Mother's fury at death accusation

Prof David Southall is appearing before the GMC

A mother has told of her anger at being accused of killing her son, who was hanged, to a disciplinary panel.

The General Medical Council has heard how paediatrician Professor David Southall told the mother she had drugged and murdered her son, aged 10.

The doctor faces allegations of acting inappropriately and causing distress.

The mother has also spoken of how her other son was taken into care on Prof Southall's advice. The doctor was working in Stoke-on-Trent at the time.

Prof Southall, who was employed at the North Staffordshire Hospital, is accused of tampering with medical records, keeping secret medical files and abusing his position in relation to four children.

In 2004, Prof Southall was found guilty of serious misconduct after accusing Steve Clark of murdering two of his sons. He was banned from child protection work for three years.

I feel sick that I had been accused of murdering my own son and that's something I've got to live with forever A mother

The fresh allegations relate to cases in his care during the 1980s and 1990s.

The boy in question died in June 1996 after fastening a belt around his neck and hanging from a curtain pole in the family home. An inquest recorded an open verdict.

The mother, who worked as an operating department orderly at the local hospital, told the panel Prof Southall used an "aggressive and sarcastic" tone when questioning her.

She went for a meeting with him two years after her son's death, after he raised fears she was suffering from Munchausen by proxy - where parents fake or induce illness in their children.

Pencil and shoelace

She told the panel how she demonstrated her son's death to the doctor by using a pencil and a shoelace.

He replied "very clever" in a sarcastic tone and added the pole should have broken due to the boy's weight.

Speaking by video-link from Australia, where she now lives, the mother, who cannot be identified, said: "Prof Southall asked me if I had seen injections being given and if I had access to any medications or drugs."

She told him she did not.

"I judged it he thought I had actually killed my son," she said.

The doctor said her son could have died in three ways - either by an experiment which went wrong, or that he meant to do it, or murder.

"Prof Southall just turned to me and said I put it to you that you killed your son by injecting him, hanging him up, leaving him there to die and then ringing the ambulance."

He carried on questioning her saying if she could not show him how her son had tied the belt than she must be guilty.

She was left feeling very upset and angry, she said.

"I feel sick that I had been accused of murdering my own son and that's something I've got to live with forever."

The hearing continues