Truly, absolutely shocking.
This was a set of care proceedings, transferred up to the High Court before Mr Justice Hayden. A consultant clinical psychologist, Dr Ben Harper, was instructed by the Court to assess the mother. The mother unknown to him, tape recorded their sessions. After the report of Dr Harper arrived, containing words set out in quotation marks attributed to the mother that she says she did not say, those tape recordings were transcribed and showed that she was correct.
Re F (A Minor) 2016
Here are the findings that mother’s team invited the Court to make – you’ll see that they are very powerful (perhaps even career-damaging stuff)
- Ms Taryn Lee QC and Ms Olivia Weir prepared a very extensive schedule prefaced by the following summary of the findings they invited the Court to make:
- 1. Dr Harper has either misread or exaggerated the mother’s presentation during the appointments. The recordings do not support the assertion that the mother was at any point agitated, abrupt, irritated, defensive or frustrated. Indeed in respect of (iii) and (v) the conversations never, in fact, took place.
2. Dr Harper misrepresents, inaccurately surmises and/or falsely asserts that the mother made comments listed in the body of the schedule. The comments set out and attributed to the mother were either (a) not said by her in those terms, or (b) other factual information provided by the mother has been re-interpreted by Dr Harper and presented as a quote of the mother with a negative or twisted emphasis attached to it. Dr Harper then uses these ‘quotations’ by the mother to form his conclusions and recommendations.
3. Dr Harper records that the mother reported/stated various facts and/or provided the accounts listed below when in fact there is no evidence during either appointment that the subject was even discussed or if the subject was discussed these comments were not made at any point. Dr Harper has fabricated these conversations/responses and has chosen to attribute negative comments to the mother including assertions that during the assessment sessions the mother called previous experts liars, which she simply has not done. Dr Harper has abused his position of trust as a professional and as a doctor and his actions in fabricating these conversations, comments and conclusions are abusive to this vulnerable mother and are a contempt of court.
4. Dr Harper states that he completed the following psychometric tests: It is not easy to discern at what point in the assessment sessions Dr. Harper states he administered these psychometric tests and he is invited to provide (a) all of the relevant guidance and assessment papers/questions and identify within the transcripts where the assessments were conducted.
5. Dr Harper suggests that the mother was reluctant and/or unable to provide information in the following matters: Dr Harper did not, in fact, ask any specific or structured questions to elicit a response to any of the matters that he then seeks to criticise the mother for and in respect of. Some matters that he suggests she refused to provide information/answer questions in respect of [they] were never at any point raised by Dr Harper.
6. Dr Harper misrepresents what the mother has actually said, in such a manner as to create a negative impression of the mother in the examples identified.
7. Dr Harper inaccurately quotes other experts’ reports in a manner that presents a negative impression of the mother.
8. Dr Harper then relies upon his own false reporting of what the mother is supposed to have said to reach his conclusions, which ultimately lead to a recommendation of separation of the siblings and adoption of the youngest two children.
9. It is asserted that neither Dr Harper’s handwritten notes nor his comments regarding the 6th April 2016 can be relied upon for the reasons asserted in the schedule.
- As these findings were particularised it became clear that the allegations extended to: ‘false reporting’; ‘inaccurate quoting’ designed to present the Mother in a ‘negative light’; ‘fabrication of conversations’ and deliberate ‘misrepresentation’. In cross examination Ms Lee accused Dr Harper of ‘lying’.
Holy wow.
Dr Harper was invited to intervene in the proceedings, and was represented by Fenella Morris QC.
The Judge did not approach the matter on the basis of the schedule of findings drawn up (that’s rather annoying for me, as it would have helped to look at such particularised findings, but that was a judicial decision)
- Whilst I am full of admiration for the industry which underpins the extensive schedule prepared by the Mother’s team and the equal energy expended in the detailed response document, I am bound to say that the two do not provide a user friendly framework to negotiate the contested issues. Partly for this reason but primarily because I consider it to be a distraction, I do not propose to address many of the minute allegations which, as I have indicated during the course of exchanges with counsel, are of varying cogency and forensic weight. What I propose to do is to analyse, in what I consider to be a proportionate manner, those allegations which it is necessary for me to determine in order properly to resolve the issues in the care proceedings. Thereafter I must consider a further important question: are the findings made out against Dr Harper sufficiently serious so as to render his evidence in these proceedings unreliable?
