Doc Gave Psych Diagnoses to Yank Children from Parents: Tip of the Iceberg in Service Abuses

After destroying countless families, Psychiatrist George Hibbert is finally be investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC). In yet another example of the abuse of power by psychiatry, Hibbert is facing claims that he deliberately gave false mental disorder diagnoses for enormous payments by social services that wanted control of the children.

He charged local authorities £6,000 per week for each family placed under his dubious “care”.  His charge for reading medical documents was £210 an hour. He’s now driving fancy cars and living in a gorgeous home, while the families whose lives he’s upended struggle to deal with the traumas he’s dealt them. Hibbert has become a multimillionaire during the years from 2000, when he started his practice.

The first time official concerns were raised was in 2007, when a woman, identified only as Miss A, complained that his diagnosis of bipolar disorder was wrong. One consultant psychiatrist stated that there was “no evidence” for the diagnosis, and that he had deliberately used “exaggerating” language and was “misrepresenting” the woman’s behavior.

Miss A has been largely barred from seeing her son since then. Obviously, her life, and that of her son, will never be put right. She has stated:

Nothing will ever make up for what he has done to me and my child. I want to make sure this man is exposed and that he can never do this to anybody else.

When Hibbert became aware that he would face GMC charges, he tried to get out of them by voluntarily giving up his license to practice. In the UK, a rule, which initially seems quirky, says that only doctors who maintain their licenses to practice can be charged and punished by the GMC. However, the GMC does have the ability to refuse requests to give them up voluntarily. In this case, they’ve denied it. As a result, Hibbert is being charged.

The most the GMC can do is take his license to practice medicine. Thus, the worst punishment facing him is public censure and loss of the license that he has tried to give up. That’s why Hibbert isn’t being given the option of giving his license up. The worst that can happen to him is for the GMC to take it away! So, the only difference is to determine who gets to remove the license—the practitioner or the GMC.

Obviously, this is not a criminal action against Hibbert. It’s repugnant that people’s lives can be torn apart, but the officials doing it can virtually walk away.

Tip of the Iceberg

As bad as the Hibbert case is, the real issue isn’t whether he loses his license to practice medicine, or even that he isn’t facing criminal charges. The real issue is how this could have happened in the first place:

• How did a service that’s supposedly for the benefit of families start ripping families apart?
• How did taxpayers’ money get diverted for such a purpose?
• How did psychiatry gain such incredible power to destroy people’s lives based solely on the word of a single person?
• What will be done to prevent such abuses by psychiatry in the future?

As a study by Professor Jane Ireland for the Family Justice Council found, the situation is even worse. Even non-qualified people are being given the authority to make decisions about the psychological status of parents!

Ireland’s report found that 20% of the people granted authority to make such decisions held no qualifications—though, in light of Hibbert’s decisions, it obviously isn’t the least bit heartening to think of psychiatrists doing it. She found that a full two-thirds of the reports generated were of “poor” or “very poor” quality. Most significantly, she found that a full 90% of the psychologists who produced such reports for social workers do nothing else. They’ve simply gotten on the social services gravy train. Obviously, the Hibbert case is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The fact is that social workers seem more interested in getting the results they want than in doing what’s right for families. Christopher Booker reports about a case in which social workers were displeased that one psychologist found one woman to be “a competent mother”. Rather than accept that, they went to another, who came up with the same result. So, they simply found yet another, who diagnosed the mother with “borderline personality disorder”.

On the strength of that single report, which conflicted with two others, all three of that woman’s children were taken from her and put up for adoption.

A father who had grown weary of psychological assessments, after going through four of them, refused to go to a fifth. He and his wife lost their daughter. An appeals court decided that he had put his “emotional needs before those of his child”. As a result, the child was adopted.

In another case, a woman lost her child based on a 235-page report that said only that she was “likely to have a borderline personality disorder” It didn’t even state that she did, only that it was “likely”. The author was paid £14,000—and had never met the woman.

And It Goes Even Deeper

On top of these abuses are ones like the fake Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, whose top promoter in the UK managed to put several women into prison by falsely claiming they’d killed their own children. Christina England tells this tale in Freedom Of Information Request Reveals Major Government Vaccine Conspiracy.

In this case, the doctor involved was allowed to give up his license to practice, and, of course, there have been no criminal charges against him—though he has seen to it that several women have been imprisoned without cause.

Children are being used as political toys against their parents—and not just in the UK.

An International Problem

This corruption of children’s services agencies is not unique to the UK. The problem is running rampant in the western world.

