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| Rahman children |
Consider the RAHMAN Family. On a well designed website with helpful tabs, friends of the family logged the ongoing struggle to establish innocence, acquittal, credibility and recovery.
Here are details from that site.
One year ago some final web pages were published about their similar horrific experience. On April 9th, 2005, the Rahman children, then aged 2,3,4, and 5 years, were removed from their family after their two-year-old cousin died while in the mother's care.The child's loss was a terrible tragedy. The court documents explain that the niece, a two-year-old girl, fell from a chair while eating and hit her head on a concrete floor. The Rahman mother, Muzzammil Rahman was in the washroom and her own four young children witnessed the niece’s fall and alerted their mother. Finding that the child was unconscious and not breathing, Muzzammil who spoke limited English and had no transportation, took the child to a neighbour. The neighbour found pieces of waffle lodged in the child's throat, removed it and called 911. The 911 recording reveals sounds of the child choking. The story also indicates that the child had a pre-existing but undisclosed medical condition. Muzzammil was charged with manslaughter, (specifically, shaken baby syndrome).
It took three years for this case to come to trial and during that time, the children remained in care. Honourable, Mr. Justice. W.G. Grist B.C. Supreme Court May 21st, 2008 ruled “The Crown says the accused was overwhelmed and over-burdened by the care of her four children and Aisha. There is no direct evidence of this and there is evidence that she was taking proper care of the child.”... “I think it essential in this case to keep in mind the evidence of the events as they unfolded given by these various witnesses.”... “Accordingly, the accused should be discharged.” Muzzammil was acquitted.
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| Some birthdays later - Rahman children |
Later, at the Rahmans' appeal to the B.C. Supreme Court, Justice Grant Burnyeat overturned Judge Borowicsz's judgement with a statement saying that Borowicz had made “a critical omission” in her ruling by not giving an explanation for how she arrived at her conclusions. He wrote, "There is a complete failure to either review or analyze any of the expert evidence." He ordered a new trial for Muzzammil and Muhammad Attiq-Ur-Rahman in their fight to regain custody of their children. Their legal costs have been estimated at $200,000. ( Details taken from Denise Ryan's, Vancouver Sun article of August 13, 2009)
The family was reunited in 2009. A final online post on Thursday, 24 December 2009 11:31, announced that “all the kids have been returned to their parents by an official court order.... We would like to sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all the moral, financial, and generous support that everybody has provided throughout this ordeal!” The four Rahman children were 10, nine, seven and six when they were returned one year ago – having been for four years in the care of the Ministry and away from their parents. I am so glad for their happiness.
It rather sounds to me as if MCFD has a script to parents who go public and clearly have the wherewithal to see the matter through to the end.
ReplyDeleteThe findings of the name of the doctor and the location of the SBS diagnosis SBS would be interesting to read.
This is relatively recent, but what is clearly missing is some sort of follow-up. The closing argument of MCFD would be interesting to read, as would the defence.
Opponents of child removal authority would be well advised to approach this family and interview then, and ask permission to obtain information to publicize the case to make sure other parents are better prepared.
These judges are causing a great deal of harm with their unjust rulings. They slip under the wire of publicity, perhaps because they are provincial court judges. This needs to change. They must know what they are doing is wrong. Especially after a superior court has found the parents not guilty.
ReplyDeleteBecause of our government's malice and stupidity, we are all paying the price - no family is safe when this viciousness is occuring. And it's high time that there was some accountability for all involved, from the doctors to the caseworkers. If there were consequences for their incompetence, and especially, for their malice, this would deter them.
Ron; Perhaps I should give a little more detail on the case I mentioned. The woman was referred to me by a foster mother who had been grievously wronged by the same director as in the Bayne case. She had vainly tried publicity and became known, so others came to her for help. The family was an immigrant family from eastern Europe with poor command of English. The first thing I did was to ask for a copy of the court report. They had no idea what I was talking about, but she could give me the name of her lawyer, who promptly sent me a copy.
ReplyDeleteThe case was fairly clear. They had several children and one of them--a boy aged 8 or 10-I forget exactly--had been admitted to hospital gravely ill. The family was religious and believed that prayer would suffice, until the boy had been unconscious for hours. He was at death's door with diabetes and had to be kept in hospital for diagnosis and treatment. The doctors were very concerned because they did not seem to be able to persuade the parents of the gravity of the illness. When visiting, they tried to persuade the boy to refuse injections and tried to abduct him from the hospital. The medical staff could not risk discharging him unless the parents agreed to proper treatment and so they called in social services.
