A DECADE has passed since a devastating official report confirmed the worst fears of many parents whose beloved children died during treatment at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

It showed that heart tissue and other body parts had been secretly removed without permission.

After the initial shock, anger and struggle to cope with what they were told, some families have coped better than others.

In the worst cases, the wounds have never healed and resulted in divorce, alcoholism and even suicide attempts.

Campaigner Matt Redmond, of Chaucer Grove, Acocks Green, has helped many families while he and his wife Carol battle to come to terms with the revelation their six-year-old daughter Karen was one of those who, in his own words, was “brutalised”.

He still gets calls in the middle of the night from mothers raking through the wretched details that at least 1,100 Midland children had organs stripped without their parents’ consent.

“There have been marriage break ups, suicides and people turning to booze because parents can never face up to what has happened,” 74-year-old former Birmingham city councillor Mr Redmond tells me.

“People have turned to alcohol as a way of opting out of what is worrying them. It hurts deeply but we can’t express ourselves about what happened.

“It took a long time to get some of the truth but only a minority of parents have moved on from it.”

Mr and Mrs Redmond’s first daughter Karen had a hole-in-the-heart and died during a failed operation in 1966. It was not until 35 years later that the couple discovered that medics helped themselves to 42 of her body parts, often for scientific research or sometimes to sell on. Slides were made from Karen’s pituitary glands and tissue.

“In 2001, when I found out what the hospital had done, I was traumatised all over again and my heart broke into thousands of pieces,” says dad-of-six Mr Redmond, who is chairman of support group Stolen Hearts.

“Her brain and heart still remain in the Children’s Hospital along with slides, but I can’t bring myself to get them. I can’t face it. I can’t go to the cemetery either. I feel like my child has been brutalised and all I buried was her shell.