Magill Annual Magazine
December 2001

Though the heavens may fall...
Editorial:


Just short of a decade ago, a number of Irish families who had been subjected to interventions by two health boards, in matters concerning the suitability of the parents concerned to rear their own children, began a process of seeking an investigation into the behavior of the doctor who had provided expert evidence against them. The doctor in question was Dr Kathleen Cecilia Moira Woods, then attached to the Rotunda's Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in Dublin, who had found comprehensively against the parents concerned, having purported to substantiate a number of very serious allegations against the families in question in the course of her practice as a medical specialist in the area of diagnosis and treatment of child sexual abuse.

Dissatisfied with her findings, and critical of her methodology, the families sought to obtain redress in whatever way might be open to them, In March 1992, a complaint alleging professional misconduct against Dr Woods was lodged with the Medical Council, the governing body of the medical profession in Ireland. The complaint made little progress during the lifetime of the then Council, and it was not until a new council took office in 1995 that an Inquiry was mooted. In January 1996, the Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Committee met to consider whether the inquiry should be held in public or in private. A majority of the Committee concluded that, with the exception of matters relating to one family, it would be appropriate to proceed by means of a public inquiry. The names of children and families were to be removed from all documents, and it was ruled that references to them in the course of the inquiry should not allow them to be identified. The media were requested to nominate two journalists to report on the inquiry, but it was expressly stipulated that no cameras or taping equipment would be allowed at the hearings.

The Eastern Health Board applied for a Judicial Review and, in April 1998, Mr Justice Barr delivered a lengthy High Court ruling, which, while overturning the Fitness to Practise Committee's decision that the hearings should proceed in public, nevertheless cleared the way for the Medical Council to publish the final report on its own inquiry. "At the conclusion of the Inquiry into the complaints made against Dr Woods," Justice Barr outlined, "the Committee and the Medical Council may publish their findings thereon but in terms that the anonymity of the children and their parents shall be preserved."

Further delays were incurred by virtue of the fact that the incumbent Fitness to Practise Committee decided it would not have enough remaining time in office to proceed with and conclude an inquiry, and that the matter should therefore be left to the incoming Committee to proceed with. Following the election of a new Fitness to Practise Committee, the inquiry eventually began on October 4 2000 and concluded, after 43 days of hearings, in May of this year. The complainants were later informed that the Fitness to Practise Committee had concluded their deliberations on 27 July, and that a report was being typed up.

In recent weeks, having heard nothing further, the complainant families have written to the Medical Council seeking a time-frame for information concerning the outcome of the deliberations of the Fitness to Practise Committee and sight of the report on the inquiry. The complainants have been told informally that they will not be informed of the verdict or given information concerning the deliberations of the Fitness to Practise Committee, and that they are not entitled to sight of the report. Dr Woods, they have been told, will receive a copy of the report.

This is most disturbing. The five families implicated in this case have spent more than a decade living under the shadow of some of the most dreadful accusations that can be levelled at parents in the matter of the care of their children. In that time they have had to persevere in their attempts to obtain a fair hearing of their complaints through no less than three different configurations of the Medical Council. The first Medical Council to be made aware of these matters was elected in 1990 and sat for five years; the second, which initiated the inquiry process, sat from 1995 to 1999; the third was elected in 1999 and is still sitting.

The public requires to be reassured that there is no reluctance on the part of the present Medical Council to publish the outcome of a process initiated by a previous council - in other words, that there is no political dimension to the delays and reported reluctance concerning these matters. The parents are understandably concerned about these delays and might be forgiven for fearing the worst.

Mr Justice Barr, in his ruling of 3 April 1998, stated that no absolute mandatory prohibition exists on the publication of information concerning family proceedings on the basis of the in camera legislation. The court, he said, was bound by the concept that "the paramount consideration is to do justice."

Since it is clear that the families in question, including their now adult children, are anxious for the report to be published, and since the Medical Council has itself previously declared that it wishes all the matters to be as fully ventilated as possible, it is difficult to understand what possible basis there could be for declining now to publish the results of this investigation. It would be a pity if the families were forced to return to the High Court to explore the potential of Mr Justice Barr's injunction concerning the paramountcy of doing justice.