This past Tuesday Mr. Finn Jensen was in court to deliver his final summation in the case of the Ministry of Children and Family Development versus Paul and Zabeth Bayne and Family, well technically that's not accurate. It is a hearing to determine whether the judge will grant an application by MCFD to keep the three children permanently.
I should advise you as a reader that every point which Jensen made will be challenged and countered in the written submission that is forthcoming from the Bayne lawyer following the conclusion of Jensen's summation.
As the morning began, Judge Crabtree wanted Mr. Jensen to deal with several outstanding matters, each cited on a prepared list by the Judge and for which Jensen was prepared. For instance, certain requests for information were made by Mr. Christie of two of the Ministry's witnesses during the hearing, and these were indicated as having been fulfilled.
With regard to Drs. Colbourne, Gardner, Sargent and Alexander, who had been permitted during the hearing to give testimonies for the Ministry as to nature of injuries but not as to cause of injuries and mechanisms because their expertise had not been established for those areas, Mr. Jensen now was advocating that their opinion evidence is relevant and necessary and should be accepted. On the other hand, Jensen sought to discredit the testimonies of doctors who disputed the Ministry claim of abuse by questioning the weight of their testimony given that they relied upon the explanation provided by the Baynes. He said that there is no evidence that Zabeth saw heads collide as the middle child fell on the youngest and he emphasized that Zabeth was the only parent to testify and that the court did not hear from Paul. (Fact: each of the defense experts examined all of the same medical records that were available to the Ministry doctors in order to arrive at their conclusions which contradicted the Ministry position, but did not dismiss the Bayne explanation out of hand.)
Several Binders that grouped categories of evidence were discussed as to their admissibility and relevance. For instance, A number of abstracts from scientific journals and presentations were used by Doug Christie to cross-examine Ministry witnesses. Jensen said these are relevant as long as the Judge pays attention to them only as to whether the witnesses agreed or disagreed with the abstracts' conclusions.
Another binder contained numerous medical assessments or followup reports on the baby through all the months post trauma event and these had been entered as exhibits and Jensen said that while these did not speak to the need for protection he felt that the judge in consulting the Act for admissibility could find them admissible as background.
Jensen made reference to many documents and reports that had been submitted during the hearing and made the point that these only had weight as they related to specific witnesses and their agreement or disagreement with content and that the documents were not stand alone evidence.
A binder of news and journal articles and blog postings submitted by the defense were discounted by Jensen as unreliable because they were not acceptable as evidence since they were merely a writer's review. Such material was not relevant, somewhat unclear, even dangerous, and certainly inadmissible and he went through individual pieces to make his points.
There was a binder of reports by defense medical experts and articles which Jensen went through doctor by doctor and article by article. He encouraged admissibility of some while questioning the weight to be given to them and with regard to others he advised exclusion.
Then there was the Defense’s binder of collected character support references which Jensen challenged because not one of the writers was called upon to testify in court, so their identities and credibility are unknown so these are opinion entities at best. (Fact: unlike the collateral testimonies to which MCFD did respond, no effort was made by MCFD workers to verify these character references so they could have some weight or that the truth about the Baynes' characters might be known to MCFD and the Court).
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| 'Mount Baker from Point Roberts', 16X20, oil |
He cited again the absence of evidence as the hallmark of the Bayne side and underscored that Zabeth Bayne was the only witness called upon in addition to the couple of medical experts who were either present in person or by video link.
The Rahman case about which I have written earlier had been raised by the defense but Jensen said this was merely news and not evidence of anything and should be excluded.
This concluded the unresolved issues after which Mr. Jensen began his summary proper for the duration of the afternoon, resulting in an adjournment at 4:30 PM until September 30th.
As I did yesterday, I conclude with this reminder. "This blog is in support of returning the children to Paul and Zabeth..." and that continues to be true even as I have objectively recounted today's information.
As I did yesterday, I conclude with this reminder. "This blog is in support of returning the children to Paul and Zabeth..." and that continues to be true even as I have objectively recounted today's information.
And always keep in mind that there is more to this story than meets your eye in this summation representation of the Bayne family ordeal.
In regard to your disclaimer at the bottom of this most recent posting ,"this blog is in support of having the children returned..." I stand with you and agree always, and claim it in the Mighty Strong name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour! Amen
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ReplyDeleteRon; I want to continue to address the issues raised by anon Sept 18 10.33 etc. Rather than engage with every quibble, I will set out some concepts. I remind him/her that 30% of cases are over-investigated and 30% under-investigated. In 30% of cases social workers shut their eyes to compelling evidence until something drastic happens. They are very good at tap dancing around the facts and avoiding action. The correct child protection guideline is first that one should never leave a child in apparent danger. The second guideline is that where there is doubt about the danger, the child must be removed to a safe place until the situation can be more thoroughly assessed. If the risk appears less than thought, then the child can return home with appropriate conditions. It would seem to me that when a child has had several prior injuries and has run away from home and asked for help that there is substantial evidence. These injuries could only have been shown through reported medical examination. To ignore this information would be irresponsible and would at least call for removal until the matter could be assessed. The police requirement for evidence is much more stringent than for the social workers and to charge the parents, they would have to convince a prosecutor.
