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A mother falsely accused of murdering her ten-year-old son by a controversial paediatrician has revealed how the devastating allegations haunted her family for a decade and threatened to rip them apart. Mandy Morris, 42, was referred to only as Mrs M when she gave video evidence from Australia against Dr David Southall at a General Medical Council hearing in London last week. The professor was found guilty of "abusing" his position and wrongly accusing the grieving mother of killing her child. The GMC's Fitness To Practice panel will decide next week whether he has been found guilty of serious professional misconduct which could lead to him being struck off for life. But for Mandy and her family – who recently moved to Australia to begin a new life – it has been a painfully long wait for justice. And only now, in the wake of the GMC ruling, does she feel able to tell the story of her ten-year ordeal for the first time and the devastating chain of events that saw her younger son taken into care. Mandy, who has agreed to waive her anonymity, said: "We had a child who had committed suicide. "But Dr Southall's allegations that I had killed him ripped the heart out of my family and stamped on it. My younger son was taken into care. "Had we not been so strong, and clung together, he would have ground us into the dust. "We kept telling ourselves that we were innocent and that the truth would come out. "But it has taken a long, long time. It would have been a shorter sentence – and less painful – if I had faced a court and either been cleared or convicted. "We have lived with these slurs for a decade." Mandy's nightmare began when her eldest son, ten-year-old Lee, committed suicide in June 1996. Lee had been bullied at school but he had shown no signs of unhappiness the day he came home, went upstairs and hanged himself, by his belt, from a curtain rail in his bedroom at the family's three-bedroom home in Oswestry, Shropshire. There was no suicide note and a coroner recorded an open verdict at the inquest. But seven months later, in January 1997, as Mandy, her husband Simon and their younger son Dale, then eight, were moving house and still struggling to cope with the tragedy, they were dealt a second blow – thanks to the involvement of Dr Southall. Mandy was packing the family's belongings when two police officers arrived at their home and demanded that she reveal Dale's whereabouts. "They wouldn't tell me why they wanted this information," she said. "I wouldn't answer their questions because I was confused and terrified. They stayed about an hour, then left. "I had no idea what was happening, or why. I couldn't understand why I was suddenly being treated like a criminal." A few minutes later, two social workers arrived, demanding answers to the same questions and telling Mandy they planned to put Dale into care. Again, she refused to answer, but after speaking to her husband later, she agreed to go to the police station for questioning. Meanwhile, Dale was collected and taken straight to a foster family by council officials. Only three days later – after rigorous questioning at the police station – did Mandy learn from her solicitor that child expert David Southall had become involved in her case after being alerted via one of her colleagues at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital where she worked as a cleaner. He had declared – without even meeting her – that she "almost certainly" suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, a controversial condition named by the now disgraced Sir Roy Meadow, which claimed some women harmed their children to get attention for themselves. Dr Southall was later to meet Mandy, when he insisted she had murdered her eldest child. He suggested she had stolen drugs from the hospital, drugged Lee and waited till he fell unconscious before stringing him up with his belt, then calling an ambulance. He concluded that her youngest child was also in danger – which resulted in Dale being put on the At Risk register, snatched from the family home and placed with a foster family in Oswestry. Only after two months of meetings with child "experts" and health authorities, and repeated court hearings were Mandy and Simon able to retrieve Dale from care. Southall, meanwhile, attempted – unsuccessfully – to have police reopen the inquest into Lee's death. Mandy said: "When police first came to the house about Dale, I had no idea what was going on. We were still in shock.
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