CORRUPT CHILD EXPERT.      

In 2001, the Harris case had Dr HAMISH CAMERON, Honorary Consultant Child Psychiatrist, appointed as 'Expert Witness' by the childrens' Guardian-ad-litem at the time, the Official Solicitor.

In 2001 Dr Cameron recommended the father should not see his children, despite refusing to see the children with the father at any time.

Mark Harris complained throughout Dr CAMERON's involvement (over two years) that the Doctor was not being honest in each of his 60+ page reports that had gone before the Court.

Covert taping of the very last interview Harris had with CAMERON provided the evidence he was deliberately lying in his court reports about Harris and other matters.

Furthermore, pressure brought upon previously involved people (a Devon Probation officer and a Child Psychothearapist) in the long running court case revealed DR HAMISH CAMERON had also deliberately falsified their opinions given to him when writing these court reports.

Despite the compelling evidence of corruption by the expert witness, Mad Judge Munby still followed Dr Cameron's recommendations to the letter.

After the March hearing and on the back of the now growing DADS protests with Judge Munby feeling the heat of demonstrations outside his house-amongst other places-for jailing Mark Harris for waving to his kids, MUNBY decided [eventually] to go 'public' with the case findings a month later.

That 'public' judgement (Harris v Harris, Attorney General v Harris, 2 FLR, 895) was some 80 pages shorter than the private judgement in the case. This 'going public' with chosen and carefully sifted findings was clearly designed to put the father in as bad a light as possible in the eyes of the DADS protesters, of whom Munby invited to court.

To Munby's credit [well, it appeared that way at the time....] in his Public judgement Munby included his findings on the dishonesty of DR HAMISH CAMERON in what he handed down.

But then, and in the true tradition of the secret family courts, Munby's findings of dishonesty regarding CAMERON (Perjury and Perverting the course of justice) were completely REMOVED from all the available family law reports-by MUNBY himself.

JORDANS (the law report publishers) confirmed MUNBY instructed that all the paragraphs about DR CAMERON were to be completely removed from all copies that were to be printed for public view by the time it reached publication.

However, those wishing to read these findings about DR HAMISH CAMERON and what he got up to, paragraphs 241-252, will find them reproduced below.

So far, the Devon & Cornwall Police, despite being passed the evidence Dr Cameron committed Perjury and Perverted the course of justice-on a repeat basis-have refused to investigate CAMERON in any way.

CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION, there is simply no other word for it.

*Munby's words he did not want seen about DR HAMISH CAMERON are copied below direct from his written judgement on the day;  Harris v Harris, Attorney General v Harris, 2001 2 FLR (895) ;

Dr Cameron

241     Mr Harris, as has been seen (see paragraphs 150-152, 172, 179 and 187 above) strongly criticises Dr Cameron.

242     He obviously disagrees profoundly with Dr Cameron’s professional judgment. He probably thinks he is a fool. Mr Harris is entitled to that opinion, though it is one with which I profoundly disagree. What Mr Harris is not entitled to do is to hurl around outrageous, baseless and fatuous charges that Dr Cameron is dishonest, corrupt and motivated by greed (see paragraphs 150, 152, 172 and 179 above). Mr Harris thinks that everyone who disagrees with him (the Official Solicitor and Dr Cameron included) is a fool and a knave. He cannot see the difference between the two. He merely demeans himself, and worst of all demeans himself in the eyes of his daughters, by his absurd antics. So consumed is Mr Harris with his idee fixe about Dr Cameron that he cannot even see that from beginning to end Dr Cameron has been supportive of his wish to have happy and fulfilling contact with his daughters.

243     Dr Cameron is a man of the utmost professional distinction and personal probity. From beginning to end, in a case which has probably been as trying for him as any in which he has ever been concerned, Dr Cameron has provided the court with invaluable, and what I am persuaded is wholly trustworthy and reliable, evidence which, speaking for my own part, I have found utterly compelling and convincing.

244     Mr Harris does, however, as it seems to me, have three legitimate complaints against Dr Cameron which it is right that I should deal with.

245     The first, and most serious, is that in one of the documents annexed to his second report dated 30 September 1999, Dr Cameron wrote that Mr B (see paragraph 32 above) and another professional, a probation officer, had reluctantly reached the conclusion that Mr Harris

"has a disorder of personality which impairs all his personal relationships, including those with his children."

Mr Harris was incensed on two grounds: first, that Dr Cameron should have made use in his report of the views of Mr B and the probation officer without having first obtained their permission, and, secondly, that Dr Cameron should have attributed to them views which they did not in fact hold. Mr Harris ventilated these matters in correspondence with Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust in December 1999 and with Devon Probation Service in, I think, March 2000. Letters to Mr Harris which I have been shown from Plymouth Hospital NHS Trust dated 21 December 1999 and 14 January 2000 show that Mr B’s employers had very serious reservations about what Dr Cameron had done. A letter to father from Devon Probation Service dated 6 April 2000 contains the probation officer’s categorical denial that he ever used the phrase "personality disorder" to Dr Cameron.

246     Pressed to justify himself in the witness-box Dr Cameron had to accept that neither Mr B nor the probation officer had ever used the phrase that he attributed to them, that it was extrapolation from what they had said to him, and that, in expressing himself in the way he had, he (Dr Cameron) had gone "a leap too far". He accepted that it was an error on his part not to get Mr B’s permission.

