Mother gets €100,000 in foetus removal case

“FIVE years of hell” for a mother left with rotting pieces of her dead foetus inside her ended yesterday when the High Court found her consultant negligent, and awarding her €100,000 in damages.

An emotional Fiona Griffin from Cobh, Co Cork, said she at last felt she could put the past behind her and start her life again in the knowledge that she had done her best for her dead baby and other parents who might go through a similar trauma.

"I'm just so glad it's over. I've thought of nothing else for five years. It's been five years of hell," she said.

Her husband, Christopher, added: "We've been vindicated and hopefully nothing like this will happen to anyone again, and that when people have to bury their dead baby, they will know they have the whole child down in the grave."

Mrs Griffin thought she had buried the complete remains of her 17-week-old foetus, which died of natural causes, with her late mother in Midleton cemetery, but after three months of illness and intensifying distress, she discovered parts of the baby were still in her uterus.

She had passed other pieces down the toilet and said she felt parts of her child, whom she believed to be a boy, were irretrievably scattered between the grave, the hospital and the sewers.

In ruling against her consultant, gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Rachel Patton of the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork, High Court judge Mr Justice Diarmuid found Dr Patton had followed all the routine procedures in removing the dead foetus and checking all the pieces were gone, but had done so in a case that was "anything but routine", given the advanced age of the foetus.

"Given the difficulty of the procedure and the fact that the foetus had to be broken into pieces for removal, it seems to me to defy logic that it was not incumbent upon Dr Patton to carry out an ultrasound scan ... common sense would dictate that recourse should be had to an ultrasound scan so as to ensure that the foetus had been fully evacuated," he said. Dr Patton had denied negligence on the grounds that scans were not routinely carried out after such a procedure.

Mrs Griffin had made the same claim against the Bon Secours Hospital, but Mr Justice O'Donovan dismissed it early in the proceedings.

Speaking after the ruling, Mrs Griffin said she had been overwhelmed by the number of cards and letters she received from well-wishers and parents who had been through other harrowing experiences in hospital.

"They were a great support to us just to know you did the right thing in taking the case, whatever the outcome. No-one should have to go through this no mother and no family."