TRANSCRIPT OF "FILE ON 4"
CURRENT AFFAIRS GROUP
TRANSMISSION: Tuesday 2nd July 2002 2000 - 2040
REPEAT: Sunday 7th July 2002 1700 - 1740
REPORTER: John Sweeney
PRODUCER: Andy Denwood
EDITOR: David Ross
PROGRAMME NUMBER: 02VY3027LHO
1


THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED
FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE
DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC
CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY.
FILE ON 4
Transmission: Tuesday 2nd July 2002
Repeat: Sunday 7th July 2002
Producer: Andy Denwood
Reporter: John Sweeney
Editor: David Ross


SWEENEY: There is perhaps no crime more terrible than a mother killing 
her baby. But what if the child died a natural cot death and the mother 
is charged with a murder that didn’t actually happen? Tonight on File 
on 4 we reveal fresh evidence that challenges the safety of the conviction 
against solicitor Sally Clark, serving life for murdering her two baby
boys. We look at other cases where the expert witness, Sir Roy Meadow, 
who helped convict Sally Clark, may have given mistaken evidence to the 
courts. And we ask the question, when mothers are accused of harming or 
killing their children, do expert witnesses have too much power?

HAYNES: My little girl, she’s gone forever. My daughter has been legally 
kidnapped by the state and there’s nothing I can do about it. And all 
for the words of one man.

SIGNATURE TUNE

CLARK: I’m daring to hope that this time we will get justice for my wife. 
We’ve discovered new medical evidence, which wasn’t disclosed to the 
defence at the time of trial, which appears to reveal a natural cause of 
death for one of our babies.

SWEENEY: Steve Clark has stood by his wife, Sally, thick and thin.
Convicted after a jury was told that the chances of her babies dying 
naturally were 73 million to one, Sally Clark was pilloried by the press. 
This was the headline in the Daily Mail:

READER IN STUDIO: Driven by drink and despair, the solicitor who killed her
babies.

SWEENEY: Sally Clark is in jail for life, for murdering baby Christopher
and then baby Harry. Steve, like his wife a solicitor, has believed in her 
innocence throughout, and now he says he’s found the evidence to prove it.

CLARK: We were badgering Macclesfield Hospital for months and months and 
months for the children’s medical records, most of which hadn’t been properly
disclosed to us. And when we finally finally got the papers at the end of last 
year, hidden away amongst those papers was a report which had not been 
disclosed to the defence at the time of trial, and the scary thing is that it 
could still be there and no one would know.

SWEENEY: Steve Clark had unearthed a laboratory report commissioned by Home 
Office pathologist Dr Alan Williams, one of a small group of expert witnesses 
whose prosecution evidence secured his wife’s conviction. When he first spotted 
the report on the second child to die, baby Harry, he did not immediately 
appreciate its significance.

CLARK: My initial reaction, not being a doctor, was 'what on earth’s this? I 
don’t really understand it.’ So I showed it to one of the doctors who has 
been helping us behind the scenes, and he almost shouted, 'Eureka!’ This is a 
test which reveals a potential natural cause of death for the baby.

SWEENEY: Are we talking about just one test here, something that he might have 
missed?

CLARK: Well it was a formal request to one of the laboratories at Macclesfield 
Hospital to carry out tests on blood and tissue samples and a formal report was
produced within a few days of the post mortem. The tests were carried out by 
Dr Williams, the pathologist. He commissioned the report in any event. The 
report was found in his files at Macclesfield Hospital.

