Branch chair Brian Morgan was in Orlando, Florida in March for the first
screening at a film festival of a feature length documentary film which
features him talking about a medico-legal journalist investigation he
has been involved in over the last decade.

The film, MAMA/M.A.M.A, tells the controversial story of medical
diagnosis in the child protection field, Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy
(MSBP). Brian has researched and written on this subject from a UK
perspective. He reported on it in his own television documentary for
Channel 4 Dispatches in 1993. The new film takes an international view
and investigates three cases, one of which is UK based, where parents
have had children removed from their own care and in one case a child
dies in medical care, after the parents were accused of harming their
children. MSBP may include fabricating illnesses in children so that
they receive unnecessary medical treatment. The film’s title is taken
from a highly polemical parent-run web-site based in the United States
which highlights issues surrounding the syndrome.

Los Angeles based producer, Amy Sommer, took up MSBP as a civil rights
issue. She had previously produced a highly acclaimed investigation into
Waco disaster (recently screened on BBC3). The director of the new film
Nonny de la Peña had before this directed ‘Jaundiced Eye’ with Amy. The
latter film was screened at the 2001 Cardiff Film Festival.

The story line of the film includes Brian talking about being arrested
and prosecuted by Sunderland police, and cleared, whilst investigating a
family’s claims of false allegation of child abuse. This British
family’s story is also told in the film. It is hoped that the film will
be shown in the Sgrîn 2003 film festival in Cardiff, and that it will be
licensed by a British TV channel.

Links
www.msbp.com
www.munchausenmovie.com

Brian Morgan