In These New Times

 

 

Lisa Blakemore-Brown 

Psychologist

 

 The One Click Group

11th March, 2009

Click on original article(above)  to see live links.

I welcomed the opportunity to represent the Autism Rights group at this 

important event.  Much of what I had to tell those who attended the Children’s 

Session, Chaired by Sabina Frediani of Liberty was probably new to them. In 

effect, my short talk was my own witness statement to violations of Human 

Rights and Civil Liberties in relation to  families, especially families with children 

who are autistic or suffer from other disabilities; and unremitting retaliation by 

the Government to prevent such violations being proven. The end result being 

ongoing damage to families and their disabled children which one could never 

imagine would happen in our so called advanced age.   

 

Speakers had only 10 minutes and I am grateful for being allowed a bit more 

time, but there is so much to say that I have added some information to this 

write up on topics which I could not elaborate on. Where this has been done the 

added information is in italics or mentioned as new. This is not therefore a 

transcript or a predetermined speech.   

 

Various documents were taken to the event and copied for interested parties to 

read. These included articles written by me and others over the course of the last 

11 years – since this Government came to power – representing various efforts to 

make the public aware of what has been happening and to trigger policy changes 

to limit the damage and ensure these atrocities never happened again. Other 

documents were provided to delegates at the Convention to support what may be 

seen as controversial assertions. (See Appendix) 

 

 

 

 2 

Gross Miscarriages Of Government 

 

Back in 1996 I was an Expert Witness in a Court case involving autistic spectrum 

hyperactive identical twin girls who had been born at 26 weeks gestation in 1984. 

The behaviour of the twins, one in particular, was so difficult for the mother to 

manage especially with two other younger children, that she threatened to sue 

the authorities if they had missed the nature of the twins’ problem. This triggered 

an allegation of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSBP) – that she was 

fabricating or inducing the children’s behaviours/illnesses. What became clear to 

me was that Social workers, the Court and other professionals were being 

groomed by perverted logic to see real disorders and symptoms of real illness as 

child abuse. Henry Porter has just written an example of exactly what I saw 

starting to happen all those years ago and was unable to stop.  See Lyndsey 

Craig case in Persecuting the Innocent, February 2009.   

 

Another Expert Witness in the twins’ case in 1996 was Dr David Southall who 

claimed that they were “perfectly normal”.  This was patently not the case and I 

became increasingly troubled by this view and the distorted thinking behind MSBP 

which spread like wild fire through the whole system blaming the mother, 

resulting in the removal of four children in the UK. It’s potential to do the same to 

just about anyone was palpably obvious, through cognitive distortion and the 

influence of high powered medics.  

 

The two youngest children were indeed perfectly normal, as they had been born 

at the expected time and did not suffer from the health problems experienced by 

their very premature older sisters. The Social Worker response to this was that 

the young ones would turn out the same as the older ones if they stayed with 

their mother!  This was of course impossible. These children were rapidly put up 

for adoption. When I mentioned my deepening concerns about all this to someone 

in the new Labour Government I was told “You need to know Tony’s position on 

adoption”. As we were to discover, Tony Blair was very keen to increase the 

number of adoptions of children in care and to help achieve this goal, social work 

departments were paid bonuses depending on how many adoptions they could 

deliver. Such speedy fast tracking for desperate children in appalling homes 

previously stuck for many years in care is of course commendable, but what if the 

parents were innocent and the children wrongly taken? They would never go 

home again. How would this affect those children for the rest of their lives? The 

more I saw within the Social Services and Court system, even the educational 

system caught up in the hysteria, and the more shocked and sickened I became. 

It felt like fascism. My colleague, Charles Pragnell, Independent Consultant Social 

Worker, saw the same thing developing. He said to me one day “Lisa, this is you 

and me”.  