SWEENEY: The prosecution did not disclose the key findings of the lab report 
which pointed to a potentially fatal infection in baby Harry. The bacterial 
infection was staphylococcal aureus and found in eight parts of the body, 
including the spinal fluid. The tests also indicated that the infection had 
been active while Harry was still alive. Two leading pathologists have seen 
the results and both have said the Staph A infection was the most likely
cause of death. One expert, Professor James Morris, consultant pathologist 
at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary added, 'No other cause of death was 
sustainable.’ And yet, throughout the trial, the jury remained in the dark 
about this compelling evidence of Sally Clark’s innocence. Tonight the
Criminal Cases Review Commission, the statutory body set up to re-examine 
potential miscarriages of justice, is sending the case to the Court of Appeal. 
Sally Clark has spent two and a half years in prison for a crime which, on 
the face of the Staph A infection, never happened.

CLARK: Emotionally she’s hanging on by her fingernails at the moment. It’s 
two and a half years now since she was convicted and been in prison. It takes 
its toll. But it’s now an agony of waiting and then a question of see how 
long it takes for the system to put right this terrible wrong. There are all 
sorts of tragedies arising out of this case. Sally has lost her liberty, we 
lost our house, our cars, all our very hard-earned savings. We’ve lost two
children who we’ve not been able to grieve for properly who I had to bury 
on my own. But more importantly there’s a little boy in all of this, the 
surviving child, who has been deprived of his mother in the early formative 
years of his life.

SWEENEY: The Crown’s star witness was Professor Sir Roy Meadow, first 
President of the Royal College of Paediatrics, the author of the 'ABC of 
Child Abuse’ and first identifier of Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy, where 
mothers harm or kill their babies while passing the abuse off as natural 
causes. He is so eminent an expert witness, he lectures judges on how to 
interpret medical evidence. Everyone agrees that some mothers do kill their
babies, but no one is infallible. Sir Roy told the Sally Clark jury that 
there was a 73 million to one chance of both babies dying naturally. The 
jury convicted 10-2. After a number of statistical experts condemned 73 
million to one, Sir Roy conceded that he had made a mistake, but not a big
one. He told a newspaper:

READER IN STUDIO: I did not explain the limited significance and I regret I
didn’t. But in court it was not a defining moment.

SWEENEY: Sir Roy’s whole approach is summarised by what some call
Meadow’s Law.

READER IN STUDIO: That unless proven otherwise, one cot death is a tragedy, two
is suspicious and three is murder.

SWEENEY: It’s a rule of thumb promulgated by Sir Roy in a paper on cot deaths 
for doctors, police, social workers, even judges. And Sally Clark is not the 
only mother who continues to plead her innocence, who was put behind bars 
with the help of Sir Roy and Meadow’s Law.

ACTUALITY OF TERRY CANNINGS WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

CANNINGS: When Gemma died she was, I believe, 14 weeks. Jason unfortunately
 only had 8 weeks, and Matthew I think again was a bit longer than Gemma, 
perhaps 15 weeks. So that’s a tragedy of the three pictures that I look at, 
that between them all there’s less than six months life.

SWEENEY: Terry Cannings, the husband of Angela Cannings.  According to
Meadow’s Law, unless proven otherwise, three cot deaths is murder. The couple
from Salisbury had already had two cot deaths, and then there was a third.

CANNINGS: Matthew was pronounced dead on the 12th November 1999, approximately
I think it was about 11.30, quarter to 12, and a very good doctor friend of 
mine that’s dealt with all my children just quietly whispered in my ear, he
just said, 'Terry, this is the third. Expect’ his words were, 'Expect crap 
now.’ And then we had a police officer say that we just needed to take 
Angela’s statement on the following day, because she hadn’t given a statement 
at this point, and at 10 o’clock they arrived at the door and Detective 
Sergeant Rob Finley, he just sort of knelt on his knee, held Angela’s hand 
and he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to arrest you on the suspicion of 
three deaths, Gemma, Jason and Matthew.’ And Angela then was, it was like 
she was shot in the kneecaps. That hit her then and they just took her away.