The parents had a very good lawyer, who was as exaspertated as everyone else. The social workers and especially the supervisor did everything possible to return the boy home.They were willing to have the public health nurse come every day and give the shots, but everything they tried was met with denial.The boy was not ill and prayer would suffice. It is also worth noting that there was never any suggestion that any of the other children were at risk or should be removed. I do not think that this case shows that any of the medical staff or the social workers had the anti-religious bias that you claim.
What I do think it shows is that protection work requires discipline and fairness and there are no nice neat formulas (sorry Ron formulae) for every situation. Now all you protection cynics, do write in and tell me how you would have handled the situation.
Two other themes that keep coming up are the flimsy evidence on which social workers act and the length of time it takes to get due process.
I think that the ministry makes a grave error in heeding anonymous information. It is invalid as evidence and it is simply not necessary. It is bad social work practice. Protection should be an evidence based practice and should depend on good provable facts. Social work theory should be based on a fact based body of knowledge and not on junk psychology. I never heeded anonymous information. The law requires that citizens must report it if they have good reason to believe a child is being abused. In theory there are penalties for failure to report. I simply used to remind people of their duty to report and demanded facts from them, including identifying themselves. This included their duty to appear as a witness,if they had evidence. I found that it usually worked. Whatis the alternative I ask you? The Loren Humeny testimony consisting entirely of anonymous "collaterals"? That is evidence gone mad.
We would cut down drastically on all these abusive cases, taking years to resolve, if we provided skilled duty counsel for all parents and if judges insisted on at least some evidence being presented under due process within the six week time frame required by the act.
Ray and others, continuing the discussion...
ReplyDeleteThis is a typical impasse between religious zealots and medical expertise, each with an agenda to see a child become well yet each with a different avenue to that end. Not for a moment do I fault the medical professionals. If I was a doctor on a case like this, even as a Christian I would urge a family to accept the medical help. Unless the spiritual leaders of faith groups educate parishioners that God heals through a variety of means including human intervention, fervent well intentioned people of faith will feel obligated to object for fear of offending God and suffering the consequences. Such education is not a spiritual compromise but rather an instruction that when praying, to ask God to heal the patient in the way of His choice, either spontaneously or through the medical treatment. When the healing occurs, to rejoice and give God glory is still honouring to Him regardless of the timing or the means. Why do we think God has blessed humanity with intelligence anyway if not to gain those skills and knowledge that can aid our short time here.
All the same, MCFD is always trying to second guess the doctors and trying to be a doctor. It got so annoying that my son's doctor went against them. It is really weird watching MCFD and the doctors play ball back and forth when there is serious illness and they take guardianship, yet still need the parents to do the work of being the parent, yet don't want to lose control. I could write a book.
ReplyDeleteThis case, clearly, need not have gone this way but it did because some people with power and position did not appreciate the ones without power and position. The whole of the MCFD structure is a specific culture and a different legal system which has been developed to operate in a different country than the Canada I thought we lived in. I think words like arrogance, and disrespect are appropriate to describe the attitudes by which MCFD people operate.
ReplyDeleteWhat would be wrong with finding suitable professional interpreters immediately? What would be wrong with learning the cultural norm of people groups or do we all have to be cookie cutter people to be consider appropriate as Canadian citizens by MCFD??
RE: Religious Zealots
ReplyDeleteIt's true that there appears to be religions that have what appear to be backwards views with respect to medical care. However, child protection appears to be using these unpopular religions and cases to get their foot in the door, and when they do it is definately a slippery slope. So, for instance, when there is a supreme court case that compels parents to give their child a lifesaving blood transfusion, few would argue (though some definately would) that it is a bad thing. But what happens is that then when people hear about a family refusing medical care, and child protection authorities taking the child, they associate it with the (radical) situation of the parents who refused the blood transfusion, when in fact in may be parents who don't want their child on powerful mind altering drugs for a questionable diagnosis, say, of Attention Deficit Disorder.
I think we have to be very, very careful about how religion and religious groups are portrayed in the media, because as we saw in, for example, the case of the FLDS, where hundreds of children were brutally torn from their families on the basis of an anonymous phone call, it is very destructive to demonize religions who may have practices we disagree with. The Court of Appeal agreed with FLDS lawyers that there was no proof that protection was urgently needed.
And if you look at the FLDS children, before the intervention of child protection services, you will see happy, healthy, well behaved children. The trauma they suffered from the intervention of the state will live on for years. Thank goodness for lawyers who truly stand up against this awful power, and that includes lawyers like Doug Christie, who I note is a Catholic, as well as being a Libertarian.
