What child abuse scandal happened in middlesbrough in the 1980s?….?
I remember this quite well as I live in this area. It was not just Middlesbrough but Cleveland generally. A paediatrician called Marietta Higgs had been on a course where it was explained to her that a reflex called anal dilatation can be a sign of abuse in children. On returning to work, she began to look for this in every child she examined and found it in almost all of them. What she had not taken in on the course was the fact that this reflex can also occurr naturally and frequently due to constipation and several other non abusive reasons, it is not a definitive sign of abuse. She was supported by a fellow doctor called Geoffrey Wyatt and an over enthusiastic social worker called Sue something or other, and between them they managed to have over 100 children removed from their parents. The clamour got so great that the authorities had to step in, it was beyond reason that every child in the county was being abused. Higgs even examined children that had been taken into care on her
