Children removed from mum for safety

By JAN CORBETT

A woman whose four children were taken from her by court order in Britain has lost two more children in New Zealand after the Family Court here said she had a "dysfunctional personality" and had probably drugged one of them.

Police and social workers took the preschoolers from their Takapuna home early one morning last August after a Starship hospital paediatrician saw a report that an adult sedative had shown up in a urine sample taken from the younger child nearly a month earlier.

The father has also lost custody but retains visiting rights. The parents have asked the High Court to overturn the order.

In 1996, a British court agreed with British paediatrician Professor David Southall that the woman suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP), a rare and often disputed diagnosis said to cause parents, usually mothers, to induce or fabricate illnesses in their children to get attention.

After losing the children, she met and married a New Zealander, settled here with him and had two more children.

Experts who acknowledge MSBP as a real condition believe the only way to save the children is to remove them immediately. However, local social workers waited until the drugging incident before seizing them.

Although the custody hearing ended in November with the judge deciding the children should not be returned to the parents, the details of the case have just been released after applications by the Herald and TV3.

Family Court proceedings are secret unless a judge rules otherwise, and both the Crown and the lawyer for the children opposed publication.

But Judge Lawrence Ryan felt that the case was of significant public interest and, in an unprecedented move, has released his judgment to the media.

At issue was not only the MSBP diagnosis but the conduct of the doctors, scientists, social workers and lawyers who the mother alleged were involved in a conspiracy against her.

Judge Ryan said the conduct of the specialists had been professional and objective, but he criticised the paediatrician for demanding that the children be uplifted in the middle of the night and social workers for agreeing to that demand.

The judge said he was neither able nor needed to rule whether the mother suffered from MSBP, but concluded that she had most likely given her 18-month-old son the adult hypno-sedative Zopiclone, which is not recommended for anyone younger than 15.

He said he was "convinced [she] has a dysfunctional personality" which impacted on her ability to care satisfactorily for both children.

Although he sidestepped the MSBP diagnosis, he noted that after her four children were removed from her in Britain, their visits to doctors decreased and their health improved.

The judge concluded that her younger children would be at risk if they remained with their mother, and that while their father refused to accept that his wife suffered from any personality disorder, he could not be relied upon to provide the necessary protection.

The children are with members of their extended family.