Our thanks to Tim for this. The piece starts:
A mother who forced her children to have a decade of unnecessary surgery in a £375,000 benefits scam was jailed today as it emerged she could have been stopped three years earlier.
Paediatrician Dr Susanna Hart wrote to other specialists at world renowned hospitals in 2010 raising concerns the children were at risk but their mother was not arrested until 2013.
The 49-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, [our emphasis] tricked doctors into believing her children were suffering from a host of serious health conditions for more than a decade.
For receiving £375,000 in a benefts scam related to needless surgery, the woman was given a seven-year-long prison sentence. We have estimated that some people who specialise in other needless surgery – the non-therapeutic circumcisions of male minors – can expect to earn over £2 million over their criminal careers. We’d like to see them serve lengthy mandatory prison sentences in future.