 

Our fears and concerns and those of others were proven right time and time 

again.  The more obvious this became, the more we were proven right and the 

more punitive and defensive were the actions of this Government. Refusing to 

ever accept fault, as if that were not bad enough, it took the cynical opportunity 

with every criticism and exposure of error, to twist criticism in order to develop 

distorted policies and Guidance. This was then further embedded deeper and 

deeper into the system as the Government sought out increasingly more creative 

ways of preventing such exposures and criticisms from happening again. The 

methods are pathological. Gross miscarriages of justice have occurred time and 

time again and tens of thousands of children with disabilities and their families 

have been affected. The brainwashing has been honed to the point that, yes, as 

Charles said “it’s you and me”. Anyone can now accuse anyone of abuse and the 

system will roll out its well practised methods to rush in to blame innocent 

families and deny the disabled child not only of its family in the worse case 

 3 

scenarios but of its right to acceptance of its disability and the treatments and 

educational support which should follow. The Convention on Modern Liberty has 

emerged through similar fears as the same kind of atrocities have been 

increasingly seen across the UK in a multitude of forms.  

 

Irretrievable Damage 

 

Months after the case ended I developed Grade 3 breast cancer and often 

wondered if it was the shock of what happened in that case which triggered the 

cancer. It made me all the more determined to see justice done and I took part in 

a New Zealand documentary and travelled to New Zealand to try to avert further 

disasters happening over there, after the mother and new husband tried to start 

a new life.  Social Workers travelled to New Zealand and ultimately the mother 

lost two more children and her life was destroyed.   See Hidden David Southall 

MSBP Film Internet Released 

 

At the time I was also Chair of a group of Psychologists, all Members of The 

British Psychological Society, advising Jack Straw on Parenting issues. I wrote to 

him, to Norman Warner, now Lord Warner ex Director of Kent Social Services to 

alert them to what was going on. I informed them that the mother in question 

was planning to go to Strasbourg to the European Courts as her Human Rights 

and those of her children had been profoundly violated. Jack Straw said he was 

interested in what New Zealand did and that there was no need to go to Europe 

as he was planning to bring in Human Rights legislation to this country. He was 

also not shocked, as he should have been. I felt very uneasy.  

 

I was a witness in the Griffiths Inquiry, which was examining various aspects of 

Dr Southall’s work, my evidence specifically on MSBP. The result of which was 

that the Government should set up a Working Party to ensure the correct 

identification of MSBP. The outcome was a gross distortion of this 

recommendation leading to Guidelines rolled out across the country to thousands 

of workers. See The Consensus Report, Family Law Reform.  

 

Years passed and over that time I wrote to many civil servants and other 

Ministers, including Jacqui Smith who was Health Minister when the appalling 

MSBP Guidelines were being brought in and in which Autism symptoms were 

being re-defined as child abuse. I wrote a book and what happened to that is a 

story in itself.  See Reweaving the Autistic Tapestry: Autism, Asperger’s 

Syndrome and ADHD and a number of articles. Examples were taken to the 

Convention on Modern Liberty. 

 

I spoke at the first conference to question the use of MSBP thinking in Sydney, 

Australia in 2004 and on the television and radio, and to MP’s and Members of the 

House of Lords, all to no avail.  See The Pseudo-Science Of MSBP, Malice In 

Wonderland, Lisa Blakemore Brown, University Of Western Sydney February 4th 

and 5th 2004.  What began to happen, instead of a Government listening to a 

former adviser, was that I began to face allegations through the British 

Psychological Society. This went on for years and I had to sell my home to pay for 

the legal fees.  

 

The British Psychological Society, in its desperation after I won against it in 2002, 

started to accuse me of being paranoid and was able to bring in a helpful 

Psychiatrist who had never met me to agree. Fascism indeed.  I ultimately won 

against that allegation too, but all of this took up many years and nine Hearing 

days and has caused irreversible damage.   