SWEENEY: Angela Cannings was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder this 
April by a judge at Winchester Crown Court. One of the Crown’s witnesses who 
told the jury that the deaths were not natural was Professor Sir Roy Meadow. 
Angela Cannings continues to protest her innocence. Others cannot understand 
how she came to be convicted. Dr David Drucker is a microbiologist at the 
University of Manchester, and in the forefront of new genetic research into 
cot deaths. A colleague at Manchester performed tests on the last child to
die, Matthew, which showed that the baby’s immune system wasn’t working. The
baby was defenceless to attack from infection.

DRUCKER: That baby had so little antibody of an entire class of antibody 
that it was almost below the limited detection of the tests that were being 
used. I remember commenting at the time, if I’d had so little antibody I 
would expect to be dead or very seriously ill. The jury obviously heard that
evidence and I wasn’t a jury member, so I don’t know what went through their 
heads, but I don’t know how they could ignore a finding that to my mind at 
least was so important.

SWEENEY: Tonight we can reveal that the same killer bug, Staph A, that two 
pathologists believe killed Sally Clark’s children was also detected in two 
out of three of Angela Cannings’ babies. Her solicitor, Bill Bache, believes 
that the new developments in the Sally Clark case have a direct bearing on 
the safety of Angela Cannings’ conviction.

BACHE: The first child, Gemma, who died, was found on post mortem to have a
fairly substantial staphylococcus aureus infection. That particular organism 
is associated with cot death. Now when we progress to Jason, one of the things
that was noted when he was admitted to hospital was that he had a sticky 
umbilical stump, and that was found to have a staphylococcus aureus infection, 
and it was treated with a powder. The third child who died, Matthew, as I 
understand it the blood samples that were intended to be used to ascertain 
whether there were any such infections as staphylococcus aureus or coliforms 
or that kind of thing were mislaid.

SWEENEY: In plain English, if two out of three of Angela Cannings’ babies died
from this particular infection and the third one we don’t know about because 
the blood samples were lost, where does it leave this finding of murder?

BACHE: It does, I would have thought, produce an entirely feasible cause of 
death for the children, which quite obviously is natural and not murder.

SWEENEY: Are you appealing?

BACHE: Yes.

SWEENEY: Angela Cannings was, according to friends and family, a loving mother, 
and there was no obvious motive as to why she should kill her children. But at
the trial the defence failed to counter the common sense prejudice driving
Meadow’s Law, that the more 'cot deaths’ a mother suffers, the more likely it 
is that she is a murderer. But at the University of Manchester, Dr David Drucker
and his team have discovered a natural explanation for multiple cot death. 
They’ve identified a cot death gene. In laymen’s terms, the cot death gene
is a faulty switch. It fails to switch on the baby’s defence system against 
killer bugs. There is a gap between the mother’s defence system fading out 
as the baby grows to around 8 weeks old and the baby’s own defences kicking in. 
And it’s through that gap that a bug or an infection like Staph A can strike, 
says Dr Drucker.

DRUCKER: We know from our own research that babies with a particular form of a
gene called IL10 are several times more likely to become cot death babies
than other babies would.

SWEENEY: What does IL10 mean? What’s it stand for?

DRUCKER: IL10 is one of a series of cyto kinds. Cyto kinds are substances we
make in our bodies that help us deal with infection. If a baby is a low IL10
producer, and the ones who have, if you like, the cot death gene are in that 
category, what happens in practice is, when they’re very young babies they 
are slower to develop immunity and when they do develop immunity it’s not as 
strong, if you like, as other babies. So for two reasons, for two biological 
reasons we understand they are more at risk of challenge by bacteria which
have been associated with cot death.

SWEENEY: The cot death gene, being genetic, runs in families -- obviously. 
Not so, says Professor Meadow. He declined to be interviewed by this programme,
but he has stated:

READER IN STUDIO: There is no evidence that cot deaths run in families, but
there’s plenty of evidence that child abuse does.

