Thursday, October 14, 2010

OUR OWN EXPERIENCE / Part 337 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

This post is significant enough to me that it will serve as my entry for the next couple of days. It represents a response to a comment left by an Anonymous writer days ago. 

Hello Anon, I have appreciated many of your comments in the past. Yes technology permits me to discern some identifying features of even Anons. Yours is a provocative comment tonight, by which I mean it causes me to stop and to deliberate a great deal. Your questions and ideas fascinate me. So permit me to speak to some of them. I may even use this one morning as a post. Well here it is.

Christine and I loved our children from the get go. They were beautiful. We were college graduates and old enough for this responsibility of parenthood and desirous for it. We each had extended families in which there had been love and healthy relationships endured.

I am old enough now that my own children are mature adults with families of their own. When my wife and I were younger and starting our family it was in a small Ontario town. I was a freshman pastor. We were determined to be wise and loving parents and to that end we read relevant books and we attended family life seminars. My children were the only small children in the church. As we gained respect and influence both in the church and in the community young families began to attend. Instruction was given in family care and rearing with all of the pertinent subjects such as discipline and values teaching and of course in the church context, spiritual values. The small church became known for its children's programs.

My career took me to different locations over the years yet as our children grew, my wife and I were even more deeply committed to the belief that our most important accomplishment in life would be to nurture good children into responsible adults. Personal time was invaluable. My wife and I took our children on dates, a mother with a son, a father with a daughter, making them feel special and learning to know and love one another and talk about life and important things and even silly things. We filled their lives with good friends both children and adults. We encouraged their pursuits in sports and the arts.

I did not intend to succeed in my career and fail as a dad. I recall informing a large Toronto church interested in having me come as their senior pastor that while I would give all I had to my work, on my list of priorities my family came first. My children were entering their teens at that time. We viewed family vacations as relationship building times after months of intense dedication to school and work. The family stayed tight in large part due to my wife's dedication. She deserves most of the credit. After ten years in Toronto and making plans to move west here to Cloverdale, my university enrolled children stood with us to say farewell to all of our Toronto friends. My children achieving on their own were also testaments that Christine and I had made the right choices. Since we knew that a move west was life changing and probably permanent, we travelled to Peterborough and Smiths Falls as well with our children to say goodbyes to friends we had made over the years.

Now as you have seen in other online sources, I am a grandfather. I am proud of my children and their spouses and their children. We have just recently gathered exuberantly at a Thanksgiving table and we gave thanks to God for so much, not least of all for our families. We walked together, and picked hazlenuts, and played and loved the day. Perhaps you knew this next brief point would be made by a retired pastor. My wife and I early in our life together dedicated our children to God and trusted him to help us and to do for them all that we could not do ourselves to develop them into people who honour righteous values by their lives. Obviously people make personal choices so in that sense there are no guarantees, but we believed that God could override all that was unforeseen.

I have spoken with my children and their spouses numerous times about the Bayne case and child protection in general, the need to protect children, the apparent injustices of some actions with families, the impact of apprehensions upon children, and all of the pursuant subjects. They find it intolerable to think that removal is so prevalent a tool in addressing domestic complaints. They find the invasiveness of government interference abhorrent as I do when stringent accountability to Victoria does not seem to be incorporated into this structure. They are well aware that some situations require for the sake of children, a preventative step of removal and believe that this should be rare and only an initial step to wholesome family reestablishment. They lead busy lives. They do not with regularity I think follow my blog. They ask me occasionally how things are with the Baynes. They hope as so many of you do too, that the Baynes will receive their children without conditions and forever.

At various times I have alerted others about this case. I am not a champion of anything, trumpeting to everyone in my sphere of influence and friendship what I am doing with regard to MCFD and the Baynes. Word spreads. I do however take occasion to ask people who pray, to pray. I am still one of those who believe that God hears.
You asked, “What would a family conference program look like that would be on the same scale as the recently reference bcasw.org social worker association conference?” At this moment, I do not know.

15 comments:

