This article appeared on the Justice Denied website ...
Neuropathologist Dr. Waney Squier is the most experienced paediatric neuropathologist in England. A member of the staff of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, she has researched the brains of babies for 30 years and is an internationally recognized expert in brain development about which she has written more than 100 medical papers.
"most experienced" ... Doctor Waney Squier
The concept of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) was introduced in 1946 by paediatric radiologist Dr. John Caffey. SBS is identified by a set of three signs (“the triad”) — swelling of the brain, bleeding between the skull and the brain, and bleeding in the retina — found in a deceased baby with little or no external evidence of head trauma, or in a live baby exhibiting a variety of unusual behaviours or symptoms such as lethargy, vomiting, seizures, altered breathing, and dilated pupils. The validity of SBS is almost universally accepted by experts in the U.S. and England.
Dr. Squier accepted the validity of SBS and testified during a number of trials as a prosecution witness that the existence of the triad of signs supported that the baby had been injured or died as a result of abusive treatment. Lorraine Harris’ trial in 2000 for manslaughter in the death of her four-month-old baby son Patrick was one of the trials during which Dr. Squier testified the triad of SBS signs were present. Harris was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison.
After Harris’ conviction Dr. Squier learned that the research of British neuropathologist Dr. Jennian Geddes resulted in the discovery that injuries associated with the SBS triad can occur naturally, including that bleeding is triggered in some babies from a lack of oxygen. Dr. Geddes suggested that there should be physical evidence that a baby suffered physical trauma before determining that abuse (SBS) occurred.
During a recent interview Dr. Squier said that when she reviewed Dr. Geddes’ research, “A light went on in my head. I became concerned that the whole basis for shaking was poor.”
Dr. Squier came to the same conclusion as Dr. Geddes after conducting her own investigation. One consequence was she prepared a report for Harris that explained why her trial testimony had been erroneous, including that the absence of any physical injury supported that Harris’ baby died from natural causes. Based on the new evidence in Dr. Squier’s report that the jury had not had available, England’s Court of Appeals quashed Harris’ conviction on July 21, 2005.
The police in England didn’t take Dr. Squier’s re-evaluation of SBS sitting down — because with her standing in the medical community it could have a cascade effect on other neuropathologists. With convictions in the 250 or more SBS cases prosecuted in England annually dependent on testimony about the presence of the triad of SBS signs, the police began a campaign to destroy Dr. Squier’s credibility as a witness. First, the Metropolitan Police (London PD) filed a complaint with the Human Tissue Authority raising concerning about her handling of post-mortem tissue. Then in June 2010 a complaint based on the same issue was filed with the General Medical Council by the National Policing Improvement Agency and Scotland Yard.
The complaints are pending, but the police campaign to professionally discredit Dr. Squier has placed a cloud over her credibility and impacted demand for her as an expert witness in cases of alleged baby abuse. In recent years she has only testified in about 5 cases a year, whereas before she was testifying in upwards of 30 cases per year.
The police war on experts who challenge the establishment view that the triad of signs establishes SBS may extend to the U.S. During a September, 2010 conference on shaken babies in Atlanta, Georgia one of the speakers was Detective Inspector Colin Welsh, lead investigator at Scotland Yard’s child abuse investigation division. DI Welsh told the audience that expert opinions contrary to the prosecution’s theory of SBS should be excluded on the basis they could confuse the jury and the judge, and that to discredit a defence expert, they should be investigated to discover “everything – qualifications, employment history, testimony, research papers presented by these experts, go to their bodies to see if we can turn up anything.” D.I. Welsh’s comments were documented by one of the conference attendees, Seattle, Washington lawyer Heather Kirkwood, who has executed an affidavit of what he said.
Kirkwood said after the conference “Now that we know we got it wrong, we need to get it right. Instead, many prominent advocates of shaken baby theory have resorted to attacking researchers such as Dr Squier, who is one of the world’s leading experts on the infant brain. Families and children deserve better. To get it right, we need open, honest debate, not cover-ups or attacks on those identifying the problems and seeking solutions.”
After Dr Squier learned about the comments made at the Atlanta conference she said in an interview with the BBC: “... it appears to me that there has been an attempt to remove from the courts all of those people who are willing to challenge the mainstream hypothesis, even if those opinions are sincerely held and are based on a lot of day-to-day experience and are based on a thorough grounding in the current evidence available in the scientific literature.”
The 63-year-old Dr. Squier hasn’t wilted under the pressure, instead she has become even more vocal in expressing her opinion that the long held view of identifying SBS is wrong and has resulted in the prosecution and conviction of large numbers of innocent adults wrongly accused of abusing a baby who actually died from natural causes. During an April 2011 interview with the Daily Mail Dr. Squier said: “I now believe that half or even more of those who have been brought to trial in the past for SBS have been wrongly convicted. It is a frightening thought … I am determined not to be silenced and if I can’t speak out in court, I shall do it in scientific papers. It cannot be fair to gag one body of opinion. The whole thing is a nightmare, not least because instead of researching vital things about babies, I have to spend time trying to clear my name.
“The experience has made me feel like a whistleblower – on the one hand challenging all those who prefer the comfort of old mainstream opinion, and on the other struggling for my professional life.”
Dr. Squier knows first-hand the tragic impact that erroneous expert testimony can have on the life of an innocent person. Although she was instrumental in the overturning of Lorraine Harris’ conviction that her testimony had helped secure, she recognises “it was a hollow victory because her life had been completely devastated.” Harris wasn’t allowed to go to her son Patrick’s funeral; a baby she gave birth to as she was starting her sentence was taken away for adoption; and while she was in prison her partner left her and both of her parents died. In addition Harris was denied compensation under England’s wrongful conviction compensation scheme.
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