Parents Against Injustice

Expert' doctor took away my baby because I was trying to be a good mother

PUBLISHED: 22:27, 6 April 2012 | UPDATED: 22:27, 6 April 2012

A woman has told how her baby was taken into care after controversial psychiatrist Dr George Hibbert said she was trying too hard to be ‘the perfect mother’.

The leading doctor is already facing claims he deliberately misdiagnosed parents with mental disorders to have their children removed.

In a damning report, he described the woman’s constant efforts to be a good mother as ‘over the top’.

'I will never forgive him': Miss B and her daughter, now six

Incredibly, he even claimed the healthy 24-year-old, who can be named only as Miss B, might be better off living ‘in the structured formality of institutional life’ so she could learn to be less obsessed with pleasing others.

As a result of Dr Hibbert’s report, for which he was paid thousands by social services, the woman’s baby was removed from her and placed with a foster family.

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The child was later returned after a string of other professionals said they had ‘no concerns’ about the woman or her parenting.

‘I will never forgive what he did,’ said Miss B. ‘He should be locked up.’
Miss B, a graduate and trainee music teacher, was sent to Dr Hibbert’s assessment centre when her daughter was six weeks old.

She had previously suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and social services were unsure how well she would cope alone with a baby.

Dr George Hibbert

A hospital psychiatrist saw ‘no evidence at all of depressive symptoms’ and said Miss B ‘appeared to have no problems in caring for her baby’.

But Dr Hibbert took a very different view after observing her at his assessment centre, Tadpole Cottage in Blunsdon, near Swindon.

He criticised Miss B for eating a sandwich while feeding her baby, and for failing to interact with the child enough while doing the vacuuming.

She was branded ‘lazy’ for missing chores when her baby was ill, and criticised for not waking at 8.30am even though her baby had woken her several times during the night.

When she played with her child or made noises to amuse her, he claimed her efforts were ‘startling and intrusive’.

Yet when she cuddled her baby quietly, he commented that ‘creating warmth, comfort and rocking was something to do when the baby was tired, not when she was wide awake’.

Miss B said: ‘The more I did to prove I was a good mother, the more he twisted it to make me look like there was something wrong with me.

‘Whatever you did was used against you. If I played with the baby too much I was upsetting her; if I didn’t, I was being neglectful.

‘The staff would distract us while we fed our babies, then our notes would say we weren’t focusing on the child. I soon realised I had been set up to fail from day one.’

At three months old, Miss B’s baby was struggling to feed and put on weight. But despite the mother’s pleas, Dr Hibbert refused at first to take the child to hospital, saying he suspected Miss B was ‘exaggerating’ the baby’s difficulties due to her tendency to ‘create drama around herself’.

When doctors at the hospital confirmed the baby did have feeding problems, Dr Hibbert changed tack, saying Miss B’s ‘intrusive and uncomfortable parenting’ was probably putting the baby off her milk.

A senior paediatrician found an abnormality in the baby’s lip was to blame for the problems, but by this time, the child had been placed in foster care.

Presenting Dr Hibbert’s report as evidence, social services had told a court that the mother’s ‘attempts to present as a perfect mother for the perfect child’ had made her too ‘stressed’ to care for her daughter properly.

In 2008, Miss B won back custody of her daughter after a two-year battle to disprove what Dr Hibbert had written.

‘I can’t describe the relief I felt when I got her back,’ Miss B said.
‘She is my whole world. When she was taken away, it was like my heart was being ripped out.’

Lucy's son was nearly taken into care when she was wrongly accused of putting his life in danger

Lucy Allan with her son who was nearly taken into care when she was wrongly accused of putting his life in danger

But Miss B said the experience of going into care had had ‘serious consequences’ for her daughter, who is now aged six.

‘It has affected her development quite badly,’ she said. ‘She is three years behind at school and has got some behavioural problems.

‘I hold Dr Hibbert completely responsible. I will never forgive what he did. He should be locked up.’

The mother is now in the process of filing a complaint to the GMC about Dr Hibbert.

Earlier this year, the eminent psychiatrist, who has lectured at Oxford and advised MPs on the family courts, offered to surrender his doctor’s licence after being confronted with allegations that he had deliberately misdiagnosed patients with mental disorders to fit with the view of social services.

His request was rejected by the GMC, who said there were still a number of ‘unresolved concerns regarding his fitness to practise’. There will now be a full fitness to practise hearing into his case.

A spokesman for Dr Hibbert at the Medical Protection Society said: ‘Dr Hibbert is bound by a professional duty of confidentiality.

‘He is therefore unable to comment on allegations raised in relation to care of a patient.

‘We can confirm that Dr Hibbert is co-operating with a General Medical Council investigation and that no findings have been made against him.’

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