- Dr Harper’s report is dated 11th April 2016, it is 70 pages in length. At its conclusion it contains the following, now standard, declarations:
- i) ‘I have exercised reasonable care and skill in order to be accurate and complete in preparing this report’;
ii) ‘I understand that this report will form the evidence to be given under oath or affirmation’;
iii) ‘I am likely to be the subject of public adverse criticism by the Judge if the Court concluded that I have not taken reasonable care in trying to meet the standards set out above’;
iv) ‘I confirm that I have acted in accordance with the Codes of Practice for Experts’.
- Finally, the ‘STATEMENT OF TRUTH’ appears at the very end of the report. Familiar though it is, it requires to be repeated here:
- “I confirm that the contents of this report are true to the best of my knowledge and that I make this report knowing that if it is tendered in evidence, I would be liable to prosecution if I have wilfully stated anything that I would know to be false or that I do not believe to be true”
Responding directly to the schedule of findings sought by mother’s team, Dr Harper said this
- Responding directly to the schedule Dr Harper makes this concession:
- “12. There are a number of occasions where I have referred toMrs Mother as having said something by way of italicised text within double quotes. It is quite clear to me that anyone reading my report would have interpreted these as suggesting they were verbatim quotes. I did not, however, take verbatim notes and a number of sentences attributed to Mother are inaccurate.”
Yes, if I read a report from an expert that said
Mother said she was sorry for all the trouble she had caused
I would think that there was an apology along those lines but not that this represented a verbatim account but
Mother said “I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused”
I would read as being, the expert is reporting the words that she used and is stating with confidence that she used those words.
So having remarks in quotation marks that mother did not actually say is a significant deficiency.
What did the Judge say about that?
- I have read this paragraph a number of times. It seems to me to do Dr Harper no credit at all. It is crafted in a way that seems designed to minimise the extent of the very significant failing it represents. When pursued in cross examination it was revealed that extensive parts of the report which purport, by the conventional grammatical use of quotation marks, to be direct quotations from the Mother, are in fact nothing of the kind. They are a collection of recollections and impressions compressed into phrases created by Dr Harper and attributed to the Mother. They convey to the reader of the report only one impression, namely that they represent the authentic voice of Mother herself. The quotations are also italicised and drafted in full sentences in the idiom of the Mother rather than in the formal argot of psychology which characterises the remainder of the report.Within the context of the evaluative exercise that the Court is involved in, during care proceedings, the accurately reported phrases and observations of the parties themselves are inevitably afforded much greater forensic weight than e.g. opinion evidence, hearsay or summary by a third party. It is very likely that a Judge reading such ‘quotations’ in the report of an experienced expert witness will at least start with the strong presumption that they have been accurately and fairly recorded. It is, to my mind inconceivable that a witness of Dr Harper’s experience, which I have taken care to set out in some detail above, would not have appreciated this. Indeed, it strikes me that it would be obvious to any lay party or member of the public. Moreover, I find the concession in the statement, where mention is made of ‘a number of sentences’ is a complete distortion of the reality of the document. The report is heavy with apparent reference to direct speech when, in truth, almost none of it is. Thus, the material supporting the ultimate conclusion appears much stronger than it actually is. Given the forensic experience of Dr Harper and his extremely impressive academic background I cannot accept that he would have failed to appreciate the profound consequences of such distorted reporting.
