health. She left him alone for 'excessive' periods of time and failed to provide him with adequate nourishment and fluids”. She then successfully concealed the child's death for eight months before anyone noticed. Nice one, experts. It's really working, isn't it?
And make no mistake, the consequences of this wilful failure by those who are employed to protect children are tragic, whether they get it wrong because the abuse was genuine and they didn't pick up on it, or whether there was no abuse at all. The little Scottish baby suffered and died unnecessarily. And the three children of the Cromer couple we wrote about four or five years ago also suffered unjustly when they were snatched from their innocent and loving parents and sent for adoption. By the time it was revealed that the injuries to one of the children were caused by a genetic weakness well-known and properly documented in their extended family, the process of adoption was complete and irrevocable and those children were lost for ever. Still, we say again, if it saves the life of just one child, it's worth visiting untold distress and cruelty on whole families, isn't it?
One innocent family that were treated cruelly by our legal system recently were Rohan and Chana Wray. They were accused at the Old Bailey of beating and shaking their own baby, Jayden, to death, when all they were guilty of was giving him a really silly name.
According to prosecutors, four-month-old Jayden Wray was gripped and twisted so brutally that bones throughout his body shattered, while vicious blows to his head damaged his brain. The injured baby was rushed to hospital where doctors said he could not survive. Three days later, paediatricians at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London switched off his life-support machine.
So certain were doctors and police that Jayden had been hurt by his parents that the couple were barred from their son’s bedside before he died. They were not allowed to attend his hospital christening and lost the chance to say their last goodbyes.
Fortunately, after a six week trial, common sense prevailed and case against them was thrown out after 60 medical and forensic experts disagreed over what really killed the child. Finally, the judge told the jury to find the couple not guilty because Jayden’s post-mortem revealed he had rickets, a serious childhood bone disease which had once been eradicated in this country nearly a century ago.
Rickets is linked to a lack of vitamin D, which the body synthesises from sunlight or absorbs from eating foods such as oily fish and eggs. The disease causes the skulls of children to weaken and their bones to easily break — symptoms which closely mimic those of a deliberately shaken baby.
Hospital doctors had missed a vital clue when the baby got sick and died. His mother had so little vitamin D in her body that Jayden did not receive the vitamin while inside her womb or when she breastfed him.
Theirs is a case which has profound implications for all families. For it serves to highlight a growing medical problem — one which is not only leading to false allegations of abuse against innocent parents, but which is endangering the health of children right across Britain. As their lawyer said: ‘The real criminality here is that if the money spent on bringing this case had been used to tell all breastfeeding mothers to take vitamin D supplements, Jayden’s death wouldn’t have occurred. ‘Rickets, which is now back to epidemic proportions, would have been wiped out.’
Indeed, a growing number of experts believe that Britain is in the grip of a childhood rickets crisis on a scale not seen since Victorian times, when children working long hours in the factories and the mines were particularly vulnerable to the ailment. The condition was largely eliminated after World War II, when the government provided free orange juice enriched with vitamin D and cod liver oil for every child in the country. The difference today is that it is not only a disease of the poor. Those living in middle-class homes are just as likely to suffer from the condition — notorious for causing bowed legs and knock-knees — as those from the poorest inner-city estates.
Doctors at Southampton General Hospital recently found 40 per cent of children from all backgrounds being treated in the orthopaedic department had a shortage of vitamin D in their bodies — and were, therefore, prone to rickets. The crisis, said orthopaedic consultant Nicholas Clarke, was ‘reminiscent of 17th-century England.’
The statistics speak for themselves: cases of childhood rickets have increased five-fold in 15 years. Last year, more than 760 babies and youngsters were admitted to hospital showing signs of the condition. At the same time, recent research among primary care trusts found that the number of children under ten admitted to hospital with rickets leapt by 140 per cent between 2001 and 2009.
Doctors say the alarming rise is often due to today’s children spending large periods of time indoors playing computer games and watching television. At the same time, many parents worry about exposing their children to sunlight — due to the repeated warnings about skin cancer — and cover them in high-protection creams, which impede the body’s ability to produce vitamin D and, in turn, to grow strong bones. If children are deprived of the vitamin, they are at great risk of developing rickets and their immune system is weakened. A diet of junk food, instead of vitamin D-rich meat, liver, eggs and oily fish, is also blamed for the crisis.
As Gillian Killiner, of the British Dietetic Association, said recently: ‘We have taken it for granted that skin cancer is the big problem and overlooked the vitamin D side of things. Children are covered up with sunblock, T-shirts and hats, and that can be important — but it can go too far. We don’t have a lot of sun in this country, and in winter you are likely to be lacking vitamin D. If you haven’t built up enough in the summer, that’s going to be a certainty.’