247     I have to say that it is most unfortunate that this should have happened and that Dr Cameron should have been as slow, as I think he was, in acknowledging that Mr Harris did have a point of real substance. I say this because of a comment Dr Cameron made in the witness box to the effect that Mr Harris does not need to stir it up every time he sees an error. There are errors and errors and in this particular instance I think that Mr Harris was justified in seeing this an error calling for complaint and remedy. I also think it was very unfortunate that Dr Cameron should have sought to take refuge for so long in what I have to say was the plainly feeble excuse that he could not correct the error in his report because he had already sent it to the Official Solicitor and it was accordingly the Official Solicitor’s property. By the end Dr Cameron was prepared to acknowledge quite frankly that he had been "sloppy", that it had been a useful learning experience for him, that he had now tightened up his professional practices and that he should have taken steps to correct his report even though it had already gone to the Official Solicitor. It is, I have to say, a pity he could not have come out as openly about this at a very early stage, for I have no doubt that the matter has rankled and festered in Mr Harris’s mind ever since. It is easy to be wise after the event and I have little doubt that Dr Cameron quite understandably found Mr Harris little short of maddening to deal with. That can explain but it does not excuse. However, let me make it quite clear that this error on Dr Cameron’s part - and it was, I think, a serious error of professional judgment - does not, as it seems to me, in any way affect the overall validity and weight of Dr Cameron’s opinions in the case.

248     Mr Harris’s second complaint against Dr Cameron relates to his reference at one point in his third report dated 20 March 2000 to the eldest girl when he should have referred to the youngest. Mr Harris, in a letter to Dr Cameron dated 23 March 2000, was quick to pick up this ‘error’, as he sarcastically referred to it, choosing to see it as a deliberate ploy, as he put it, "to keep things for me as bad as possible" and "to tilt the Judge further from me." Dr Cameron was quick to correct this inadvertent slip, as I am sure it was, writing the very next day to Mr Harris (24 March 2000) to confirm that the report should indeed read as Mr Harris had suggested. This particular complaint is groundless, but provides an illuminating illustration of Mr Harris’s unerring ability always to see something sinister, or worse, in even the most innocent slip.

249     Mr Harris’s third complaint is more serious, and again, as it seems to me, well founded. In the course of preparing his fourth report dated 18 January 2001 Dr Cameron had a discussion with Mr Harris in the course of which he asked him about the hoax bombs on the A38 (see paragraphs 222 and 228 above). Dr Cameron’s report reads:

"Bomb hoax A38 Mr Mark Harris accepted responsibility for this, as the publicity for DADS was good."

Mr Harris denied having said any such thing to Dr Cameron. Dr Cameron produced his contemporaneous manuscript notes taken at his meeting with Mr Harris. The relevant part reads:

"BOMB Hoax on A38. Accepted. "It’s me I’m being affected."

250     Now Mr Harris had in fact tape-recorded his meeting with Dr Cameron, so I was able both to listen to the tape and to read an agreed transcript of the relevant part of their conversation. Unfortunately at one crucial point the quality of the tape was too poor to enable one to be confident of the precise words used. However it is fairly clear that Mr Harris was not telling Dr Cameron that he had either claimed or accepted responsibility for the hoax. What he did say, and this is entirely in keeping with his devious and cynical turn of mind, was words to the effect that if people wanted to assume that he or DADS was responsible he was not going to go out of his way to disabuse them of the notion, for it was all good publicity for DADS. The distinction between what Mr Harris told Dr Cameron and what he noted down - for it is clear that the crucial word "accepted" that appears in his report was taken by Dr Cameron directly from his contemporaneous note - is important, even if the correct version would also have displayed Mr Harris in a fairly unattractive light. Dr Cameron accepted that his language had been "very economical." It was worse than that. It was, albeit I am sure unintentionally, positively misleading.

251     I have to say that it is a matter of concern to me that this is the second occasion in just a few months on which it has been demonstrated to my satisfaction that a very eminent expert witness in the Family Division has mis-reported in a report for the court - I am sure entirely innocently - an important conversation with one of the adults involved. Virtually every report one reads in this Division, whether it be a report from an expert witness such as Dr Cameron, a Court Welfare Officer’s report, or a social worker’s report or statement, contains accounts, often appearing in quotation marks, of what somebody or other is said to have told the writer of the report. Only comparatively rarely does the judge ever have the opportunity to go behind the written report in order to examine the underlying materials on which it is based. Very often it will be impossible or impracticable for him to do so. It is therefore vital that nothing should be done to impair judicial confidence in the scrupulous accuracy of such reports.

252     Equally in a case such as this it is vital that nothing is allowed to happen to impair the parties’ confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the experts involved. It is a measure of Mr Harris’s distrust of Dr Cameron that he should feel it necessary to tape-record their conversations. But how is Mr Harris to feel anything but vindication for his behaviour in this respect when he reflects that, but for the fact that he had recorded this conversation, Dr Cameron’s error might well have passed undetected.

WELL, IF THAT IS NOT CORRUPT, DISHONEST AND PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE, THEN WHAT IS?

SIR JAMES MUNBY, THE JUDGE WHO DIRECTED JORDANS, THE LAW REPORT PUBLISHERS IN BRISTOLTO EXCLUDE HIS FINDINGS OF DISHONESTY REGARDING THE EXPERT WITNESS.

FAMILY COURT HELL, By Mark Harris, £8.99 from Amazon and all good bookshops,