- In the course of the public law proceedings the Court authorised interviews between one of the children and Dr Harper. I very much regret to say that the purported quotations in that report i.e. presented as if they were the words of the child himself are also nothing of the kind. Dr Harper used the same approach there. They are in fact a jumble of phrases extracted from jottings and / or perceived recollection. Dr Harper voluntarily submitted his notes to scrutiny, they can properly be characterised as minimal. They prompted this submission on behalf of the children’s Guardian by Mr Cohen QC and Mr Edwards:
- “It is hard to know why Dr Harper has reported as he has. His methodology and minimal notes of the 3 meetings with the mother would have made it very difficult to accurately record what she had said. The court will form its own view as to his evidence. We do not suggest that he had an intent to mislead but he showed a carelessness which verged towards recklessness in making statements which he must or should have known were to be relied upon. His evidence may also have shown an overconfidence in his own professional judgment and ability that was indifferent to the correct assessment process.”
I am genuinely shocked by this. It undermines a lot of credibility of expert witnesses, if an expert attributes quotations to a parent and a child that they did not say, that were ‘impressions’ and that the note keeping was minimal.
As these ‘quotations’ were not present in the tape-recorded formal sessions, there was some consideration of whether they were instead conversations or discussions that took place at one meeting on 6th April, which appears to have been a contact session and two discussions on the way in and way out of the session
- Ms Lee and Ms Weir pitch the findings they seek very highly indeed, they are of the utmost gravity. It is for this reason that I required counsel to be very clear about the legal framework. Ms Lee has, in the proper presentation of her case, repeatedly impugned Dr Harper’s integrity and honesty during the course of her cross examination. It is alleged that he has fabricated the fact of the discussions between himself and the Mother and, says Ms Lee, where there is no written note of any topic of discussion it has been, in effect, invented by Dr Harper. There is no ambivalence in the way Ms Lee advances her case. In her closing written submission she asserts:
- “For the avoidance of doubt, it is submitted on behalf of the mother that Dr Harper’s account of the ‘discussions’ that took place on the 6 April is a lie. Likewise his handwritten note is a fabricated document (Finding 9) in which he has attempted to back-fill some of the gaps that he knew would come to light once he was alerted to the fact that the assessment sessions on the 15 and 23 March 2016 had been recorded; he of course being present at both sessions and knowing exactly what he discussed and what he did not. As such, it is submitted that his handwritten note can not be relied upon.”
- Given that the earlier meetings were recorded and transcribed it must follow that the purported quotations from the Mother not covered on those sessions must therefore have taken place at the meeting at the contact centre on the 6th April 2016. This inevitably therefore has been the focus of the dispute at this hearing. The first conflict of evidence is as to the length of the meeting. There were in fact two meetings, one before the children arrived for an observed contact session and a second later encounter in the car park at the conclusion of the session.
- The 6th April was a day on which plans went awry. The Mother had been led to believe that her meeting with Dr Harper was to provide her with advice on how best to manage the eldest child’s challenging behaviour. On Dr Harper’s account he had decided to change the agenda and look at what he has referred to as ‘the inconsistencies of the Mother’s various narrative accounts’. He had, to my mind, settled on the view, for reasons that I will come to below, that this was the key issue in this case. The undoubtedly discrepant histories of her own childhood and relationships recorded from the Mother are, as Ms Morris QC (on behalf of Dr Harper) describes them, ‘polar opposites’ and ‘at a 180 degrees to each other’. Essentially, there is both a light and benign version of these issues alongside a dark and abusive account. In any event what is clear is that the Mother finds discussion of both these areas to be highly unsettling and distressing. That she would do so was anticipated by Dr Harper but nonetheless so important was this issue to him that he forced it through in circumstances which were, in my judgement, insensitive to the Mother. Of course it follows from this comment that I have accepted his account of the 6th April, at least in part. In fairness I should record that Dr Harper offered the Mother a further appointment which she did not take up.
- In addition, building work was being undertaken at the contact centre and it was necessary to shorten the contact. This had not been communicated to the Mother, Dr Harper or I assume the children either. The conditions both in which to observe contact and to undertake important features of the assessment of the Mother were inimical to constructive and fair assessment. I am satisfied that the Mother was understandably upset and that Dr Harper’s account of her as agitated is an honest expression of his perception.
