Sheffield Incest Case - Medical Guidelines

Medical Guidelines

Doctors were said to have failed professional guidelines of the General Medical Council by not informing the authorities, and the handling of the case, together with the failure of institutions to share information with each other, breached recommendations following a review of another case of protracted incest four years before in Swindon.

The family doctor who failed to recognise the signs had already been suspended by the GMC four years before, due to his falling below the minimum standard to the extent that he was exposing patients to risk. Before this doctor's suspension and subsequent departure from practice, the father would bring his daughters with the complications from their nineteen pregnancies and other injuries to him if they needed to see a doctor, even when they moved out of the area. The County Council's director of children's services said treatment of such cases was now handled differently from when the childhood abuse occurred.