Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London are facing questions over whether they had the consent of parents or guardians before conducting brain experiments on vulnerable children from scandal-hit charity Kids’ Company.
Documents obtained by Heat Street under Freedom of Information laws show that between 2007 and 2009, a total of 123 separate procedures were conducted on 10 young people who were clients of Camila Batmanghelidjh’s now-defunct charity.
MORE: Prince Charles’s Ties To Kids’ Company
The children were given small sums of money for taking part in the experiments.
The tests, including MRI scans, tried to prove a link between mistreatment in childhood and violent tendencies in adulthood.
But the research proved inconclusive and was never published.
It was part of a joint venture between Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College London carried out by the Institute of Child Health, which the two organisations co-fund.
When asked who gave consent for these procedures, Great Ormond Street Hospital was unable to provide any details despite taking almost three months to respond.
UCL provided copies of the consent forms but said they “do not specify the consenting adult’s relationship with the child, so it is difficult to discern which of them were parents/guardians.”
When pressed, UCL said it was satisfied it had proof that parents of three of the 10 children had given consent based on available evidence.
It provided no details about the other seven children, leaving open the possibility that no proper consent was secured.
Last month Heat Street told how in 2002 the Prince of Wales reportedly passed to Ms Batmanghelidjh 25 clinical papers that looked at the impact of abuse on children’s brain development.
It is understood this act inspired Batmanghelidjh to become an advocate of children’s brain research.
Dr Jan Macvarish, a research fellow at the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies based at the University of Kent told Heat Street she was surprised at the potential lack of proper consent.
Dr Macvarish said: “Parental consent is always important and anything that undermines parental consent is a very serious issue.”
These tests were the first batch of experiments carried out on more than 100 teenage boys over several years by other organisations including the Anna Freud Centre and King’s College, London.
Dr Peter Rankin of Great Ormond Street hospital was named on the original ethics committee application for the research but played no part in the project.
The researchers named on the UCL/GOSH consent form are: Prof Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, Robert Surtees, Khalid Hussain, Paramala Santosh, David Gadian and Patricia Martin Sanfilippo.
Kids’ Company closed last summer having become insolvent.
It received almost £50 million of government funding between 2001 and 2015.
David Cameron and his wife, Samantha, were among Batmanghelidjh’s greatest supporters.
It has since been heavily criticized in reports by parliament and the National Audit Office.
It is currently under investigation by the Charity Commission.
Alan Yentob, chairman of Kids’ Company trustees, was forced to resign from his BBC executive post as a result of the scandal last December. He remains on the BBC payroll as a freelance presenter and producer of BBC1 arts series Imagine.
A UCL spokesman said: “Considering the backgrounds of the children who took part, it would not be unusual for them to be under the care of a guardian other than their birth parent. However, as the consent forms do not specify the consenting adult’s relationship with the child, it is difficult to discern which of them were parents/guardians. We can confirm that two of the adult signatories have matching surnames with the participating child and one further signatory has identified herself as ‘mum’.”