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Diagnosing Murder, Episode 3, is available now. Click here to listen.
The Victorian government describes Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital as one of the world’s best. It’s internationally recognised as a leading centre of paediatric treatment, teaching and research.
So when David and his partner brought their weeks-old baby son, Oliver, to its doors in November 2017, it was with the hope that the “best place in the world for kids” would find out what had made him suddenly stop breathing, and “make him better”.
But after doctors looked at Oliver, everything changed. Two days after he was admitted to hospital, Oliver was declared brain-dead. Then, largely on the word of one doctor, David was charged with child homicide and put on trial in the Supreme Court.
The Diagnosing Murder podcast examines the devastation inflicted on some families by the diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome. Episode 3, released at the weekend, examines the engine room of that diagnosis – where the investigations into alleged perpetrators start in earnest.
Click the player below to listen to the full third episode of Diagnosing Murder, or click here.
It’s inside the children’s hospital – one of the state’s most beloved institutions, which receives almost $1 billion in public funding and treats nearly 300,000 children every year – and it’s called the Victorian Forensic Paediatric Medical Service (VFPMS).
This team is separate from the other doctors and does not treat children. It employs a special team of doctors called forensic paediatricians, and their role is to assess whether a child has been abused and, if necessary, to bring in police and child protection workers to act against the abuser.
David and his ex-partner met one doctor from the team early on.
“The first time we met that doctor, she came rushing into the room, didn’t introduce herself, went straight over to Oliver,” David recalls.
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“She began an examination, and which took a couple of minutes. So she checked his eyes and looked at his body then she turned and looked at me and said, ‘You did something… you did something, and I’m going to prove it’.” The doctor later denied saying words to that effect in David’s court case.
Within 48 hours, a criminal investigation had begun.
In the majority of cases, all this would be completely justified. Where there’s strong evidence that a child’s been deliberately hurt, society rightly expects that they’ll be protected from their tormentor.
But the science of shaken baby syndrome is subject to serious questions. As we’ve outlined in previous episodes, overseas, this diagnosis has been found to have caused dozens of wrongful convictions.
In Australia, though, there’s no debate to speak of. And the VFPMS rejects that there’s any serious medical controversy here at all.
In David’s case, VFPMS quickly called in the police child abuse squad and child protection agency. As their four-week-old son was lying critically ill nearby, David says he and his partner were grilled.
His ordeal persisted long after Oliver’s death. David’s partner believed him, and supported him. But the pressure was intense, and their relationship didn’t survive.
Last year, seven years after Oliver’s death, a Supreme Court jury acquitted David following an 18-day trial, after his defence presented evidence of potential alternative medical or accidental causes of the child’s collapse.
David got his freedom back. But he’ll never be the same.
He’s still in touch with his partner and other children, but he doesn’t live with them. He has no house, no assets, and he still can’t afford to bury his son’s ashes.
“People keep forgetting that we lost our son,” says David. “All these people were just hell-bent on putting me away that they also forgot that we lost our son.”
And David describes himself as one of the lucky ones.
For more information on the four-part Diagnosing Murder investigative podcast, and to listen to the third episode, see below or click here.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
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