SWEENEY: If cot deaths don’t run in families, there is no such thing as a
cot death gene. Either Professor Meadow or Dr Drucker is just plain wrong. Dr 
Drucker’s data is open to critical attack. His experiments can be checked and 
tested. The same cannot be said of Professor Meadow’s raw data -- 81 cases 
that informed his outlook. The 81 cases, first described as 'cot deaths’ were 
later established to be unnatural, effectively murders. Sir Roy has admitted
that he has had his raw data shredded. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed:

READER IN STUDIO: It now seems that most of the raw material on which
Sir Roy’s paper was based has been destroyed.

SWEENEY: The shredding took place six months before the jury trial in the Sally 
Clark case and long before the Angela Cannings case. Unless proven otherwise,
Sir Roy’s assertion that there is no evidence that cot deaths runs in families 
is wrong. Jean Golding is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of 
Bristol. She was called as a prosecution witness at the trial of Angela Cannings, 
but her reading of the pre-trial evidence swung her to the defence. In court 
she savaged Sir Roy’s methodology, because his 81 cases had no control group.

GOLDING: I called it stamp collecting. You pick out the cases that you want to
present, and then you present them. It was never a way of doing proper 
scientific research. The approach that an epidemiologist would take, for 
example, is to look at all the evidence and then draw conclusions, and the 
conclusions you draw are based on comparing what’s happening, say, in a group 
of families where there have been two sudden infant deaths with families where 
there haven’t, and looking to see what the differences might be. He hasn’t done 
that.

SWEENEY: This is a distinguished scientist and a knight.

GOLDING: I would say he is a distinguished paediatrician. I would never say he 
is a distinguished scientist. He doesn’t use the scientific rigour that I would 
respect.

SWEENEY: In the case of a woman charged with murdering her babies, is Professor 
Meadow a reliable witness?

GOLDING: No, because I think he comes to any case with a prior belief. If you 
believe that somebody has murdered a baby, there is no way in which you can prove 
she hasn’t. If she is alone in the house with a baby and the baby has died, there 
is no evidence that the pathologist can give, there’s no evidence she can produce 
that proves that she hasn’t done it, and therefore it’s very easy to throw that 
suspicion.

SWEENEY: The fundamental problem remains. A mother who has suffered a cot death 
can’t explain why her baby died. The prosecution can -- murder. None of this
helps Terry Cannings explain to his surviving daughter where her mother is.

CANNINGS: She’s not questioned me so far, 'How long is mummy going to be in that 
big building for?’ She constantly asks me, oh, if she does it once a day she’ll 
do it ten times a day, given time she’ll say, 'What will mummy be doing now?’ 
and I just tell her all the good things about what she’s doing and keep it that 
way. I almost, I suppose -- whether wrongly or rightly -- I suppose I paint it 
to her as a mini Butlins.

SWEENEY: Angela Cannings is on Rule 43, segregated from other prisoners for her 
own protection. In the last thirty years the whole approach to the protection of
children has changed. Concern about child abuse has led the courts to adopt 'the 
paramountcy of the child’ -- but some fear the pendulum has swung too far that 
way, making it almost impossible for mothers to defend themselves in the criminal 
courts. But at least a murder case is open to press and public. In the Family 
Courts, judges sit in private, away from media scrutiny, weighing whether social 
services can take a child away from its parents for its own protection. Professor
Meadow has also had a big impact in the closed world of the Family Courts, though 
one just far that has never been made public. We have taken a close look at two 
Family Court cases where Professor Meadow has given evidence against mothers he 
believed harmed or even killed their babies. All the names have been changed.

CARTER: We got up as normal. We were all sat in the front room and the television 
was on. Jane was wandering around quite happily, and she then just walked across
the front room diagonally towards the back door and just fell over. But it was 
very odd because there was no sort of reaction to save herself. She just went
literally flat on her face.

