Reporter’s work led to a doctor being struck off
CARDIFF FREELANCE Brian Morgan, who for years has specialised in reporting the ill treatment of children by the medical and social work professions, is calling on South Wales police to investigate a case involving controversial paediatrician Professor David Southall, who was struck off by the General Medical Council last year.
Brian Morgan, who was presented with an NUJ Gold Badge in 2006 for his years of work as chair of the union’s Cardiff branch, has investigated numerous cases involving David Southall — at times with the legal support of the NUJ. He has endured serious legal threats and even a dawn raid by police to seize his files and computer.
David Southall was disciplined for accusing a mother of murdering her son who had committed suicide.
He has faced a decade of complaints to his NHS Trust and the GMC over controversial child protection work. He had been suspended, re-instated, barred from child protection work for three years, then cleared of other serious complaints.
Most notoriously, he falsely accused a lawyer of killing a baby over whose deaths his wife was wrongly imprisoned, after watching a TV programme on the case.
For nearly two decades David Southall, his supporters and even some fellow journalists have accused Brian Morgan of agitating complaints against him.
In 1996, a campaigner working undercover for David Southall copied and circulated secret medical files she had found and Brian Morgan was sent copies. The NHS Trust concerned took the journalist to the High Court to recover them — even though they disclosed a now-proved professional offence. The NUJ backed Brian Morgan; the case cost the union £50,000.
Ironically, Brian Morgan is not wholly pleased that David Southall has been struck off, because there can be no further GMC investigation of the professor’s conduct — in particular of a case involving himself.
Documents uncovered by an MP investigating the cases showed that false information had been placed in a hospital’s records, alleging that Brian Morgan’s own two children had previously been taken into care. Brian Morgan would like to know whether David Southall had a role in the affair.