"Munch" Mom Myth in UK Meltdown: Will American Media Ask Questions Here?

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From:

National Child Abuse Defense and Resource Center

Roanoke, VA

Tuesday, July 8, 2003

Once able to pronounce an end to family life with imaginative opinions on alleged child abuse, retired UK pediatrician Sir Roy Meadow of "Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome" (MSP) and "Meadow's Law" fame is in a belated fire storm in England and the isles over lacking science in his theories and testimonies under oath.

Before concluding his life-altering article's 25th anniversary year, the originator of the MSP concept--that mothers get a bang from causing, inducing, or exaggerating a child's poor health to gain attention from doctors and bask in the ambiance of the hospital setting--is having the ride of his life. Only his ride is more along the lines of tarring and feathering from some quarters, figuratively speaking.

Meadow's "Hinterlands of Child Abuse" motivation theory for discoverable if sought child illness and death appeared in August 1977 Lancet. In it he boldly announced his saltloading a baby serially admitted in emergency, always with high salt levels. Not using a recognized treatment, not by accident, nor with consented research, Sir Roy nevertheless claimed the child's continuing illness and subsequent death at 15 months had been proved by him to have been at the hand of the mother.

What is loosely referred to as "Meadow's Law" is his offhand announcement that one cot (or SIDS) death is sad, two is suspicious, and three is most certainly murder. While it does not explain the multiple infant grave markers in nearly all older cemeteries, nor does it burden itself with checking genetic defects in DNA, it has made good press for too long.

Saltloading Creates Theory

Thus, a never scientifically validated motivation theory, born in otherwise prosecutable medical "practice" of force feeding salt to a child ill and manifesting "hypernatraemia," managed to make its way around the world and today in America inspires instant removal of chronically or critically or confusingly ill children, siblings, and any subsequent babies, often from the delivery room.

Alleged Munch Moms, suspected, labeled unseen by absent self-styled experts, become Rent-A-Wombs under the timely Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997) incorporated into each state's laws. Their children are removed, reallocated for cash incentives, and all is legal. After all, followers of Roy Meadow's MSP theory insist the mothers are homicidal liars anyway; so, there is no point in having out of state and unlicensed experts personally or professionally deal with them, nor can any of their children remain safely anywhere within the child's natural family.

Interestingly, in more than a quarter century, no notes or proof of Meadow's unauthorized experimentation and results have appeared. Not surprisingly no one has dared to replicate his "research" so MSP and all related motivation theories--MBP maltreatment, PCF (pediatric condition falsification), FII (factitious and induced illness), developmental stifling, and the amazing "maternal directed medical child abuse," plus perhaps dozens more--must come under the scrutiny now chasing Dr. Meadow and other practitioners of the Munch Hunch persuasion.

American media may not yet grasp the significance of what happened recently in Britain when attorney Sally Clark was released from more than three years in prison for death of her two infant sons, one with a proved infection that was withheld from the defense before her trial. It was Roy Meadow's astounding statistic that there was only a "73 million to one" chance that her sons--a third one born later and not vaccinated early as has his brothers--had suffered natural deaths which changed her fate.

Because her husband also was an attorney and her father a respected retired law enforcer, and because a team of legal, medical, and other specialists and supporters worked pro bono for years, she gained the release that few have enjoyed. However, when pharmacist Trupti Patel faced similar murder charges, with expected testimony also from Sir Roy, for the early infant deaths of three children born after her surviving daughter, 8, the tables had turned.

Ever Hear of DNA?

It did not hurt that Patel's grandmother from India testified about the unexplained deaths of five of her own nine children. Common sense overcame deliberate ignorance of DNA in most serial SIDS that manage to be morphed into MSP murder charges. News of Patel's nearly astounding and quick success spread around the world.

Almost immediately the British press, normally under a threat of suit from anyone they even slightly tarnish without overwhelming proof, and particularly in any matter involving a child, called for reviews of cases of six mothers imprisoned under similar circumstances and expert witness testimony.

Newspapers, BBC, tabloids, media across the pond, in all English speaking nations as well as beyond, have reported more boldly that Sir Roy skipped the science and choose suspicion as his guide. Normally that works well with the mandate of child protection units in America's 50 states and District of Columbia: to accept and check out "reports of suspicions" of child abuse or neglect.

However (see prior release for tenets of "Shawna's Bill") because doctors are given immunity and a generally free pass, their own motivations not usually examined--some diverting attention from threatened suits or saving money for HMOs or Medicaid often at the expense of a genuinely ill child--too little scrutiny and too much "fast track" removing has occurred during the heyday of MSP theory.

American Media Questions

Will American media overtake the Brits in storming state capitols to learn how many families have been, and still are, at risk for removal of all children (including never harmed newborns) using the untested MSP and "Separation Test" theories?

Will they be impressed that the "experts" took a page from America's MSP guru Herbert Schreier in his HURTING FOR LOVE book: they became experts because people asked a lot of questions and not that they studied or had any answers?

Will they ask the purported experts--attention-seeking by writing, speaking, consulting, testifying, presenting, and more--how they were educated, by whom, where, and what professional body certifies or censures MSP "experts"?

Will they check into the education and experience of those relied on by the FBI, the Department of Justice (whose funding forwards MSP "education" with seminar organizing help from Child Advocacy Centers and with faculty provided by APSAC that has its own "guidelines" for finding MSP, still minus any accepted scientific methodology in validating it?

Congress provides appropriations to states that pass money through to local child protection units whose frontline workers are no match for a doctor's report of "suspicions" of a motivation theory that began in a British doctor's saltloading a sick baby.

At last "the British are coming" to the aid of common sense American media can help expose what Brits are learning about closed door proceedings that accuse parents and caretakers, prosecute them in secrecy, and threaten those who break "confidentiality" about it all.

How? By comparing child protection units' handling of MSP suspicions--law, regulation, policy, and practice--with those once vital safeguards of civil rights found in the Bill of Rights as well as State and U.S. Constitutions all elected officials swear to uphold.

Real Abuse, Not MSP

Are there parents who deliberately hurt their children? Of course. What about the grainy black and white videos with no sound in the hospital (covert video surveillance)? Don't they show parents trying to poison their children?

Media and others often are shown a few minutes of days of films in which nothing at all happens other than caring conduct. Parents are told they must learn to use medical equipment only to find themselves the star of a show in which they "did put something into the feed line" but at the request or insistence of a doctor or nurse.

Sick or cruel parents, and those out of their minds from substance or other kinds of abuse, are just that and must be dealt with appropriately. Removing a child from siblings and grandparents, aunts and uncles or godparents, scattering children around the city, state, and beyond does not make Roy Meadow's motivation theory true nor does "acceptance" by the courts for more than two decades validate it scientifically.

If American media asks the right questions and refuses to budge until all children removed and reallocated under the MSP myth are accounted for, at least one chapter in forced removal of people within our nation's own borders will be documented while it matters and perhaps some happy returns can be made.

Otherwise, exploitation of the system persists, experts continue opining for fame and gain, and taxpayers everywhere are defrauded going in (wrongful prosecutions) and coming out (successful suits), all preventable with persistent press questioning for which there never have been good answers.

Barbara Bryan

See also: http://www.freemarybethdavis.homestead.com

http://web.tiscali.it/humanrights/articles/meadow77.html

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