SWEENEY: Will Carter, describing the day their baby collapsed. Will and his wife 
Michelle rushed the 16 month old to hospital. Mercifully the baby, Jane, recovered,
though doctors said it had been a close-run thing. She had suffered a heart attack 
and a stroke.  Social services in London, where the family lives, were concerned 
and considered taking the baby into care. A report was commissioned from Professor
Meadow.

CARTER: He actually came over, when you actually spoke to him, as quite a nice 
and affable guy. He was very softly spoken, and I did say to Michelle after he’d
gone, I said, 'I think we’ll be all right with this one. He seems a good guy and 
he’ll put in the report as things are.’ What a shock it was when his report 
actually came out. I just couldn’t believe he’d done it.

SWEENEY: Sir Roy’s report, and his subsequent testimony in court, pointed squarely 
at Michelle Carter. He concluded that she had, on the balance of probability,
poisoned her baby. Noting the family’s general poor state of health and frequent 
trips to the doctor, he diagnosed her as suffering from Munchhausen Syndrome by 
Proxy, the condition he first defined, also known as Meadow’s Syndrome, where 
mothers harm or kill their children and pass off the abuse as natural illness. 
The critical question Sir Roy addressed is why did Jane have a heart attack. 
Although blood and urine samples were lost, trace elements of a drug, imipramine,
were found in one test. Jane’s older sister, then 12, was taking imipramine for 
bed-wetting.  Because the samples had been lost, it was impossible to establish 
the true number of tablets Jane had taken or been given. Working backwards from 
the severity of the attack, Sir Roy estimated the dose at between 6 and 12 
imipramine tablets. He asserted:

READER IN STUDIO: It is inconceivable that Jane, at the age of 18 months, could
have poisoned herself with even 6 imipramine tablets. In order for Jane to have 
ingested the imipramine tablets, considerable determination and dexterity was 
needed on the part of a determined adult.

SWEENEY: Did you do it? Did you poison your child?

MICHELLE CARTER: Definitely not. I would never harm any of them, not any of
them at all. I love them all too much. I just think that it was a pure accident 
which she found them herself, I don’t believe anyone gave it to them, whether 
it be an adult or a child, and I just think it’s one of them unfortunate 
accidents that should never have happened. At the end of the day he
is accusing me of trying to murder my own child, and there is no way on this 
earth I would ever do that. I actually went into Wandsworth Police Station and 
I said to the guy behind the desk, I said, 'Arrest me,’ so he said, 'Why?’ I 
said, 'Because I’ve been accused of attempted murder of my youngest daughter 
and I want it looked into.’ They called CID down and all the guy could do
was laugh.

SWEENEY: The police did not charge Michelle Carter with attempted murder. And 
in the Family Court both she and her husband were supported by their GP. But the
judge agreed with Professor Meadow’s testimony and all four children were taken 
into care.  Their flat, once full of noise, is now quiet. Convinced of Michelle’s 
innocence, Will Carter went on the internet and discovered evidence which 
challenged Professor Meadow’s toxicological estimate.

CARTER: If Professor Meadow is correct that it was six, and he even goes further 
to say it could be anything up to twelve, then it would be more likely that it 
would be a poisoning, but on the basis of the information that I’ve unearthed 
from the internet, it makes it more likely that it was an accident and that 
one tablet had been picked up and caused the effects that he then describes in 
great detail. Professor Meadow states that it must have been six tablets that 
she had ingested to cause the heart attack that she had, and yet the research 
that I’ve unearthed quite clearly shows that it’s actually one-sixth of that, 
it would mean that just one tablet could have the same effect.

SWEENEY: You’re an unemployed barman and you’re accusing a professor of getting 
his sums wrong.

CARTER: Yes, because I have got the supporting evidence in black and white to 
prove what I’m saying is correct.

SWEENEY: And Professor Meadow?

CARTER: He has produced thus far no evidence to prove the basis of his 
assertations, and I would quite cheerfully invite him to do so, if indeed he can.

