Paul and Zabeth Bayne – Part 12 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

As of today I am changing the subtitle of these posts from the “The Alarming Case of B.C. Government’s Miscarriage of Justice’ to ‘The Bayne Campaign for Justice.’

Paul and Zabeth Bayne – Part 12 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

Candidly, while Paul and Zabeth and their three children, Kent, Baden and Bethany continue to suffer as a result of this obstruction of justice, there is every reason to focus less on the way our system has failed all five people, specially Bethany, and focus instead upon the victories that will come out of this debacle. The family members will be restored to one another. Some foster care givers will be dropped from the program, or all foster parents will be required to be registered so there is full accountability. Some within the ranks of MCFD will be reassessed and maybe even reassigned. MCFD reforms already envisioned by Lesley Du Toit and Honourable Mary Polak will be prioritized.

If the MCFD Case on the Bayne Family were a table it would have no legs. You can’t then call this legless thing a platform because no one will want to put his weight on what the MCFD has to say in court to justify why a two month old girl has been withheld from her parents until past her second birthday. MCFD will not be able to answer acceptably why they have insisted upon violating the law for so long, contravening the very ACT with which it seeks to serve children’s welfare. When there was no evidence against the Baynes, when the RCMP stepped away from the case, when CT scans, tests and opinions pointed to accidental injury rather than non accidental injury, the early medical suspicion and caution of infant shaking should have reasonably been set aside in deference to the outstanding characters and reputations of two parents committed to God, to family values, to one another, to their children, to decency. MCFD will be unable to adequately explain why it rejected the counsel of its own lawyer who recommended that there was no injury or harm on the boys and no risk and no cause for holding the boys from their parents and yet they are in custody today as if belonging to the state. And some answers need to be forthcoming as to why adult grip marks on children’s limbs and abrasions and rashes and spankings and cold showers have been the Bayne children’s experience within the protective envelope of MCFD.

In so many ways people within the system have been made to feel they need to protect themselves or their jobs or the program or the agency and consequently good parents have been maligned, misjudged, mistreated. Children have been detached and deprived from parental and family relationships and the extent of the scarring of their spirits and minds is unknown but deplorable to contemplate. While we all value the sincere efforts by good people to protect children, there is a line recognized by most others over which good judgement and a commitment to right choices do not take you when doing your job.

I am not contending that MCFD is broken. Far from it. So many dividends accrue to our communities because of the initiatives and services of MCFD. Yet something within MCFD is broken and that must be identified and fixed.