Yes, when ADHD is involved they take a turn for the strange. ADHD is considered a mental illness and it is treated as medically necessary for the child to have Ritalin. The public school system is used to enforce the taking of these drugs. My child was diagnosed with a psychiatric illness while I had an open file (not remotely related to not taking him to a doctor). After all this stuff went on, they became aware that I was living in a different region and they were not aware of all the doctor visits I had taken my child to as they only had some of the records. It was a big mistake. Yet they infiltrated the hospital and tried to get me written up for neglect while I was there at the request of the hospital to help as parents generally do in paediatrics. The entire story is very strange and corrupt and it has taken me my whole summer to fight it in court and I will be fighting for some time to come. I have become broke, I will be borrowing money for my rent and it took away from my kids what could have been a happy, normal summer.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate learning how SWs see things, yet it is hard to read that they see themselves as saviours preventing all this medical damage as they can also be a huge burden on the back of the sick child. In my case no family were allowed to visit my son and he was held weeks longer than medically necessary because the case could not be resolved until we could get a court date (that took 2 and 1/2 months 1 month of which he was healthy and just being held and could have otherwise gone home).
Every meeting was a back and forth with the MCFD claiming they were just following doctor's orders and the doctor claiming they could release my son if MCFD could figure out legally where he could live.
MCFD is no Florence Nightengale.
I learned the hard way that a hospital is the most likely place to lose your children as they have CPS workers right there and it is very difficult to fight medical authority. ALso other siblings who are with the parent while they are disagreeing with the doctor about certain treatments will be removed as well.
ReplyDeleteThen when you go to court MCFD encourages the parents to agree with the MCFD findings as you will be advised it will speed the process and your kids come back to you sooner.
I did that the first time. Little did I know that all untrue stuff was then legally enshrined on my file and now weakens my case in the future and makes it much more likely I will lose my kids again.
When we proved ourselves we had our child returned which was as close to an apology as we got (but at that point how could we not be satisfied with that lone). At 14 months old he was home and couldn't even crawl although had weekly physical therapy while in Foster Care. We were never able to mourn his twin that passed away for we were traumatized as it was before the accusations and after we were fighting for the future of our children as well as for our own. Only God pulled us through it. Each day on he way to work I prayed that God would send one more person to me or me to one more person. One of these occasions I was introduced to the Baynes and I know they are God and people loving people that has been caught up as a victim of circustances and medical controversy. We are not disputing that abuse does or doesn't occur. We are not disputing whether or not Shaken Baby syndrome is real or not real---we are stating that the Baynes are innocent and their children should be returned in the name of justice and in the best interest of the child. That is what this is supposed to be about is the children...Let's do right by them and return them to their makers as they belong.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons I sent you the link to the Rahmans case back in May was to permit a telling of a story that lends some perspective to the Baynes case. The Rahman's clearly experienced about triple what the Baynes have so far been through.
ReplyDeleteThe Rahman case would also provide Judge Crabtree some guidance, and visibility in seeing a successful CCO overturned.
I looked up the various Rahman cases and noted the common names of doctors that also appeared in the Baynes case.
Dr. Poskitt, the Radiologist who declined to testify for MCFD, and Dr. Gardiner, an eye expert both worked on Bethany.
At the HEAL clinic in Surrey, Dr. Korn is examined the children saying no abuse occurred(who also, incidently cleared my children).
The phrase the first Supreme Court judge used "unsafe to convict" is telling. One would think also, "unsafe to permanently remove children."
The next Provincial judgment is short, too much so, and not complimentary to the family. Note the style and lack of reference to evidence. It is more character assassination as opposed to an objective view of evidence and deference to the BC Supreme Court judge. An Appeal works in this case because the lower court Provincial judge simply slapped the superior judge in the face, and the Appeal ruling is "payback".
The Provincial judge buys into the MCFD's mantra that to err on the side of safety is better than being sorry (for the judge and MCFD, not the family).
The Appeal orders a new trial August 11th 2009. I wasn't able to find another Provincial judgement after that date, so perhaps the Ministry simply returned the children at that point, as it is close to the date on the website stating the children were returned.
My assessment is that because the Baynes did not have to go through the criminal aspect of trial because the police refused to file charges, the Crown really does not have a leg to stand on. The best they can do is pout and drag the matter on for as long as possible like they did to the Rahman's.
The Ministry still wins by a landslide in terms of damage inflicted.
I have little doubt MCFD is likley happy at this point to have had their revenge and several pounds of Bayne flesh, and expect to quietly move on to the next unsuspecting SBS family.
References:
BC Supreme Court X070001 (23 days)
http://www.canlii.org/eliisa/highlight.do?text=Rahman+shaken+baby&language=en&searchTitle=Search+all+CanLII+Databases&path=/en/bc/bcsc/doc/2008/2008bcsc647/2008bcsc647.html
Provincial Court F26010 (15 days)
http://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/judgments/pc/2008/04/p08_0480.htm
Supreme Court (Appeal) E083988 (3 days)
http://www.courts.gov.bc.ca/jdb-txt/SC/09/10/2009BCSC1073err1.htm
Anon 3:35 - the SW's in hospitals are not MCFD CP SW's. They are employed by the health authority of their region.
