This man devastated my family

On a landing in Holloway prison, with a razor blade being held at her neck and whispered threats in her ear, Sarah Grey experienced a moment of liberating anger. It was not directed at the hard-case prisoner holding her by the hair and threatening to cut her throat, nor even the prison staff she believes set her up for this violent confrontation. Rather, her fury was aimed at the people she blames, to this day, for the disintegration of her life. Among them she numbers Professor David Southall, the eminent paediatrician who is being investigated by the General Medical Council over allegations that he wrongly accused parents of harming their children.

Sarah's son was taken away from her after Professor Southall became involved in his case and she is pursuing her own, separate, complaint against him. According to her, his actions triggered a series of devastating circumstances that led to her, her closest family and a friend being sent to jail. Then, both her children were taken into care and her entire existence was taken over by the battle to get them back.

At the heart of her story is a diagnosis of Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, the theory that proposed some mothers harm their children to draw attention to themselves. The acceptance of the theory, first advanced by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, led to murder charges against innocent mothers and the suspicion that thousands of children may have been needlessly taken into care. Sarah joined the demonstration outside the High Court yesterday when the first appeal hearings were launched by parents who believe their children were wrongly taken away from them on the basis of Munchausen evidence.

The Children's Minister, Margaret Hodge, has announced a review of such cases, but an Evening Standard investigation into Sarah Grey's case and others like it suggests the Government's action is unlikely to produce positive results.

Indeed, we can reveal that Ms Hodge could soon face a judicial challenge to her plans. And mothers who have lost their children to the Munchausen scourge are already saying Ms Hodge's initiative is merely an attempt to whitewash a grave national scandal.

Sarah Grey comes from a loving, law-abiding family which was torn apart when the Munchausen theory was visited upon them. She, her husband and her elderly mother were given substantial prison sentences in circumstances that appear to belong to some dark Kafkaesque dictatorship rather than modern Britain.

And Sarah lost her two children. They were taken into care three years ago, when she was thrown into prison, and she has not seen them since. This is the hurt that prompted the angry despair in Holloway and led Sarah to tell the woman threatening to cut her throat to "just go ahead and do it".

"I meant it," she said. "I just didn't care any more. Everything had been taken away."

How did it come to that? She is 38 now, a slim, attractive woman who talks intelligently and without hysteria-about the tragedies that came to dominate her life. Her memory is uncannily accurate and appears to concur precisely with the documents she stores in more than 40 ring-binder files.

The files tell their own story. They begin with letters, some photocopied and fading reports, assessments and then papers on the court case and prison.

The record begins in 1990 when her son James had an MMR jab at just over two years old.

"I became aware something was wrong quite quickly," she said. "He became unsteady on his feet, he wouldn't sleep and although he had been speaking quite well, he stopped communicating." James's sister Emma was born around this time, and she grew normally and thrived, but James became worse.

He wasn't eating properly and he was shutting himself off from everyone around him. By the time he was five his left leg had begun turning inward and he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. It was also suspected that he was autistic.

The family moved across Britain so James could attend a special- needs school. Sarah had to abandon the designer babywear company she had launched; her mother and father moved to be close by.

The school was not a success. "He was very unhappy there," Sarah said. "He would cry for hours when he got home and repeated over and over 'no school, no school ...' I'd persuade him to go in the morning, but he'd break my heart when he said goodbye. He'd be choking back the sobs, tears running down his face."

Eventually, she said, she could stand it no more and began educating James at home. He was eight years old at the time and still needed a great deal of care. He was attending hospital regularly and underwent a serious operation on his leg to try to correct the growing deformity. It didn't work.

In November 1997 she took James for an examination by Professor Southall. He was an advocate of Professor Sir Roy Meadow's Munchausen theory, but when Sarah took her son to see him she knew nothing of this. Indeed, after years of frustration, he seemed like their last hope. She could not have known how it was to turn out.

Her files contain a letter written by Professor Southall to her local hospital. In one letter he expressed the view that a full examination of James's case would probably reveal Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. "I suspect ... we should be looking for child-protection proceedings," he added.

During Professor Southall's examination of James he asked about family history. Sarah revealed that her twin brothers and one of her two sisters had died in infancy.

