The credibility of evidence from the mother of a boy who died after a procedure by Peter Beale was questioned in the Gauteng High Court this week, where the paediatric surgeon is on trial for three counts of murder and two of fraud.
The cases relate to the deaths of three children between 2012 and 2019. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The state alleges that Beale’s surgeries caused the deaths of the children, that the procedures were unnecessary, and that he had operated only to make money, reports News24.
A recording of a call between Beale and the mother of a 10-year-old boy who died, in 2019, after one of the procedures, was played in court this week – with the woman saying she had trained her memory to block out some of the traumatic events of the night her son died.
She had said her son had a problem with excessive vomiting – and two medical experts had already testified this could have been caused by anxiety.
A week after his death, she had phoned Beale and asked why he had left the hospital immediately after the surgery, despite the complications, and why he hadn’t stayed.
She said as Beale was leaving the hospital, the late anaesthetist, Dr Abdulhay Munshi, who was Beale’s co-accused in the same case before being murdered, told him the boy’s lung had collapsed, and that he showed signs of a condition called tension pneumothorax.
The mother testified that she had asked Beale what it was, and what it meant for her son.
Beale allegedly told her it was nothing serious, and then left the hospital.
Her son died later that night.
In his response during the phone call a week later, Beale said he had left the child in the care of Munshi, but the mother asked: “Why did you leave your patient? I trusted you. I didn’t even know him. I knew you…You should never have left until your patient had recovered and was stable.”
Beale’s response was: “It was not what I wanted. I wanted the absolute best for your son. To have pneumothorax in a child is one in many thousand chances. I’ve never encountered that before.”
He had said he was sorry for her loss and offered his condolences.
She told the court that from the start, she had been uneasy about the operation going ahead.
However, Roux accused her of “believing things that are not reliable”.
Referring to the phone call, Roux asked her if she were satisfied that her version of what was said during that conversation was reliable.
She said she was. She had said that during the call, Beale had admitted her son didn’t have a condition called metaplasia, which he'd previously said could lead to cancer of the oesophagus.
But Roux said his client had not said that.
“Your mind took over, and you believe things that are not real… nowhere in that call did Dr Beale admit your son didn’t have metaplasia …Show me where Beale admitted (that),” he said.
She was unable to show in the call’s transcripts where the admission was made.
The trial continues.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
State witness ‘biased’ and ‘reckless’, Beale’s lawyer claims
Beale ignored advice not to operate on children, state claims
Culpable homicide charge added to surgeon Peter Beale’s murder/fraud case