But until now, few have pointed out one of the most worrying aspects of the crisis: babies with a vitamin D deficiency display remarkably similar symptoms to those who have been deliberately shaken by their parents or carers. This may have led to other controversial criminal trials of parents accused of harming their children when — like the Wrays — they were completely innocent.
Earlier this year, Nafisa and Mohammed Karolia, of Blackburn, Lancashire, were imprisoned for child cruelty despite their defence team arguing that vitamin D depletion led to their baby daughter’s injuries and subsequent death from broncho-pneumonia, aged seven months, in 2009. The Karolias were accused of inflicting many terrible injuries on the child, including breaking her leg, her arm, and her rib. The police and prosecution lawyers said they had been caused by twisting, shaking and rotating the child’s limbs.
However, a very senior paediatric consultant who has examined evidence given at the trial has given his opinion that ‘it is very likely that there was an issue here with low levels of vitamin D in the mother and her daughter. But it appears that when it was mentioned in court, the prosecution nearly had a fit because they insisted this child had been shaken and abused.’
Now one coroner has become so alarmed by the rise of rickets that he has demanded the Government take action. North London Coroner Andrew Walker sent a written notice to the Department of Health, under Rule 43 of the Coroner’s Rules, saying mothers must be warned of the dangers of not taking the vitamin D supplements. The notice requires the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to respond within 56 days, detailing what action his department plans to take.
Mr Walker acted after presiding over the inquest into the death of three-month-old Milind Agarwal. The baby was taken to the doctor this summer with a suspected viral infection and was sent home with saline nasal drops. A later call to another doctor by his parents resulted in them being told to give him paracetamol. When Milind became critically ill at 10pm one evening in July this year, his parents called an ambulance and he was taken to Northwick Park Hospital in North London. A few hours later, he died of septic inflammation of the heart and associated problems.
An eminent paediatric pathologist and a leading authority on signs of child abuse, Dr Irene Scheimberg, who conducted a post-mortem examination on baby Milind, told the inquest that vitamin D deficiency may have accelerated the baby’s illness because his immune system was weakened. She said ‘I hope that the doctors treating sick children now open their eyes to this vitamin deficiency and the problems it causes. It is a really serious issue and a matter of justice for parents who are accused of abusing their children.’
Research has shown that those with darker complexions process vitamin D from sunlight much more slowly than people with paler skin and are, therefore, prone to deficiency — and more likely to pass it on to their babies.
By coincidence it was Dr Scheimberg who also helped clear the parents of Jayden Wray.
The prosecution insisted that Jayden’s injuries to his skull, knee, elbow, shoulder, hip, ankle and wrist could only have been caused by him being intentionally shaken and having his head hit against something hard. However, a post-mortem examination by Dr Scheimberg discovered Jayden’s ‘obvious sign of rickets. It would have left the baby with weak bones, including a weak skull, and led to a series of fractures’.
She is appalled at the way that these innocent parents have been treated. ‘Some people should be hanging their heads,’ she said. ‘These young parents were stopped from even saying goodbye to their child before he died, and then accused of murdering him.’
We say this to anyone from the child protection industry who continues to bleat about being “damned if we do, damned if we don't”: what we expect from you is that you get it right. This is not an unreasonable expectation. You're paid to get it right. You are, supposedly, trained to get it right. We expect lots of workers to get their jobs right, and mostly they do.
We expect that when we pick up our new car from the dealer, its wheels will turn, its brakes will work and it'll stay on the road. We expect that our train driver will remember to stop at the red signals, and he does. We hurl ourselves through the sky in a metal tube on our way to holidays in Magaluf or Miami, trusting that the plane-makers have done their job properly and that the pilot knows what he's doing. We assume that our bank will not lose our money. We expect that clean water will come out when we turn the tap. We're surprised and irritated if the lights don't come on when we flick the switch.
That's all we expect from you, child-protection experts. We just expect you to do your job, same as the rest of us. Don't complain that it's difficult; lots of us have very difficult jobs to do. Thrashing blindly about in the hope that sometimes you'll be on target is not good enough. We don't expect our train driver to stop at some red lights and some green ones just in case: we expect him to get it right every single time.
So ... stop bleating about how hard it is, and get on with it. And get it right!
The GOS says: Here's a thought. I bet if the Wrays could actually afford to sue the doctors and the police for defamation of character, child kidnap or wrongful arrest or whatever, we'd soon see some changes in policy and performance.
But they can't, of course. Legal recourse is only for the rich and famous these days. And that's another story, isn't it ....?
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