 

 4 

Others who do their duty by attempting to alert the public to miscarriages of 

justice have also faced attack. Jane Bryant of the One Click health advocacy 

pressure group website faced the Police entering her home and threats to take 

her into custody and her son into care if she did not allow them to take her 

computer and sign a waiver form. Since the talk at the Convention of Modern 

Liberty she has received a legal letter from Dr David Salisbury for daring to 

publish a complaint to the GMC about him and an essay about the vaccine 

scandal.  See UK Government Vaccines Director Threatens Legal Action Against 

One Click. 

 

Basic Support For Disabled Children Denied 

 

Over time vastly increased numbers of children have been recognised as having 

autism and related immune system disorders/ME etc and the incidence has grown 

rapidly. Parents have to fight Local Education Authorities for basic support and 

treatment has been denied to the majority who claim their children reacted to 

vaccines, even when they can prove that biomedical methods have worked. Other 

professionals have been so appalled by the terrible struggle for parents even to 

get basic special educational needs met, vaccine damaged or not, that they have 

left the system and some have left the country in disgust. See US child expert 

quits Britain over ‘hidden crisis’ in special needs, The Observer.  

 

In the worst case scenarios these reactions are called abuse and children could 

then easily be removed from the family in secret family courts where cognitive 

distortions and miscarriages of justice can go unchecked. This has led to 

persistent calls for changes in Family Law. Jack Straw has announced that there 

will be changes but a journalist at the Independent, Matthew Bell, spotted a fatal 

flaw  – at the same time as announcing changes to allow the Press into these 

courts Jack Straw also announced that he would be reversing Clayton versus 

Clayton – thereby preventing anyone from being named by telling their story to a 

journalist, thus making a criminal of every child or family (and the journalist) who 

is named in a story about their experiences in the Family Courts.  See Justice 

Ministry to bar parents from telling their own stories, Matthew Bell, The 

Independent, 15 February 2009. Mr Straw was giving freedom with one hand and 

taking it away with the other. 

 

For those who have been wrongly taken into care with real illness or disorders 

morphed into child abuse, we can only guess at how their lives progress without 

the understanding and support they need, but I was able to see both sides in the 

first case as I met the most damaged child when she turned 17. As she had been 

regarded as abused and perfectly normal, her bizarre behaviours, learning 

difficulties and poor co-ordination were seen as a result of the “abuse”. No-one 

could change that by putting her in a “good home” because that wasn’t the 

reason for her problems. So extraordinary methods were put in place to rid her of 

her “demons”. These included real abuse such as swinging her from trees, 

throwing her downstairs and smashing her fingers in a door. Other forms of 

abuse were suspected and eventually the child was placed with another foster 

parent – but only after she ran away many times. The Police were never informed 

by Social Workers about this abuse in care. When l informed them they did 

nothing.  

 

In 2005 I also provided information to a Cross Party Parliamentary project 

(Consensus) to encourage the Government to look again at its MSBP methods – 

now spreading wildly as its name was changed to FII (Factitious and Induced 

Illness) and it became clear that even that name was no longer needed as 

children could be regarded as emotionally abused with ease thanks to 

Government policy and training. The lengthy and highly well referenced document 

 5 

sets out clearly how Social Policy had been misdirected. Even this initiative, sent 

throughout Whitehall in 2005 was thwarted.   See The Consensus Report, Family 

Law Reform.  

 

Meanwhile other information came to light. I was informed that the twins in that 

first case had been in a Dr Southall study and from other sources knew that Dr 

Southall was involved with vaccination population studies with Cot Death 

charities. Of course identical twins would be very useful in any study as one 

would be used as the experimental twin and the other the control. This would also 

explain the difference in the children’s neurological status, which I knew all about 

as I had assessed them. It could also throw light on why the mother had to be so 

brutally silenced and hounded across the world. 

 

Vaccines – Adverse Reactions 

 

Then came the astonishing revelation through a Freedom of Information request 

that Professor Sir Roy Meadow had been on the JCVI Joint Sub Committee on 

Adverse Reactions to Vaccines and Immunisation alongside Dr Elizabeth Miller 

and Dr David Salisbury from the then named DHSS.   See Professor Roy Meadow 

and Professor David Salisbury at the Joint Sub-Committee On Adverse Reactions 

To Vaccines And Immunisation held on 6 July 1987 at lO.30am in Room 1611/12 

Market Towers. The meeting notes were headed as ‘commercial’ and ‘in 

confidence’. MMR and DTP adverse reactions were discussed.  

