BMJ  2003;327:299-300 (9 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7410.299

Editorial

Suspected child abuse: the potential for justice to miscarry

Poor process causes more injustice than poor professional practice

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Two years ago the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, in the course of a letter to every doctor in England and Wales, said that he doubted whether the public realised the extent to which "when things go wrong, the true cause lies in weakness within the system rather than the culpable actions of an individual."¹

One area where the British public sense that things have gone badly wrong is in the field of suspected child abuse. The quashing of Sally Clark's conviction for the murder of two of her children in January,^w1 and the collapse of the Crown Prosecution case against Trupti Patel in June,^w2 have shaken public confidence. In each case the issue at stake was whether it could be shown—beyond reasonable doubt—that a death originally certified as due to natural causes had, in retrospect, been caused by a parent. In each case suspicion only arose after a . . . [Full text of this article]

Newcastle (shey@easynet.co.uk)

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