SWEENEY: We asked Sir Roy to discuss his understanding of toxicology, but he 
declined. File on 4 took Will Carter’s discovery on the internet along to a
poisons expert. Dr Vyvyan Howard is a toxico-pathologist at the University of 
Liverpool.  [To Howard:] What dosage of imipramine would be needed to cause a 
heart attack in a sixteen month old toddler?

HOWARD: Well, if I can refer to the Paediatric Emergency Medicine textbook, 4th 
edition by Fleischer and Ludwig, they address this problem. Imipramine, they
reckon one to two tablets is a potentially fatal dose, through seizures or 
arythmia, which is an abnormality of the heartbeat. So it’s clearly a toxic 
substance for infants and one would expect to see worrying or dangerous signs at 
an ingestion of about one or two tablets.

SWEENEY: Professor Meadow has said the child needed to have taken six tablets 
for there to have been a heart attack. Was he right? 

HOWARD: That’s higher than I would expect for a toddler of this age.  That’s now 
what the literature says and it’s not what I understand from the toxicology of this
drug. I would think a lower dose is enough to cause serious and potentially fatal 
effects.

SWEENEY: That is the evidence that the father in this case, who’s an unemployed 
barman, found. If you were going to side with Professor Meadow or the unemployed
barman, who would you side with?

HOWARD: I would side with the weight of the evidence in the literature
which I have cited to you, which in this case seems to be what the unemployed 
barman has found.

SWEENEY: If Dr Howard, an expert in toxicology, is correct, then just one tablet 
could have been enough to cause baby Jane’s heart attack and stroke, and that would
make the Carters’ explanation of accidental poisoning plausible and not, as
 Professor Meadow asserted, 'inconceivable’. Although he says he has made a 
particular study of children involved in non accidental poisoning, Professor 
Meadow is not a toxicologist. Mr Justice Wall, a Family Court judge at the High 
Court in London, has recently written a handbook for expert witnesses. As a judge 
he could not discuss individual cases. But as a general rule he insisted that 
witnesses must not stray outside their area of expertise.
 
WALL: The expert’s reliability and integrity is crucial to the whole system, and 
if you have a rogue witness who takes you on a wild goose chase, you waste not 
only a lot of money, you waste a huge amount of time, and time is the precious 
commodity in children’s cases. It is very very important that experts stick to 
the area of their expertise. If a case requires a toxicological opinion, you 
get a toxicologist, and most decent experts, most responsible professional 
experts will say to you, 'I’m very sorry, I can’t give you an opinion on this, you
must go to someone else, and I will defer to that particular branch of expertise,’ 
and that is what should happen.

SWEENEY: Would it concern you that we found a particular case where a 
paediatrician has expressed a toxicological opinion without reference?

WALL: In principle it would concern me, but I would want to know who the 
paediatrician was, what the opinion was, what the facts of the case were and 
whether or not, objectively speaking, the paediatrician was able to justify 
professionally, in terms of expertise, giving an opinion on a toxicological issue.

SWEENEY: None of these concerns is academic for the Carters. Where are your children 
now?

MICHELLE CARTER: All four of my children are in care.

SWEENEY: Do you know where they are?

MICHELLE CARTER: I know where two of them are, but I do not know where the
younger two are.

SWEENEY: When did you last see them?

MICHELLE CARTER: The two younger ones, it was February 1st two years ago,
and my other two I saw on the 14th May. I don’t know whether they remember me, 
me and my husband. They haven’t let the children see each other for that time as 
well. It’s just been very very hard.

SWEENEY: Family Courts are supposed to be less confrontational than criminal courts, 
but because they take place behind closed doors there are concerns about the lack
of peer criticism of expert evidence. Sometimes only one expert will be consulted. 
The standard of proof is lower and the court puts the child first, so doubts 
about safety of a child may override the presumption of a mother’s innocence. 
Professor Peter Fleming of the University of Bristol is a world expert on cot death.