- The second meeting in the car park was cursory and ended peremptorily in the rain. The first meeting was, on either party’s view no longer than 15 minutes. It is not necessary for me to resolve the conflict as to the duration of the meeting, there is very little between the Mother’s recollection and Dr Harper’s. What is significant is that in this period Dr Harper contends that he dealt with somewhere between 13 and approximately 20 significant points of assessment.
[That does not sound terribly plausible]
- From his notes of assessment it is clear that some of the issues were discussed. The notes are silent on other issues. In his analysis Mr Cohen submits that Dr Harper ‘has produced no satisfactory explanation of the inconsistencies nor is his credit enhanced by what seems to us to be an unwillingness to recognise the effect of his wrongdoing’. This leads Mr Cohen further to submit:
- “We suggest that as a result of his admissions the burden should shift to him to show that he has accurately reported the gist of what the mother has said in interviews. In light of the above this is a difficult burden for him to satisfy and he has failed to do so.“
- Ms Morris vigorously resists this approach, she contends that the burden of proof rests on the applicant and does not shift. I agree.Certainly Dr Harper’s admissions require him to explain his admitted misconduct but they do not cast upon him some additional burden of proving the accuracy of his notes of what he contends the Mother said to him in interview.
- I do not propose further to burden this judgment with a list of the various topics which Dr Harper contends were discussed on the 6thApril. In response to Mr Cohen Dr Harper accepted that there were 13 topics. I simply fail to see how this range of challenging and difficult material could have been covered to the extent that Dr Harper purports in such a limited time. It would have involved rapid fire question and answer on each topic. Given the circumstances and the nature of the material, such a process would have also required a degree of brutality or at least gross insensitivity. The subject matters ranged across e.g. domestic abuse, childhood experiences, sexual issues. Having listened to Dr Harper in the witness box he does not strike me for a moment as a man capable of such crassness. His work has been widely respected. I do consider that there was an enthusiastic effort by him to cover some of the material that day. I entirely accept his evidence that his notes are genuine and not fabricated, as Ms Lee contends, but I find on the balance of probabilities that some, though not necessarily all, of the material which is not corroborated by the notes was most likely drawn from other sources and incorporated into the report again as if it were direct speech from the Mother to Dr Harper.
The Judge’s overall impression and his decision about whether Dr Harper’s report could be relied upon in the care proceedings :-
- The overall impression is of an expert who is overreaching his material, in the sense that whilst much of it is rooted in genuine reliable secure evidence, it is represented in such a way that it is designed to give it its maximum forensic impact. That involves a manipulation of material which is wholly unacceptable and, at very least, falls far below the standard that any Court is entitled to expect of any expert witness. It simply cannot be reconciled with those duties which I have pointedly set out above at para 10 and 11. Moreover, it is manifestly unfair to the Mother, who it should be emphasised is battling to achieve the care of her children whilst trying to manage life with diagnosed PTSD. Ipso facto this is a case of unique gravity and importance. Common law principles of fairness and justice demand, as do Articles 6 & 8 of the ECHR, a process in which both the children and the parents can properly participate in a real sense which respects their autonomy. Dr Harper’s professional failure here compromised the fairness of the process for both Mother and children. These are fundamental principles emphasised in Re B-S [2013] EWCA Civ 1146 and Re A [2015] EWFC 11.
- Mr Rowley, on behalf of the Local Authority, submits that Dr Harper’s central thesis is probably correct. He summarises it succinctly thus:
- “Dr Harper’s concern about the mother’s inability to provide a consistent narrative about her relationship history and childhood experiences is again objectively valid. It cannot be sensibly argued that the mother has done anything other than provide wildly divergent accounts of such experiences. Whether this is, indeed, impression management or the consequences of her PTSD it robs the psychological professional of a baseline for diagnosis and thus prognosis and treatment recommendations. This makes it, as Dr Harper concludes, difficult (to say the least) for measurement and management of risk.”
