Doctor ‘failed to spot abuse’ on girl’s body - Freddy Patel's post mortem below Home Office standards

Published: 27 August 2010
by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS

AN independent panel yesterday (Thursday) began final deliberations in the case of a pathologist who failed to spot signs of abuse on a five-year-old Islington girl.

Dr Freddy Patel, 63, was told by a General Medical Council fitness-to-practise hearing on Wednesday that he had taken an “incurious” approach to his post mortem examination of Annastacia Williams and that his work had been below Home Office standards.

He has also been told he faces possible sanctions over two other post mortems reviewed at the hearing.

The panel will now decide whether he should be struck off.

Annastacia, from Sutterton Street in Holloway, died in 2002 from a serious head injury after an apparent fall down stairs. 

Panel chairman Richard Davies questioned Dr Patel’s conclusions relating to the youngster’s injuries, which were described during a second post mortem two weeks later by pathologist Dr Nat Carey as “clearly visible” and “obviously” signs of abuse. 

It later emerged she had a fractured breastbone, had been attacked with a fork, and had been bitten.

Yesterday, GMC barrister Simon Jackson QC warned that Dr Patel’s mistakes were “not a momentary loss of judgement” but evidence of  sustained incompetence in his work, and warned his fitness to practise was impaired. He said the doctor had failed in his role as the “final gatekeeper” in cases such as that of Annastacia, whose injuries would never have been discovered had she been cremated rather than buried. For that reason, he “created a potential risk of a loss of crucial evidence”.

Mr Jackson said: “The panel can have no confidence that Dr Patel has recognised his failures – and so his fitness to practise is impaired.”

Adrian Hopkins QC, for Dr Patel, argued that his client’s past mistakes did not impair his future ability to practise as he no longer carries out post mortems on children or those who have died in suspicious circumstances.

At an Old Bailey hearing in 2003, Annastacia’s stepmother and father were convicted of child cruelty.