Tuesday 26 April 2005

By Maria Ahmed, Simeon Brody, Derren Hayes and Clare
Jerrom

Marriage fixer who sold girls jailed for ten years

The mastermind of a £1 million sham marriage empire who preyed
on vulnerable young Asian women was jailed for 10 years
yesterday.

Jaswinder Gill recruited teenage drug addicts and debt-ridden
students with the promise of lucrative modelling work in India. But
her victims were married off to Indian men desperate for a new life
in Britain.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 4

Expert under fire

A child abuse expert wrote an exaggerated report into claims that
two nursery workers had abused children, the General Medical
Council was told.

Dr Camille De San Lazaro is accused of “unprofessional”
behaviour in the case of the workers, who were cleared in July
1994, at the Sheffield nursery in Newcastle.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 4

Jailed for toy gun

Richard Bottley was sentenced to six months in jail by Oxford Crown
Court for picking up his six-year-old son’s toy gun and
telling two teenage boys on his doorstep: “Bang, bang,
I’m going to kill you and your family.”

Bottley, from Oxford, had suffered six months of harassment and
abuse from the teenagers.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 4

Boy sues school

A schoolboy who said that he was forced by bullies to watch an
uncensored film of Ken Bigley’s decapitation in Iraq is
taking legal action against his school.

Nathanial Titley, 14, suffered a campaign of bullying, his parents
allege, before being forced to watch the murder on a computer at
Cathays High School, Cardiff.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 4

Lawyer jailed

An immigration lawyer who helped more than 500 Romanians, including
a convicted murderer, to get into Britain illegally was jailed for
nine years.

Chris Christodoulides, from Enfield, north London, was paid
£2,000 by each client for the forged paperwork.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 4

‘In the baby’s last seconds you see the pain
relax and then they fall asleep…’

Report on Dr Eduard Verhagen, a Dutch paediatrician who has
admitted to illegally ending the lives of four desperately ill
babies. He is campaigning for a further relaxation of Dutch
euthanasia laws to free doctors like himself from
prosecution.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 6

Bullies ‘should be fostered’

A senior education official called for persistent school bullies to
be put into foster homes.

The Reverend Ewan Aitken, education spokesperson for the Convention
of Scottish Local Authorities, told 200 head teachers and officials
at a conference in Edinburgh that the most aggressive youngsters
should be separated from their families and put into care.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 6

Criminals to get out of jail early under
‘harsh’ sentencing review

Thousands of criminals including burglars and thieves will serve
less time in prison under new guidelines that urge courts to cut
jail terms by 15 per cent.

The change means that a non-violent and non-sexual offender
sentenced to six years will spend one year and five months less in
jail, according to guidance issued by the Sentencing Guidelines
Council which came into force this month.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 14

Gypsies win greenbelt case

A gypsy family won planning permission to set up a private caravan
cite on greenbelt land at Betchworth, Surrey.

The High Court rejected a challenge by Mole Valley District Council
against a planning inspector’s decision last November in
favour of Henry Smith, 20, who has a wife and two children.

Smith had lived on the land as a child and bought the site,
measuring 100ft by 400ft, from his father for £2,000.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 21

Warning on Prozac for children

Doctors were yesterday told not to give Prozac to children by the
European medicines regulator, ruling out the one antidepressant of
its class that the British authorities had allowed to be prescribed
to under-18s.

Prozac and other drugs of the class called SSRIs can make some
children and adolescents feel suicidal or become hostile and
aggressive, the European Medicines Agency ruled yesterday.

Source:- The Guardian Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 12

Child abduction jury discharged

The jury in the trial of Mustapha Abushima and his wife, Wedad
Ahmed, from Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, who deny conspiring to
abduct five children from Britain to Libya, was discharged for
legal reasons at Norwich Crown court.

Source:- The Guardian Tuesday 26 April 2005 page 15

Howard lays into “wasteful” public
sector

Michael Howard launched a withering attack on a bloated public
sector “where money is no object”, promising to scrap
168 public bodies and cut 235,000 civil service posts.

Howard told a business conference: “There are two Britains
today. Private sector Britain where people are struggling to make
ends meet. And bureaucratic Britain, where money is no object, you
spend what you like and employ who you like.”

Source:- Financial Times Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
3

Nurses’ leaders reject call for rethink on euthanasia
policy

Nurses’ leaders resisted attempts to persuade the Royal
College of Nursing to change its view on euthanasia following an
impassioned debate. The college remains opposed to
euthanasia.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
2

Retrial in legionnaires’ case

Council architect Gillian Beckingham of Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria,
will face a retrial over the manslaughter of seven people in
Britain’s worst outbreak of legionnaires’
disease.

