Through tears, Rose, speaking publicly for the first time, told The Times: “I just remember rushing around, screaming.”
Despite desperate attempts by her partner and paramedics to resuscitate the girl, she was declared dead in hospital.
Professor David Mangham, a bone pathologist, would later identify non accidental rib fractures on Rose’s daughter and the mother would be questioned about them by police. “It was like living through two nightmares at once,” she said.
Rose is one of a number of people with concerns about Mangham’s evidence, including those jailed over baby deaths, The Times can reveal.
A beautiful soul
It took almost three months from the time I first messaged Rose to meet her in person, on an overcast summer afternoon in Richmond Park, southwest London.
Rose is not her real name. Under family court restrictions she cannot be identified.
Despite her wish to highlight her family’s ordeal, she was wary of speaking out because of a criminal investigation that had concluded shortly before we first met.
Talking of the “sweet” daughter she lost remains incredibly painful for Rose, a mother of five. The child, her third, was born during lockdown in 2020.
“She was just a beautiful soul,” Rose said.
The child’s death inside the one bedroom London flat shared by Rose, her partner and the infant’s two older siblings in June 2022 was a tragic accident.
But after a rib fracture was discovered during the post mortem examination, the ribcage was sent to Mangham, a specialist bone pathologist.
The ‘only’ UK expert in his field
Two days before Rose’s daughter died, one of Britain’s top judges highlighted Mangham’s “backlog” of cases in an unusual High Court judgment.
Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division, revealed “extreme delay” in the preparation of post mortem reports in child suspicious death cases.
This was due to a lack of specialist forensic experts, including in bone pathology, where Mangham was then the “only” expert in the country “prepared to take on this work”.
Working across up to 110 adult and child suspicious death cases a year, Mangham examined bones under the microscope alongside his NHS role as a consultant histopathologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
McFarlane noted that the delays, sometimes eight months for reports, were having a “profound impact” on criminal and family proceedings.
‘Drowning in sorrow and suspicion’
Nine days after her daughter’s death, and before Mangham’s report, Rose and her partner were arrested on suspicion of child neglect.
“I felt stripped of my identity as her mum,” she said. “It was crushing, like I was drowning in sorrow and suspicion at the same time.”
Police also found a small amount of cannabis, which Rose said she used for medicinal purposes. Her two older children were taken to live with her aunt.
Mangham’s report later identified 24 rib fractures, including nine partial fractures said to have occurred shortly before death. The rest were described as older, dated three to seven days before.
He concluded that all, or at least some, of the newer fractures were non accidental, and all the older ones were too, citing “forceful chest compression”.
His report also said: “Posterior rib fractures are not caused by CPR.”
But this is disputed by other bone pathologists. One told The Times: “After a change to paediatric recommendations, the new CPR mechanism for babies could cause posterior rib fractures in a few per cent of cases. You have to really dig into the literature to find these cases. But it’s like Pandora’s box, you can’t put the lid back.”
A pattern of controversy
Bone pathologists can be critical witnesses in baby death or shaken baby cases. Their conclusions can shape prosecution theories, often in the absence of other evidence.
But in 2019, a High Court judge raised concerns about Mangham’s evidence in a separate family case, criticising “clear factual inaccuracies” and a “blinkered” approach that “could so easily have given rise to very great injustice”.
A mother’s long fight for truth
Rose’s legal battle dragged on for more than a year. At one stage, DNA testing was required to confirm that the correct ribcage had even been examined.
During that period, Rose learned that Mangham was also central to the murder trial of another mother, Laura Langley, in Blackpool.
Langley was accused of killing her baby daughter, Edith, in 2023. Mangham identified 33 rib fractures, mostly posterior, concluding they were not CPR related.
However, US expert Dr Edward McCarthy, a bone specialist from Johns Hopkins University, later reviewed the evidence and found that the injuries were consistent with CPR and normal bone remodelling, not abuse.
The trial collapsed in November 2024.
‘An affront to my judicial conscience’
In Rose’s case, the High Court reached similar conclusions. Judge Mr Justice Keehan ruled that Mangham had shown “a closed mind to an accidental cause for these injuries”.
He described McCarthy’s evidence as “balanced, measured and authoritative”, accepting that the fractures were accidental and that the supposed older fractures were normal bone growth.
“To accept Professor Mangham’s conclusions,” he wrote, “would be an affront to my judicial conscience.”
Lives left in pieces
Rose’s children were eventually returned to her. The criminal investigation was dropped after prosecutors found the case did not meet the threshold for charges.
She said: “He’s affected my children for the rest of their lives. He has caused long standing trauma.”
Rose added that while she recognises “not everyone is innocent”, she believes Mangham may have been overburdened and unsupported. “I don’t know if he has psychological support behind what he does as a job, but I believe he’s just seen too much,” she said. “I don’t want to feel sorry for him, but in a sense, I do.”
Her solicitor, Annie Francis of Miles and Partners, said: “For professionals, judges, experts and lawyers alike, cases may conclude on paper, but for the families we work with, the legacy of our decisions lasts a lifetime.”
Under investigation
Following a self referral, Professor Mangham is now under investigation by the General Medical Council and is understood not to be taking on suspicious death cases.
In his absence, Professor Tony Freemont, who described Mangham as a “brilliant pathologist”, has taken on some of the caseload. But even he admits that the field’s complexity carries risks: “Histopathology is finding new evidence, and the difficult question is how that evidence is interpreted. That’s always the risk when you’re pushing the limits.”
Still, for Rose, the consequences have been devastating.
“I loved my daughter more than anything,” she said quietly. “To even imagine me hurting her was beyond insulting, it was devastating.”