"He changed completely," she said. "He became very interested. He kept firing questions at me about the babies. I couldn't answer him - I was 12 months old when that happened - so he said he wanted to see my mother."

She made the trip back to Professor Southall's hospital in Stoke-on-Trent with her mother, Mary. The documents in Sarah's file reveal that after this meeting Professor Southall began to investigate the infant deaths in her family.

They further disclose, in letters he wrote, that he believed Mary had suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy and may have killed her own babies. She, he suspected, had passed on the " syndrome" to her daughter.

As Sarah's mother, Mary, related this part of the story she held up the documents in disbelief.

"How could anyone believe such a thing?" she said. "My babies died because they had cystic fibrosis. They were in hospital. He has tried to turn a family tragedy into a crime."

On 25 September, 1998, James was taken into care. Sarah and her mother were allowed to see him for an hour a day. Even that contact was soon to be stopped. Professor Southall had warned that it could be dangerous for the two women to be with the children. Within a few months the local social services department made moves to take James's sister Emma into care.

"There were three court hearings in quick succession," Sarah recalled. "We were in a panic. We didn't know what to do."

She sought the help of Penny Mellor, a vigorous campaigner for mothers who had fallen victim to the Munchausen theory.

"I was terrified they were going to take Emma away," Sarah said. "James was showing signs of abuse at the care home - he had a black eye and fingertip bruising on his arms - and I couldn't face both my children suffering like that."

So her mother, Mary, took Emma on a long holiday. It lasted four weeks and ended in Scotland when dozens of police raided the flat they were staying in.

"It was a major police operation - they had been scouring the country for them - they even gave it a name, Operation Neptune. It seemed they had been told Emma had been abducted by a mass murderer."

Emma, who was found hiding from the police in a wardrobe in the borrowed flat, was immediately taken into care. Sarah, her husband, her mother and Penny Mellor were arrested. They came to court in the spring of 2001. Ms Mellor and Mary were charged with conspiracy to abduct Emma. Sarah and her husband were charged with aiding and abetting them.

Mary, then aged 62, was sentenced to nine months' jail. She served almost three months in a prison where the adjoining wing contained at least one mass killer and longterm prisoners called her "nonce" because staff told them she had been convicted of child abuse.

"That happened to both of us," Sarah said. "The prison staff seemed to take delight in saying we were in for a child offence." Sarah also served almost three months; most of the time was spent sharing a cell with her mother but one month was spent in Holloway so she could attend court hearings that decided the fate of her children.

Her husband was sentenced to six months' jail and Penny Mellor was given a two-year sentence. This was later reduced to 18 months on appeal and she was released after serving eight months.

By the time Sarah and her family left prison, her children were lost to her. Her marriage, which she said had been a happy one, ended. She and her husband are separated, although they are on amicable terms.

"The children are both in foster homes," she said. "I haven't seen either of them for three years." A DVD she put together with a poem for them last Christmas was returned to her because it was judged to be "inappropriate".

She tells the story calmly, but there can be no disguising the hurt. Each day that passes, she said, seems to move her children further and further away from her.

When Margaret Hodge announced an urgent review of care proceedings involving Munchausen cases there was a moment of hope: "I thought, thank God! I thought that if someone just looks at our case they'll know straight away that a wrong has been done. But then I looked at what was being proposed more closely. I realised all the Government was doing was referring cases back to the local authority. It was just a whitewash."

Sarah's reasons for saying this are based on a sound judgment that may yet embarrass Ms Hodge. Sarah is one of more than a dozen parents who have instructed the London law firm Leigh Day and Co to act for them over the placing of their children in care. The firm is currently looking at the possibility of applying for a judicial review of the Government's decision to turn the suspect cases back to local authorities.

Solicitor Bozena Michalowska says: "There is no provision for an independent review. The local authorities will be judging themselves in their own court. And there is no mechanism for truly objective monitoring."

Sarah believes that this will prevent new scrutiny of her case. She said: "The local authority is not going to provide legal ammunition that could be fired back at them."

As the Munchausen story continues to unfold, the list of parents joining the action being prepared by Bozena Michalowska and her colleagues grows almost daily. And there is a growing confidence that when the battle is joined in earnest, there will be no shortage of ammunition.

Family names have been changed for legal reasons