Police to investigate organ scandal doctor

Dick Van Velzen is banned from practising in the UK

Police are set to investigate the disgraced pathologist at the centre of the Alder Hey organ scandal.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has advised officers to begin an inquiry into the actions of Professor Dick van Velzen who stripped organs from hundreds of dead children.

However, the CPS is not advising the Dutch-born doctor be investigated for charges directly linked to the taking of organs and tissue samples without consent.

Instead, the lawyers are calling for the police inquiry to look at the possibility of a charge of Misconduct in a Public Office.

A statement from the CPS claims that taking organs without consent was not a criminal act because it was considered common practice by many pathologists.

Where organs are removed without consent there is not a criminal offence committed

Chris Enzor, CPS senior lawyer

It also advises that the "obscure and very rare common law offence" of preventing a decent burial applies to the way in which a body is disposed, not whether it was fully intact at the time.

The CPS statement says Merseyside Police should consider the Redfern Report's findings that Van Velzen lied about carrying out proper tests, fabricated post-mortem reports and misidentified suitable cases for cot-death research.

Chris Enzor, the CPS's senior lawyer, said: "We've taken very good advice from leading counsel.

"All have agreed with us in that where organs are removed without consent there is not a criminal offence committed.

"And indeed that was the conclusion of the Redfern report itself."

Post-mortems 'fabricated'

The CPS also advises that Van Velzen, who worked at the Liverpool hospital between 1988 and 1995, could be extradited to face possible dishonesty charges of theft, forgery, obtaining property by deception and obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception.

Those charges relate to the Redfern Report's findings that Van Velzen lied about his experience while applying for the post of Chair of Fetal and Infant Pathology.

The report also found that he forged other doctors' signatures on research grant applications, and took medical records from Alder Hey.

Chairman of the parents' group Pity II John O'Hare, whose 15-year-old daughter Kathryn had organs taken after her death in 1993, said no-one is surprised by the CPS's statement.

Law change

Her post-mortem was among those singled out in the Redfern report as "deliberate and total fabrications".

He said: "The whole point of a post-mortem is to ascertain the cause of death to help medical science - the falsification of the reports means no other children could be helped by the findings."

He added the group was continuing to push for a change in the law to make organ retention without parental permission a criminal offence.

"It has to be by consent - the parents' wishes must be respected. So much heartache's been caused by this."

Merseyside Deputy Chief Constable Mike Tonge said: "Merseyside police will investigate by closely examining issues that relate specifically to Professor van Velzen.

"We will co-operate with all the relevant authorities and submit our findings to the CPS in due course."

Van Velzen was last reported to be living in Holland.