- Mr Rowley may very well be right. He goes on to suggest that notwithstanding the significant criticisms made of Dr Harper, his report should be allowed to stand, with the Judge who hears the case entitled to give it such weight, if any, as he thinks fit. I disagree. These are such fundamental failures of methodology that I do not consider any Judge could fairly rely on the conclusions. Furthermore, there is an inevitable risk that were I not to order that a new expert be instructed the Judge might at the conclusion of the hearing find a lacuna in the evidence in consequence of his being unable to rely on Dr Harper’s opinion. That would result in further delay for the children in a case where I have been told the final hearing is now unlikely to be effective in any event. The delay in this case in already unacceptable, the harm caused to the children because of it is the responsibility of the professionals not, I emphasise, the Mother.
- I should say that my conclusions here are predicated substantially on my evaluation of Dr Harper’s evidence and the available written material. I have found myself unable to place a great deal of weight on the Mother’s own evidence even where my findings are essentially in her favour. I agree with Ms Morris, who advances the point sensitively and elegantly, when she says that the issue in the Mother’s evidence is ‘reliability’ not ‘credibility’. Her reliability is sadly compromised by her inconsistent accounts which may well be, as Dr Harper has postulated, a facet of her psychological distress. I have in mind Re H-C ( Children) [2016] EWCA Civ 136 and R v Lucas [1981] QB 720.
- Finally, there has been much discussion at the Bar as to how I should characterise Dr Harper’s professional failings. Ultimately I have come to the conclusion that the language or nomenclature is irrelevant. What matters is the substance of my findings and their impact on these children.
- Ms Lee is right to emphasise the observations of Butler-Sloss (P) in Re U: Re B (serious injury;standard of proof) [2004] 2 FLR 263 at para 23iv:
- “The court must always be on guard against the over-dogmatic expert, the expert whose reputation or amour-propre is at stake, or the expert who has developed a scientific prejudice”
- I do not consider that Dr Harper has developed a scientific prejudice nor that he is jealous to guard his amour-propre but I do consider that his disregard for the conventional principles of professional method and analysis displays a zealotry which he should recognise as a danger to him as a professional and, more importantly, to those who I believe he is otherwise genuinely motivated to help and whom he plainly has much to offer.
[I’m not sure why the Courts have felt that amour-propre is an expression in common use, but basically ‘reputation’ would do the trick just as well – the self-esteem that comes from the opinion of others]
It is a bitterly ironic twist that part of the disputed attributed quotations were Dr Harper stating that the mother had been critical of other (past) experts, calling them liars.
This concept of an expert taking an impression but then attributing quotations to the mother that she did not say and that the notes could have given no indication of her having said is a truly shocking one. As the Judge says, doing this gives the conclusions and recommendations of the report far more weight as it seems to come directly from mother, she condemning herself out of her own mouth, rather than the expert stating that he had the impression (which of course can be cross-examined as to the forensic basis of this)
Let us be honest – if the mother simply asserted that she had not said this, and had not tape-recorded the sessions, who would have been believed? We have to be able to trust experts – they may genuinely form the wrong opinion, and may be shifted in cross-examination, but there has to be trust that if a report says Mother said “X Y Z” that she actually said those things. Future of children is at stake here. We must demand higher standards from experts than we would of political journalists, surely.
(I’m reminded a little of the Overegging the Pudding case https://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/11/28/over-egging-the-pudding/ though of course this goes still further, from cherry-picking only the negatives to flat out creation of quotations that the mother did not in fact say)
It is also an interesting comparison, given that both were Hayden J to the criticism he made of the ISW in the radicalisation case (which were about competence rather than integrity) and the fairer process here where the expert had the opportunity to be represented and respond to the criticisms – in both cases they could have a serious impact on livelihood of the experts, for whom reputation is a vital component in them obtaining future instructions.
https://suesspiciousminds.com/2016/08/23/tape-recording-of-an-expert-a-shocking-case/
