Research wins legal protection

A Keele University professor has obtained an injunction in the High Court banning the disclosure of confidential research material. The material included documents on Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP), a condition by which people fabricate or induce illness in others, commonly their own children.

North Staffordshire Hospital NHS Trust in conjunction with David Southall, professor of paediatrics at the school of postgraduate medicine which is part of Keele University, took legal action after papers belonging to the professor were copied unlawfully.

According to the hospital in Stoke-on-Trent, the papers concerned the use of Covert Video Surveillance (CVS) as a means of diagnosing MSBP.

The injunctions ban four people, including a postgraduate sociology student at Sheffield University, from communicating, publishing or making use of any information contained in the documents.

The injunctions, issued in Birmingham, come four months after one of the defendants, Sharon Payne from Winsford, Cheshire, unlawfully copied the documents which, according to North Staffordshire Hospital, "largely consist of research and audit notes and general correspondence".

They were in Professor Southall's office "further to the preparation of a medical paper for publication by way of an audit of this method of diagnosis".

Professor Southall controversially used CVS in the hospital as a way of identifying the condition among parents who were referred from across the country.

CVS was stopped at the hospital as a result of the objections.

Mrs Payne was accused at a different hospital of having MSBP and abusing her children. She was temporarily denied contact with her children. She decided to get a job as a fundraiser with a charity run by Professor Southall earlier this year.

She says she stumbled over the papers while working for him. She took them and photocopied them. "I was horrified by what was in the papers," she said.

The court ordered Mrs Payne and a second defendant Andrea Dean of Talke, Stoke, who helped Mrs Payne, to each pay nominal damages of Pounds 2. Mrs Payne was also ordered to pay the trust's costs, against which her solicitor says she will appeal.

Freelance journalist Brian Morgan, a THES contributor and Sheffield postgraduate student Clive Baldwin both submitted to the injunctions. They were ordered to each pay the hospital and Professor Southall Pounds 100 damages. Mr Morgan's union, the National Union of Journalists, offered to pay Pounds 25,000 costs.

Professor Southall said he welcomed the outcome. He said: "They said they had done this because there was a public interest issue - that the work I was doing in identifying child abuse victims using CVS was in some way unethical. The most important part was to vindicate the clinical work we were doing to protect children from child abuse. We are doing something very important to help children."

He added there was also a need to keep confidential medical information private: "We don't think it's right for people to come in and take confidential medical information."

Mrs Payne added: "I took the material because we wanted an inquiry. That is what we have been asking for four years."