 

Of course Drs David Southall and Meadow are well known for promoting MSBP 

with Professor Sir Roy Meadow being the architect of the distorted theory. To find 

him in a Committee in which adverse reactions to vaccinations were openly 

discussed with specific case details – especially as many of the so called 

symptoms of child abuse could be adverse reactions to vaccines – was shocking.  

 

The profoundly worrying  implications are that powerful medics have been aware 

of adverse reactions and have ensured, through Government crossing of 

boundaries, that public health, social work , legal and education policy and 

training has distorted thinking and put in place draconian measures to blame 

parents and deny many children’s illnesses, and in some cases children’s deaths. 

In the Sally Clark case, questions have been raised as to why all the lawyers were 

told not to raise vaccine issues even though one of the children had been 

vaccinated just hours earlier.  I recall in that very first MSBP case wondering why 

a “cot death” specialist (Dr Southall) was swimming in my sea – ASD and 

hyperactivity. Of course if children react to a vaccine but survive, it is not 

surprising that gradually over time other problems could emerge linked to that 

adverse reaction. See What killed Sally Clark’s child?  Neville Hodgkinson asks 

why the jury in the Sally Clark trial was told to discount the DTP jab given to her 

second child, Harry, just five hours before he was found dead.  Neville 

Hodgkinson, The Spectator 16th May 2007, 

 

I am aware of a number of parents whose children reacted to vaccine who were 

subsequently wrongly blamed for the adverse reaction instead of admitting that 

this was iatrogenic abuse not child abuse. Professors Sir Roy Meadow and David 

Southall were involved with a number of them. 

 

The meetings of the JCVI are commercial and not published and there are known 

links to the pharmaceutical industry. New legislation coming into force very soon 

will have people on these committees dictating to the Government on vaccines. 

Copies of the announcement of this legislation were taken to the Modern Liberty 

Convention.     

 

 6 

At the time of the conference the following article had not been written: Jab 

Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme, Lucy Johnston, Sunday Express, 8 March 

2009.       

 

There are so many cases of children who have reacted to vaccines who have 

never been able to get recognition of their illness whether in the form of 

compensation or support and in some cases they have found themselves in the 

prison system and on psychotropic drugs separated from their family. A case 

mentioned in the reading of the Cheryl Gillan Bill in Parliament just the day before 

the conference was that of Piers Bolduc. He reacted to a booster vaccination as a 

teenager and developed Asperger Syndrome. Without appropriate understanding 

or support he ended up in Broadmoor on psychotropic medications and his 

parents were prevented from seeing him for 12 years. Finally, it looks as if he has 

been placed in the appropriate placement after all these years. (See What can be 

done with people with Aspergers? We hear the story of Piers Bolduc – a man with 

Aspergers who’s been in Broadmoor for 13 years after being misdiagnosed with 

schizophrenia, You and Yours, Radio 4, 13/09/07.) 

 

Jodie Marchant, 17 years old, was featured in the Mail on Sunday during the week 

of the Convention.  See NHS blunders are behind a spate of ‘vaccine overloads’, 

Beezy Marsh and Jo Macfarlane, Daily Mail, 21st February 2009.  Jodie had been 

given a cocktail of 7 vaccinations at once and was left brain damaged and with a 

gut disorder. Parents could not complain to the GMC about the GP who ordered 

the vaccine as they said there was not enough research into the vaccine – if there 

was not enough research then the vaccine should never have been given. Jodie’s 

parents have been thwarted at every turn legally despite a portfolio of evidence 

that the vaccination caused the damage to their daughter. Jodie’s tragic case has 

raised awareness of the frightening possibility of multiple thousands of children 

reacting badly to being given the wrong vaccines quite apart from those who 

react to the “right” ones. The JCVI has been able to keep the lid on adverse 

reactions for more than two full decades – at what terrible cost to the children 

and their families? Jodie’s parents email is: patandbillmarchant@btinternet.com 

 

Blaming Parents Government Policy 

 

With the sterling efforts of this Government, distorted policy affecting these and 

other disabled children has damaged them all the more, in many cases by falsely 

blaming innocent parents and also by denying the real problems suffered by the 

children, therefore blocking the way to any services, compensation and support 

they should be given.  

