Zabeth and Paul Bayne – Part 18 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

The Shaken Baby Syndrome - A Pretense of Justice in the Bayne Case

It is decidedly wrong to harm a child. Our medical and justice communities have been shaping themselves to interrupt, to correct, to prevent and to punish offenders. When someone questions a Shaken Baby Syndrome diagnosis, this is not to be considered equivalent to condoning shameful abuse of a child. Such a question is objective and necessary. The SBS diagnosis was increasingly common in the late 1980s and early 1990’s. People suspected of being guilty of SBS are deemed criminally liable, and if the SBS diagnosis is connected with an infant’s death, the sentences imposed are severe.

The reliability of an SBS diagnosis however, has become progressively more doubtful as research has increased. In the early 2000’s SBS skeptics emerged particularly with regard to SBS’s legitimacy as a diagnosis when used within the court for prosecution purposes and the number of skeptics has created into a reform movement in the United States and in Canada.

That misgiving about the legitimacy of an SBS diagnosis is precisely at the heart of the pretense to justice in the case of Bethany Bayne and her disconnected parents, Zabeth and Paul Bayne. One of the tasks of the Ministry of Children and Family Development in B.C. is to protect children. Good. Where a child is harmed or might be harmed, protect the child! Remove the child. Who would question that? That is justice. Paul’s and Zabeth’s two-month old baby girl Bethany was taken from them two years ago because one doctor out of the several who looked at her, made an SBS diagnosis. Although an RCMP investigation concluded there were insufficient grounds to charge these parents with any kind of breach of responsibility or care and cleared them, the local branch of the Ministry of Children and Family Development has persistently held to the conviction that these parents must have done something dreadful to Bethany for her to sustain what appeared to be injuries to her head. MCFD continues to deem the Baynes are a risk to their daughter. This speculative suspicion, when accompanied by the authority to deprive a suspect of natural rights, translate into “presumption of guilt until able to prove oneself innocent.” “Guilty until proven innocent,” is not commensurate with the character for our country’s and province’s justice system. It is, with respect to the Bayne family, fundamentally unjust and is for this reason, a travesty.

The most just action that the local branch of MCFD or the elected Provincial Minister of MCFD could take right now, would be to let Bethany go home to her parents who have loved her and cared for her during their visitation hours each week for two years now. And that Ministry action should be made with unqualified and deliberate haste. It should be accompanied by the most sincere apology that authentic social minded and courteous servants of the public good can generate. I won’t expect that. I won’t expect that because that would be an admission that could be litigated. So, even without the apology, return this now two-year old girl to her mommy and daddy and stop this insult to what is good and proper about the MCFD mandate.