A jury last week found her guilty of breaching health and safety
laws but could not reach a verdict on seven charges of manslaughter
following the outbreak in Barrow in 2002.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
2

Suicide case wife “caught off
guard”

A woman accused of doing nothing after her husband took a fatal
morphine overdose told police he had caught her off guard, a court
heard.

Jill Anderson denies the manslaughter of her husband, who was
bedridden with chronic fatigue syndrome at their home in Galphay,
near Ripon, North Yorks in 2003.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
4

Nurses fear choice will make them salesmen

Expansion of choice in the health service could turn nurses into
salesmen and damage their relationships with patients, the Royal
College of Nursing annual congress heard yesterday.

Nurses and other health professionals believe that when patients
start to exercise choice in earnest the system will be destabilised
and some units in a hospital could close for lack of work,
jeopardising the whole hospital.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
4

Drug clinic doctor “regrets” death of
addict

The founder of a private clinic for drug addicts accused of
inappropriately treating patients said yesterday he regretted the
death of a man who died after being prescribed a “DIY home
detox kit”.

Dr Colin Brewer is one of seven doctors from the Stapleford Centre,
based in London and Essex, who have been accused of wrongly
prescribing drugs at a General Medical Council hearing.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
10

NUT opposes secret classroom cameras

A television documentary which captures pupils on hidden cameras
smashing chairs and fighting at several schools should not be shown
because it could identify children, according to the National Union
of Teachers.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 26 April 2005 page
11

Scottish news

New police computer years late and £3m over budget

The replacement of Scotland’s main police computer is going to be
at least two years late and more than £3 million over budget,
ministers admitted last night.

The project, supposed to be completed last March, will now not be
online until next year because it has proved more complex than
first thought.

The CHS is the central record of criminal convictions in Scotland.
It is used daily by the police, the courts, and Disclosure
Scotland, which checks job applicants for criminal records,
particularly those working with children.

Source:- The Herald Tuesday 26 April

Nursing crisis is looming

Scotland is attracting fewer nurses than any other part of the
UK.

Latest figures from the Royal College of Nurses show Scotland’s
nursing workforce is up by just 10 per cent – compared with 24 per
cent in England.

Just 2,331 trained in Scotland to become nurses or midwives in
2003/4 – down from almost 2,600 in 1990/91.

Source:- Daily Record Tuesday 26 April

Prison for A&E knife attacker

A woman who stalked a nurse then attacked her with a knife was
yesterday jailed for a year.

Joan McGlone had a hatred of medics and social workers stretching
back 20 years and had already served a sentence for stabbing a
doctor and a social worker, a court heard. The 51-year-old admitted
attacking a female accident and emergency nurse last November in
the Lanarkshire town’s Monklands General Hospital.

Source:- Daily Record Tuesday 26 April

Welsh news

Schools in poor areas need more than cash

Welsh academics have claimed that giving Welsh schools in deprived
areas extra cash has failed to raise standards.

Initiatives to raise attainment among socially and economically
deprived areas have not fulfilled their aim, academics at Cardiff
University told a conference in Canada.

Source:- Western Mail  Tuesday 26 April

‘All I remember is walking up the steps and seeing a
police officer with tears in his eyes’

The ex-wife of Sion Jenkins yesterday told the Billie-Jo murder
trial at the Old Bailey of the day she discovered her foster
daughter was dead.

Lois Jenkins gave evidence against her former husband and said all
she could remember was walking up the steps and seeing a police
officer with tears in his eyes.

Jenkins is accused of murdering his foster daughter Billie-Jo in
1997. Jenkins was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. The
retrial follows two appeals and Jenkins denies the murder.

Source:- Western Mail  Tuesday 26 April

Leave off, we’re doing a good job, say mums

Mothers believe they are doing a good job at raising their
children, despite feeling under increasing pressure to be perfect,
according to a survey.

The research commissioned by contraceptive manufacturer Schering
found that 91 per cent of mothers constantly feel under the
spotlight because of the pressure to be a perfect mum. But eight
out of 10 said they were “pretty” or “very”
confident that they were doing a good job.

Source:- Western Mail  Tuesday 26 April

Why society can no longer afford to ignore mental health
issues

Society is failing to fully help those people affected by mental
health problems, according to a Welsh charity yesterday.

Gofal Cymru said that as stress-related absences account for half
of all sicknesses from work, stress and related mental health
problems have been thrown into the limelight.

As a result, there is a drastic need for mental health issues to be
addressed by government and employees.

Source:- Western Mail  Monday 25 April

‘Woman forced into prostitution’

Two men have been accused of buying a woman and forcing her into
prostitution.

Gjergi Mungioui and Akil Likcani pleaded not guilty at Cardiff
magistrates’ court of bringing the Lithuanian woman into the
country for prostitution.

Source:- South Wales Echo  Monday 25 April