The belief in Munchausen's syndrome by proxy - a condition whereby mothers supposedly harm children to draw attention to themselves - is one of those strange fashions that afflict the professional classes from time to time. Satanic abuse, whipping tonsils out, using "look and say" methods to teach reading: where children are involved, beliefs are apt to be held so strongly that rational debate and the admission of dissent become all but impossible. Now, however, the tide has turned. Several mothers who had allegedly killed their babies in "cot death" cases have been freed. Munchausen's syndrome by proxy may not exist at all, it is said. Professor Sir Roy Meadow - the high priest of this little religion whose creed is that one cot death in a family is a tragedy, two suspicious and three murder - is widely reviled.

The government has announced a review of all 258 cases in the past decade where a parent was convicted of killing a child under two. About 20 of these, it is thought, may be open to question. But though these are potentially the most disturbing cases - what could be worse than to lose a child and then to be wrongly imprisoned for killing it? - there is a far bigger cause for concern. In an estimated 5,000 instances, children have been taken from their parents, put into care and sometimes later adopted on the basis of "expert" evidence from Professor Meadow or his followers. These cases were heard in the family courts - the same courts that deal with the custody of children of separated couples, and have led aggrieved fathers to such acts as chaining themselves to Tower Bridge.

The danger of all this is that we learn the wrong lesson and swing to another extreme. Now that Sally Clark, Trupti Patel and Angela Cannings - all accused of killing their babies - have been freed, we may start to discount all allegations of child abuse in the home. But the lessons to be drawn are quite different. Mrs Cannings and the others suffered terrible injustice, but were eventually acquitted because the evidence against them was a matter of public record, open to scrutiny and challenge. That could not be so in the family courts. These operate in complete secrecy. The press cannot attend the hearings or report anything of what takes place. Even to interview the parents risks contempt of court because of the dangers of identifying the child.

Yet family court cases - whether they involve disputes between mothers and fathers or between parents and the local social services - require, if anything, more scrutiny than many of those in the criminal courts. The standard of proof is lower. There is no requirement to establish beyond reasonable doubt that a child has been abused; rather, the court has to assess whether, on a balance of probabilities, there is a potential danger. Mothers have been acquitted on criminal charges of abuse or murder, only to have their children taken away from them in the family courts on these lower standards of evidence. Moreover, the judges (there are no juries in family courts) are less restrained by precedent than in any other area of the law. They have enormous discretion as to which experts may be called. Defenders of the system say this allows for the "uniqueness" of each family. But many lawyers say it is better described as a lottery.

Many parents will feel the loss of a child, forcibly removed by the state, even more keenly than the loss of liberty. That it should be inflicted behind closed doors, as in an eastern European state of the Soviet era, is outrageous. It is also dangerous. Had the many examples of evidence that Professor Meadow gave in the family courts been openly reported, his ideas may have been challenged much earlier, and Mrs Cannings and others possibly never convicted at all. We should draw the lessons for other areas of law and government, too. Transparency, press freedom and judicial safeguards are not abstract values, of interest only to metropolitan chatterers. They are essential to a fair and just society. In their absence, innocent people face unimaginable distress and ruined lives.

Up in the air

East Midlanders rarely get just recognition. When Adrian Mole, the creation of Sue Townsend (born and still resident in Leicester, east Midlands), was turned into a TV series, he was given a Birmingham (west Midlands) accent. Now the airlines say there can no longer be an East Midlands airport because nobody knows where the east Midlands is. But to rename it Nottingham East Midlands is unimaginative as well as wordy. An opportunity to make a larger statement has been missed. Robin Hood airport could give new confidence to the cause of redistribution of wealth. Joe Orton airport, after the Leicester playwright who battered his homosexual lover to death before killing himself, could attract many tourists with its whiff of danger and low life. Otherwise, London-Nottingham (in the spirit of London-Gatwick) would be adequate, since few airports nowadays are anywhere near where they claim to be.

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