ReplyDeleteAnon is so good at quibbling that I suspect that he/she may be a lawyer or possibly a philopher. I have seen many social workers who would quibble away about the need for certainty while children got abused. A classic case was Matthew Vaudreuil, where they quibbled him to death. Anon is full of self-contradictions, is distracted by irrelevance and makes false comparisons. It is claimed that children can make false statements and backs it up by citing McMartin etc. Let me explain.
In the late eighties and early nineties, there was an epidemic of false abuse claims. It started off by there being an awareness that childhood sexual abuse was much more widespread than had previously been thought. Mostly people were too ashamed to reveal it. However, some brave souls broke the ice and talked about their childhood sexual abuse. More and more people came forward to talk about it and to seek counselling. It was not long before the counselling trades drummed up more business by developing some new junk psychology. They claimed that many people had been abused, but it was so painful that they suppressed the memory. They also claimed that they could tell when children were being currently abused, but were in denial about the problem. So two types of counselling arose. One was to help adults recover suppressed memories of childhood abuse. All sorts of people believed they had recovered memories of abuse that never happened. The stories were particularly bizarre when it came to recovering memories of Satanic ritual abuse. This was repeatedly investigated and found to be totally fictitious and wholly due to a counselling cult. Many people were sued and jailed and lives ruined until all this was debunked. Similarly counsellors rationalised that children suppressed current abuse until helped to reveal it. The most persistent and coercive interviewing took place until children were brainwashed into believing things that never happened. The witch hunt became so widespread that eventually it was patently ridiculous. The whole of the Martinsville Sask police force was put in jail. In the USA it is a federal offense to send a bill for recovered memory counselling through the mail.
One result was that in BC strict guidelines were drawn up for the correct forensic interviewing of children and placed in the interministry guidebook. Five years later they were forgotten and I will guarantee that most staff have never heard of them. So you see anon, when you say that children can make false claims it is true, when coerced into it by repeated coercive interviewing. To then compare this with a voluntary statement to a neighbour by an injured child is the sort of irrelevant quibble that leads to the death of children. I am with Ron on this one.
Ron;you had a great blog yesterday with some penetrating comments comments by child protection exposed and others. The analysis was so good that they must have been reading my blogs or something. In fact they could do a good job of rebutting Jensen's testimony. I heard it reported that he claimed the ministry wanted a quick decision because the case was costing too much. I nearly gagged on that one. You were there. Is this correct?
ReplyDeleteNext week I want to write about social workers and the law, because it seems they don't know much about it and I cannot see how they can do their jobs without knowing at least a smidgin about the law under which they work.
Yes Ray, in fact Jensen did say that this case must be concluded now because of several things including the cost. IT DIDN'T NEED TO COME TO THIS IS WHAT I SAY!
ReplyDeleteRay Ferris above (at September 24, 2010 2:48 PM) states:
ReplyDelete"...So you see anon, when you say that children can make false claims it is true, when coerced into it by repeated coercive interviewing. To then compare this with a voluntary statement to a neighbour by an injured child is the sort of irrelevant quibble that leads to the death of children."
How do you know that the statement made by the child is voluntary? How do you know it is true? And how many times has a child who was taken from parents, because of real or falsely alleged abuse, led to the death of that child because that child was placed in foster care?
It may seem as if Anon was "quibbling," but these are important issues. I don't know how anyone, even if they were only familiar with the Bayne case, could just assume that what child protection authorities reported the child said, was in fact what the child said.
I could be missing something here, but I really don't get why we have to assume that anyone - the child, child protection authorities, the media - is telling the truth. Maybe they are deliberately lying, maybe they don't know what the truth is, but how anyone can say that this is a clear cut case of child abuse - and that any questioning of this case is "quibbling" - is beyond me. Nothing is clear cut with these corrupt, deceptive, and manipulative child protection agencies.
Hi, just read my comment and it is full of mistakes.
ReplyDeletePlease re-post it with correction, and take off first posting
Anonymous said...
My understanding that Baynes asked for second opinion from hospital. Also I would believe that they would have asked MCFD to get contre-expertise. All medical experts are paid, does not matter what opinion they express. MCFD and judge accepted to file and consider medical opinion from Baynes experts. If MCFD did not agree with it it should be discussed before trial and not at closing argument. To suggest that doctors for Baynes are bias shows Jensen immaturity. I understand, that when Baynes hired these experts the main question was within balance of probability could the injury that baby B received be within parents explanation of injury or this is SBS. Also experts for Baynes would not put their names on the line if they were not sure of their opinion. As for Dr. Colbourne I do not think that she thought to be challenged by parents, because in Canada it is "mission impossible", so she could give any diagnostic without carefully weighting all the angles and possibilities of Baby B injury.
If the injury happened at home, and the parents can put finger only on one occasion when it could be that baby B got hurt, why not believe parents? Zabeth as mother and person of the household can give her version at what she believes happened. She has intimate knowledge of her kids and she knows. Dr. Colbourne does not know the household or the kids; she was not there; Zabeth was; Zabeth is witness; Dr. Colbourne is doctor, she is medical expert but she is not "fly on the wall" to know what happened in Baynes residence.
September 24, 2010 1:36 PM