Mother of dead baby feared daughter's head would be ripped off by Bosnian doctor

Tracey Dinning of Chertsey, Surrey said Dr Vladan Visnjevac was so rough during the delivery she feared her baby's head would be 'pulled off'.

And Mrs Dinning, now 40, said in a statement read to the GMC's 'fitness to practice' hearing that she did not believe her daughter could ever have survived the birth at St Peter's Hospital in Chertsey.

Dr Visnjevac, 55, fled the UK and returned to his homeland after he was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter following the death of Hollie Hope Dinning in May 2002.

Moments after the baby was delivered Mrs Freeman said she was thinking: "Why isn't she breathing what has he done?"

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She said: "I believed I was going to be well looked after but instead our beautiful daughter Hollie Hope has been taken from us. We have come home with nothing."

Yesterday the GMC heard that 55-year-old Dr Visnjevac inflicted massive brain damage on Hollie, who died 24 hours after birth.

The hearing was told he tugged so forcefully on her head that her mother, Tracey, had to be held down by her husband to prevent her being pulled off the bed.

A post mortem examination in May 2002 revealed the baby's skull had been horrifically fractured.

Two months later Dr Visnjevac, an obstetric registrar, was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

He was bailed and interviewed several times but in December that year, when he was to be charged, he failed to return to Woking police station.

It later emerged he had fled to Sarajevo where he is in hiding.

When Mrs Dinning unexpectedly became pregnant in May 2001 she took every precaution to ensure she did not miscarry and went on to carry the baby full term.

But, after two days of labour, Dr Visnjevac tried a forceps delivery. After four attempts Hollie was delivered.

Stephen Brassington, counsel for the GMC, said yesterday that the doctor's pulling was so strong that Mrs Dinning "described it as like watching a calf being delivered".

But because the forceps were not properly positioned "there was a shearing effect" which caused massive injury.

In an appalling twist, the father of the baby Jim Dinning had lost his first wife Caroline Freeman and their baby during childbirth at the same hospital two years previously.

Two years earlier his then partner Caroline Freeman and their baby Chloe-Jade died at the hospital, which is run by Ashford and St Peter's NHS Trust.

Earlier this year maternity services at the hospital were ranked among the worst in England.

The hearing is expected to result in Dr Visnjevac being struck off the medical register in the UK.

But because there is no extradition agreement between Bosnia and the UK, the doctor has been able to avoid justice.