FLEMING: One of my concerns about the Family Courts is that sometimes information 
is given in those closed courts which may not stand up to the fullest scrutiny. 
In other words, people giving their opinion to the best of their ability may not 
actually be the most knowledgeable people in their field, and because of the 
closed nature of the courts, that information of course isn’t scrutinised by those 
who might perhaps have a better grasp of the particular minute area of physiology 
or biochemistry that’s being talked about. On some occasions I’m sure very well 
intentioned clinicians who are giving evidence are pushed into giving opinions on 
areas that maybe are outside their area of major expertise, or maybe just alongside 
rather than forming a central part of their expertise, and sometimes because the 
rate of development in these fields is so rapid, sometimes what that leads to is 
potentially significant information being overlooked or missed or not taken into 
account.

SWEENEY: Sir Roy Meadow has said that it’s important for experts to meet families 
before tendering their advice. In the Carter case, he did just that. But not so in
every case.

KAREN HAYNES: The first time I saw him was in court just before he gave evidence, 
and I asked my solicitor, 'Is that Professor Sir Roy Meadow?’ and her comment to me
is, 'Yes, I think it is.’ Before that I didn’t even know him.

SWEENEY: But by that time he had already written a report accusing
you of smothering your child?

KAREN HAYNES: Yes, he had.

SWEENEY: Karen and Mark Haynes -- not their real names -- were delighted when 
Michael was born. They had tried hard for a child and, they say, loved him very
much. Then, on two separate occasions, Michael just stopped breathing -- apnoea 
to the doctors.  When the baby had a third attack, he was rushed straight to 
intensive care.

MARK HAYNES: There was drips everywhere, there was drugs going into him, he was 
being monitored, and the nurses were confident, they felt that he was making a
recovery. In fact they decided to sedate him because they were afraid that he 
was going to pull the leads that were attached to his hands with drips, and so 
that shows that he was a lot more lively than when he was admitted to hospital. 
And so, because we were confident that he was getting better, my wife and I 
left and we came home.

SWEENEY: Later that same evening, when Karen and Mark were at home, Michael’s 
condition suddenly grew worse. Two days later his life support machine was
switched off. There were disturbing features to Michael’s death. The baby had 
a hole in the heart. Michael had been treated with the drug Cisapride, now 
banned after being linked to a series of infant deaths. The coroner found 
defibrillator marks on the baby’s chest, evidence of a heart attack, although 
at the time of death the Haynes’ say they were not told about that. The hospital
has lost critical medical notes around this time. Still mourning their son, 
they decided to try for another child. Social services were concerned for the 
safety of the yet-to-be-born child. A report was commissioned from Professor 
Sir Roy Meadow. Sir Roy’s view was that Karen had, on the balance of 
probability, smothered Michael. On the question of the unborn child, he stated:

READER IN STUDIO: In general there appears to be a 1:2 chance of similar or
serious abuse occurring to a sibling of a child who has been smothered.

SWEENEY: Another statistic. The case went to the Family Court. The experts were 
divided, but the majority thought that Michael had died a natural death but that 
the precise cause was unknown. Sir Roy said the baby had died because of the 
delayed effect of smothering. But he had a problem. The baby had got better in 
intensive care. Nursing staff recorded his improvement by regularly noting his 
response to stimuli and logging them according to a system called the Modified 
Glasgow Coma Score. The Score gives a numerical mark between 3 and 15. Mark had 
a good score, 14 out of 15, at the time Karen left the hospital. So how could 
Karen, by then at home, have killed the baby if he was improving? At first 
Professor Meadow was at a loss. He stated:
 
READER IN STUDIO: Fourteen is near normal and it does not fit in with the other
observations. It’s discrepant and I cannot explain it.

SWEENEY: The next day, when asked about the score, he could explain the discrepancy.

READER IN STUDIO: I’m not sure what she means by the Modified Glasgow Coma Scale. 
I’m unfamiliar with using the Scale on young children and it certainly was not 
the practice in our hospital.