 

If the system fails to admit why children are ill/suffer from disorders, or even that 

they have the illnesses and disorders, these children will not be supported 

through appropriate health and educational support and can so easily become 

those on the streets with the ASBO’S, the knives and getting hit by Tasers etc. 

Any workers involved with children in trouble need to establish if they have an 

ASD condition.    

 

Autism Rights has recognised these creeping violations over many years and 

produced briefing papers and I would like to say thank you to them for wanting 

me to represent them in London. Thank you also to Sabina Frediani at Liberty and 

the Convention for the opportunity to speak and for giving the children and their 

families a voice.   

 

 

 

 7 

APPENDIX 

 

1. Innocence is no protection against the Government’s laws, February 2009, 

Number One, Modern Liberty Convention. 

 

2. Hidden David Southall MSBP Film Internet Released.  This is the Award 

winning film of disgraced paediatrician David Southall and Munchausen 

Syndrome by Proxy recently uploaded to YouTube that the British 

Establishment has not wanted you to see for the last ten years.  

 

3. The Consensus Report, Family Law Reform. Mismanagement: Social and 

Family Policy. 

 

4. Reweaving the Autistic Tapestry: Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD, 

Lisa Blakemore Brown, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, ISBN NO. 

1853027480. 

 

5. The Pseudo-Science Of MSBP, Malice In Wonderland, Lisa Blakemore 

Brown,  University Of Western Sydney February 4th and 5th 2004.  

 

6. Sydney Talk, Charles Pragnell.  A Paper presented to an International 

Conference in Sydney, Australia on 4/5 February 2004 to examine 

problems in child protection systems and procedures internationally, and 

to discuss the need for reforms. 

 

7. Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, Lisa Blakemore Brown, The Psychologist, 

September 1997.  

 

8. False illness in children – or simply false accusations?, Lisa Blakemore 

Brown, The Therapist, Volume 5, No 2 – Spring 1998.  

 

9. UK Government Vaccines Director Threatens Legal Action Against One 

Click, Jane Bryant, The One Click Group, 4 March 2009. 

 

10. US child expert quits Britain over ‘hidden crisis’ in special needs,  Anushka 

Asthana, 30 July 2006, The Observer. 

 

11. Justice Ministry to bar parents from telling their own stories, Matthew Bell, 

The Independent, 15 February 2009. 

 

12. Professor Roy Meadow and Professor David Salisbury at the Joint Sub- 

Committee On Adverse Reactions To Vaccines And Immunisation held on 6 

July 1987 at lO.30am in Room 1611/12 Market Towers. 

 

13. What killed Sally Clark’s child? , Neville Hodgkinson, The Spectator 16th 

May 2007. 

 

14. Jab Makers Linked To Vaccine Programme, Lucy Johnston, Sunday 

Express, 8 March 2009. 

 

15. What can be done with people with Aspergers? We hear the story of Piers 

Bolduc – a man with Aspergers who’s been in Broadmoor for 13 years 

after being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, You and Yours, Radio 4, 

13/09/07. 

 

16. NHS blunders are behind a spate of ‘vaccine overloads’, Beezy Marsh and 

Jo Macfarlane Daily Mail, 21st February 2009. 

 

 

17. Ministers told child harm theory was flawed, Jamie Doward, The Observer, 

January 25th, 2004.  

 

18. Summary Of Glasgow Modern Liberty Convention Event, Across Britain 28 

February 2009, Fiona Sinclair, Autism Rights.