Canada

As told by her father in Ayn, Stolen from Her Family by Canadian Government, Wants to Come Home, this autistic girl was abducted on 16 June last year by a Canadian provincial children’s service nearly a year ago. He was not accused of doing anything wrong or of providing anything but a caring home.

Ayn is still in a foster home nearly a year later. Her father cared for her, was able to manage her behavior without drugs. Ayn was happy. She had problems, though they were primarily in school. She is now drugged with powerful antipsychotics, which have no place in treatment of autism. She’s in foster care.

You can follow Ayn’s case here or her father’s Facebook page, Help Bring Little Autistic Girl Back to Her Daddy.

Australia

In Australia, 11-year-old Sarah Westley was suffering from cancer, a particularly aggressive and rare kind. Doctors knew that she would not survive. Nonetheless, they wanted the chance to use her as a guinea pig. With the assistance of children’s services, her parents were not allowed to care for her. They were given no choices in her treatment.

Sarah was not given pain medication, though her pain was horrible. Her spleen was surgically removed, though there was no medical reason for it. She was pressured to eat junk food, in order to fatten her up, but not given the sort of food that she was familiar with—healthy and fresh—in spite of making it clear that’s what she wanted. She was given horrible chemotherapy, even when she had allergic reactions that nearly killed her.

Her parents were threatened with the loss of their other five children if they tried to interfere with the doctors. They had no choice but to watch their daughter be virtually tortured.

You can read Sarah’s story in Sarah’s Last Wish: A Tale of Medical Hubris That Caused a Child to Be Tortured as Her Life Was Ending.

United States

Many Americans recognize the name of Maryanne Godboldo. Child Protective Services wanted to take her autistic daughter because Godboldo had refused to give her the antipsychotic drug, Risperdal. Without a warrant, police went to her door with a full SWAT operation. If you question that, take a look at the photo on the left, which shows them.

Because they had no right to be there, Godboldo refused to hand her daughter over, and she pulled a rifle out and shot it, though not aiming at anyone. A full standoff ensued after they had broken her door down.

She finally surrendered after 12 hours. Her daughter was taken and drugged. Godboldo was imprisoned and charged with multiple felonies, though she finally won her case months later. Nonetheless, the prosecutor is still trying to get her.

Before this happened, Godboldo’s daughter, though autistic and missing the lower part of one leg because of a birth defect, played the piano and danced.

You can get more information about this case at Justice for Maryanne Godboldo.

What They All Have in Common

All these abuses of families and children is possible because of one thing. Everything is done behind a wall of secrecy. As a result, for the few cases the public knows about, there are dozens—more likely hundreds, possibly thousands—of others.

Under the guise of protecting the privacy of children in custody, very little information gets out. Parents who have come afoul of these agencies are generally afraid to speak out for fear that their situations could be made worse. And who will listen to these tales? They sound like the sorts of things that people don’t want want to believe their governments and people in authority positions are capable of doing.

But they are.

Ultimately, it comes down to money. The more children agencies can grab from their parents, the more they can “prove” the need for their services. To get what they want, they’re willing to pay enormous sums to psychiatrists, psychologists, and self-styled experts who’ll tell them whatever they want to hear if they’re paid enough. And, of course, the money comes from taxes. This is all being done is the name of the people of Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and most likely many other countries.

Christopher Booker concluded in Dubious ‘experts’ are paid to tear families apart:

… once a court system is allowed to hide itself away behind a wall of secrecy, the chances are high that it will become corrupted. A perfect example is the role played in our family courts by many of these professional “experts”.

If you think it can’t happen to you, please think again. Not one of the parents whose stories are told here would have thought it possible. But it did happen to them. And it will happen to more and more parents and children. If you think that you have the right to raise your children as you see fit, barring abuse, oyou need to realize that it isn’t true. Your children can be torn from you, your life and theirs turned inside-out, because one person in a children’s agency points the finger.

Sources:

• The doctor who broke up families: Psychiatrist who damned hundreds as ‘unfit parents’ faces GMC probe
• The doctor who took my baby away
• Dubious ‘experts’ are paid to tear families apart
• Bring them to book
• Justice for Maryanne Godboldo
• SWAT Team Arrests Black Mother Who Refused to Medicate Child

Tagged antipsychotics, autism, child abuse agencies, children torn from parents, children’s service abuse, children’s services, dr. george hibbert, george hibbert children’s services, george hibbert general medical council, george hibbert gmc, hibbert psychiatrist, maryanne godboldo, politics, psychiatry