SWEENEY: St James’, Leeds.

READER IN STUDIO: It sounds like a system that they have found helpful rather
than an internationally or indeed scientifically standardised test.

ACTUALITY IN HOSPITAL

DUANE: This is Charlie. Hello Charlie.

WOMAN: He’s frightened now.

DUANE: What’s the matter, Mum?

WOMAN: We’ve been away on holiday and we think he’s been bit by mosquitoes and 
he’s got an allergic reaction on his arms.

SWEENEY: Dr Lorcan Duane is a consultant in emergency paediatric medicine at 
Manchester Children’s Hospital.  
[To Duane:] How much do you personally rely, as a child doctor, on the Modified 
Glasgow Coma Score?

DUANE: I would say that in a child who comes in in an unconscious
state, we rely on it 100%.

SWEENEY: And you have confidence in it?

DUANE: Yes, I definitely have confidence in it, it’s a crucial yardstick.

SWEENEY: Would you be surprised to hear that one particular paediatrician does 
not use the Score?

DUANE: I would find it hard to actually comprehend that. It’s a standard working 
tool in most paediatric emergency departments and also most paediatric wards
where they will be observing patients who have a decreased coma scale, 
particularly children after fits, children after minor head injuries, etc etc.

SWEENEY: Have you, in your experience, ever worked in a children’s hospital 
where they don’t use the Modified Score?

DUANE: Er no, it’s standard throughout.

SWEENEY: The Modified Glasgow Coma Score is the standard test in children’s 
wards in Britain and around the world and has been used at Sir Roy’s old hospital,
St James’ in Leeds, since 1996. What Professor Sir Roy Meadow told the court 
was completely wrong. The trial judge, Mrs Justice Bracewell, preferred the 
evidence of Sir Roy that baby Michael had been smothered. When Karen’s second 
baby, Emma, was born, they took it away at 25 minutes old. Karen has never seen 
her daughter on her own since. The courts have paved the way for adoption. The 
couple are trying to adjust to the fact that they may never see their little
girl again.

MARK HAYNES: In this bedroom we have all the mementoes of our daughter and our 
son. We have dresses that she wore, we have photographs, we have videos, we 
have her favourite toy -- it still squeaks. We’ve even got drawings that she 
actually did for us.

SWEENEY: When did you last see your daughter?

MARK HAYNES: The end of September 2001.

SWEENEY: So that’s six, eight months ago.

MARK HAYNES: That’s correct. My little girl should be with me. She’s gone forever. 
My daughter has been legally kidnapped by the state and there’s nothing I can do 
about it. And all for the words of one man.

SWEENEY: After writing several letters to Professor Sir Roy Meadow, inviting him 
to appear on this programme and receiving no reply, File on 4 set out to give him 
one last opportunity to answer our concerns.

ACTUALITY IN YORKSHIRE

SWEENEY: We’ve come here to rural Yorkshire to Professor Meadow’s home to put to 
him some of our concerns about the evidence he’s given in these four cases. Let’s
hope he’s in. Well, that was a dead loss. Professor Meadow did come to the door, 
but he made it clear he doesn’t want to take part in this programme. We’ve posted 
a letter, another letter through his letterbox setting out our concerns, and 
hopefully he’ll get back to us.

He didn’t. Unless proven otherwise, Professor Sir Roy Meadow cannot be relied 
upon in the fields of statistics, genetics, toxicology and his own, paediatrics. 
But the scandal we have revealed in the British legal system is greater than 
that. The system appears to be pre-loaded against mothers who lose their babies, 
both in the criminal courts and perhaps even more so in the closed world of the 
Family Courts. Tonight the Sally Clark case is on its way back to the Court of
Appeal. Other mothers may follow her. If she succeeds, then those experts who 
seemed so certain of her guilt have questions of their own to answer.

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