Linda Sands still remembers securing the evidence that convicted a mother of poisoning her own baby. She was a detective in the early 1990s, and doctors had raised the alarm about the infant’s high sodium levels.
A covert camera was set up on a ward that recorded the mother putting salt in the baby’s bottle, and the case was solved. It was shocking, but it stood out in Sands’s police career specialising in child abuse investigations, because in two decades it was one of only two cases of what was then known as Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy.
Yet in recent work in the family court as an independent safeguarding consultant, Sands has been struck by both the volume of accusations of this “extremely rare” form of child abuse — and the complete lack of substantiating evidence. “Something’s clearly gone wrong,” she said.
Last week, a Sunday Times investigation revealed that hundreds of parents, mostly mothers, are being falsely accused of abuse when they seek medical or social care for their children.
They are accused of fabricated or induced illness (FII), the broad term used for exaggerating or causing a child’s illness. They are often threatened with losing access to their children, and then have to wait months to have their names cleared. In the worst cases the child has become more ill or even died.
Among those accused was Elly Chapple, who was forcibly separated from her daughter Ella for eight months over unsubstantiated allegations.
Experts believe broad guidance issued...
Tel Aviv [Israel], July 27 (ANI/TPS): Following directives from the political echelon, the IDF announced a series of humanitarian measures in Gaza aimed at countering false claims of deliberate st...