Experts

consider whether Professor Meadow should be accused of serious professional misconduct. The GMC says that it usually takes between 15 and 18 months to mount such a hearing. Exactly how busy are these people? How long is the backlog of doctors accused of ruining women’s lives?

Home Office bureaucrats seem to think that they do not even owe an explanation of their refusal to compensate a woman who spent 18 months in jail on false charges being treated as the vilest of the vile, who lost her house and almost lost her surviving daughter to the social services. She escaped, like Mrs Clark and Mrs Patel, only through sheer determination. Few mothers can imagine marshalling such strength at a time of such unutterable grief. Mrs Clark looks unlikely ever to recover fully from her ordeal in prison. Yet it was she and her husband who first forced intelligent judges to see what they should have spotted long before: that the science behind Professor Meadow’s claims was ropy to say the least. When challenged to produce his research papers to justify his original findings on MSBP, he claimed to have destroyed them.

Meanwhile Richard Webster – author of “Why Freud was Wrong” who also writes about sexual abuse panics – points to this item from Scotland on Sunday a couple of months back, on the Lewis abuse case of 2003, when eight people were charged with sexual offences against children involving Satanic ritual child abuse, only for the charges to be dropped in July 2004.

A woman whose claims of Satanic child sex abuse helped put eight people in the dock had a history of making false allegations, which was known to police, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Angela Stretton was the key police witness in the Lewis abuse case which collapsed this summer with charges against all the accused being dropped.

An investigation by this newspaper has revealed that Stretton was convicted of making false allegations of child abuse in 1987, and that Scots police were aware of her track record of false claims before deciding to press charges.

Last night, several of the accused – some of whom are suing for compensation – demanded to know why they were dragged through the courts by social workers and police on the evidence of a discredited witness.

The results of our investigation also raise serious questions about whether the authorities have learned the lessons of previous abuse inquiries, and whether similar mistakes will be made in future.

The Lewis case began in January 2003 when a small group of children told social workers they had been sexually abused. Initially, the allegations related only to two individuals and involved inappropriate touching.

Island resident Stretton, now 37, emerged as crucial adult police witness in the case. After she became involved, the number of suspects spiralled to eight and the nature of the allegations broadened dramatically.

Police documents seen by this newspaper show that Stretton told police that Satanic rituals were used in the abuse, and that adults were filmed having sex with children. The evidence included lurid claims of drinking blood, orgies, and slaughtering animals.