ReplyDeletehttp://careers.fraserhealth.ca/vacancies.asp?action=summary&id=52577.
Also, I have to ask - you agreed to the concerns in a court proceeding. What did you expect would happen re: those "untrue" things on your file? Once confirmed in court it is there forever - that has to do with the court process more than it does the MCFD process.
The Rahman case file and ruling was among the documents submitted by the Baynes to Court and during Judge Crabtree's deliberations he will read this.
ReplyDeleteI don't think religious affiliation makes any difference to social workers. That would be too easy to be able to nail them on a discrimination suit.
ReplyDeleteIf any situation can be made functional as a weapon or turned into a derogatory on paper against parent, MCFD staff will do so in order to achieve an objective. That objective is to get the parents angry, preferably uncontrollably so, and to get the children beholden to their new parents.
I made a point of mentioning that my kids attended church, so the foster parent made a point of not taking them.
Later, when it was necessary to butter up one child after my children were separated, the foster mom took my child to church, movies, activities - you name it. The other children were housebound in a separate foster home.
The shear volume and variety of behaviour by social workers over the course of their involvment simply would not fit into a normal CFCSA trial. This is one reason the Baynes trial went over by two weeks. Having the social workers on the stand burning up valuable trial time, wasting four days for Loren Humeny is one example.
I rather suspect MCFD believes children in their care should have only one family at a time, so supervised visitation is simply tolerated and minimized as much a possible.
Anon at August 24, 2010 10:51 PM;
ReplyDeleteYou are being disingenuous. While it may be true that MCFD does not directly employ social workers at hospitals, they are working side by side with MCFD and reporting to MCFD, as in, for example, the child protection unit at Children's Hospital, where an entire team of social workers, doctors, nurses, shrinks, etc. are working hard to find child abuse, and like the scientist said, they will definately find what they are looking for. They are definately working very closely with MCFD. After all, who do you think they call when they suspect child abuse, Oprah?
And regarding your statement regarding the parent who agreed to what MCFD said and had it go on court record. As the parent quite clearly pointed out, it was extortion; the parents were promised they would get what was most important to them IF they did what MCFD wanted them to do. Don't say it has to do with "the court process" when you and I and everyone else knows that it has everything to do with MCFD coercion.
Is it possible you work for MCFD?
The danger of MCFD intake files after a trial finds in favour of the parent is the outcome rarely detracts from the weight of old allegations that were clearly proven wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe Baynes will have yet another risk assessment that can list past allegations as "unexplained concerns" and the trial outcome as "inconclusive." The fact Paul did not testify, MCFD can get great derogatory mileage from by further hinting the defence "deliberately avoided" putting Paul on the stand, implying guilt.
There is a whole other level MCFD can operate on to disrupt the childrens lives in the distant future. The Baynes will have to later retrieve the "closed" version of the files and specifically request they be updated so the reslts of the trial appears in each, then again verify the requested changes are in place.
ANON 10:35 PM - thank you for the well researched piece today and the links which I have retained for my files.
ReplyDeleteCourt transcripts of sworn witness statements are rarely ordered in MCFD cases.
ReplyDeleteIntake reports are equivalent to sworn affidavits, but are often so cross-pollinated with snippets from other intakes, the worker could be held on the stand for days just to explain the convoluted mess they create.
As this is not practical, you can only address what, out of these intake reports MCFD chooses to put on a reort to court, and in a risk assessment. This is the worst stuff they can find, all context and dates are removed, and it is all hearsay.
MCFD employees love to blame "court process," but they are the worst abusers of this due process imaginable. Tthey know the steps and tricks inside and out. It is not until one actually experiences and goes through the process will a parent gain an understanding of how bastardized the process is.
A certain threshold of volume of intakes is required before having enough material to draw from in order to create a report to court. The more intakes and the more people involved then provides an excuse to establish a multi-day trial. More volume means more delay, and more time to hold on to your kids. This is the primary objective.
It is all blamed on the "court process" by coniving MCFD social workers.
Dr. Korn works closely with MCFD on other cases. I wish he had been in charge of my child as it would not have gone how it did if someone good was in charge. It is interesting to learn he cleared the parents. He was almost put in charge of my child. Now, I wish he was.
ReplyDeleteTO ANON at August 25, 2010 8:43 am
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I just want to add one word to your last sentence, and that is: "conniving, malicious, MCFD social workers."
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