  1. Ron; I marvel at how you keep up such a high standard of comment day in and day out. As a bit of a writer myself, I know the work that goes into it. It is easy to write script, but it is not easy to do quality work, no matter how often one has done it in the past. A tip of the hat to start with.
    Now just a brief comment. There was an anon yesterday who gave me a bit of a chuckle. He quite rightly commented that it was atrocious to lose ones children on a false accusation.Then when the parents won an appeal, they found that their children had been irreversably adopted. Here we see a classic dilemma of the conflict of rights. The rights of the parents not to lose their children without just cause and the rights of the children to speedy resolution and continuity of care. One could argue that the CPS was irresponsible to proceed with adoption, knowing that an appeal was underway. They would probably counter that this could take years and he children needed stability now. Maybe the real issue hear is that court processes need to be speeded up on child welfare cases, so that these conflicts become rare. Maybe the court is the wrong arena?
    Anyway, what gave me a chuckle. It was the simple way in which the writer extrapolated one case to make assumptions about all adoptions. They are all caused by children being brutally deprived of their own parents. Then they try to search for their parents as adults, seeking to reconnect. Most children are placed for adoption by request of the parent, or because they are deserted or abandoned. A beautiful story arose in Victoria last year concerning two lovely young women. One had been abandoned in a ditch and found by two men. The other had been also been abandoned as a new born in the grounds of the Anglican cathedral here. I remember that one because I did the court work. They had both been placed for adoption in a home in Smithers BC. They said they had a wonderful life and a loving home. The first one came here looking for someone indeed. She was not looking for her parents, but for the two men who found her. She wanted to thank them and let them know about her happy life. They had a great reunion. Life does not provide us with one size fits all solutions. Adoption mostly provides stories with happy endings and that is why adoption workers often stay in the work for years.

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  2. Coming from you Ray, I accept your note as satisfying praise. Thanks.

    The young woman's reunion with the two gentlemen who discovered her years earlier is a gratifying story to everyone in the story and who read it. What must be the burden carried by the other young woman with her broken life when she birthed this baby and abandoned her in the church property, hopefully to be found.

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  3. Ron,

    Can you tell us where to find the comment you are referring to when you write (above).

    "Hello Anon, I have appreciated many of your comments in the past. Yes technology permits me to discern some identifying features of even Anons. Yours is a provocative comment tonight, by which I mean it causes me to stop and to deliberate a great deal. "

    Thank you.

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  4. 3:26 PM Anon.
    Yes the comment that ignited my post today is dated October 5, 2010 at 8:03 PM.

    Or cut and paste this and go directly

    http://ronunruhgps.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-glimpse-of-mcfd-offends-me-part-329.html?showComment=1286334192718#c2548024500669123378

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  5. Thank you.

    Just to let readers know, ParentalRights.org has a trailer for an upcoming film on parental rights. The name of the film is "The Child: America's Battle for the Next Generation." A trailer can be viewed here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul6Eod0j8Q4

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  6. Ron, could you please let your readers know more info regarding the ParentalRights.org upcoming film on parental rights:

    "Here is another opportunity to get involved: You can help us premiere “The Child” all across the U.S. on November 20, 2010 by hosting a public screening in your area!
    If you can arrange a public venue for the screening and commit to attending it yourself, we will supply the advertising and educational materials, as well as an advance DVD copy of “The Child,” free of charge. To request all the details, email WatchmanCinema@gmail.com"

    http://thechilddocumentary.wordpress.com/

    Thank you.

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  7. 7:23 PM, while the trailer is for an American movie, it is profoundly relevant to what we have been speaking about within our Canadian and British Columbian contexts. Film makers, journalists, come on, acquaint yourselves with the issues and the concerns and become involved. Thanks for the link.

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  8. Ray Ferris (above) states:

    "Adoption mostly provides stories with happy endings and that is why adoption workers often stay in the work for years."

    I can't agree with this, because I've read too many accounts of children who have grown into adults and been messed up because they were adopted. There is a website that gives stats regarding the highest common denominator of serial killers, and that common denominator is that the children were adopted.

    http://www.amfor.net/KillerAdopters/

    Of course there are happy endings, no question. But it is incorrect, I believe, to represent adoption as some wonderful fairy tale, happily ever after scenario. It fails to recognize all the parents who have their children taken away (wrongfully) and adopted out.

    Just put these two words into the Google search engine, and you'll see that adoption is not exactly a fairy tale come true for all parties:

    "forced adoption"

    Here is one interesting example"

    http://www.forced-adoption.com/introduction.asp

    Adoption didn't used to be popular at all. Georgia Tann made it popular. A book has been written about her, by a woman who is pretty pro-adoption (but who admits that even now adoption has elements of corruption). The book is called "The Baby Thief" and gives a good account of the life and horrible deeds of Georgia Tann (who was aided and abetted in what were essentially kidnappings by a corrupt judge).

    More info on the book, The Baby Thief, can be found here:

    http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Thief-Georgia-Corrupted-Adoption/dp/0786719443

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  9. Here are couple of reviews of the book from the Amazon website, to give readers an idea of the history of adoption:

    "...For those of you who aren't familiar to Georgia Tann, she was a baby thief who worked her evil with the full knowledge of courts, social workers, and politicians. Between 1924 and 1950 she arranged 5000 "adoptions"--many of them of children she'd kidnapped or obtained by other illegal or unethical means. Tann stole from the poor to sell to the rich. Sometimes she just gave babies away to the child-hungry denizens of Tennessee's power structure, all too happy to turn their backs on justice in order to fill their nurseries with undocumented children to call their own. As part of Boss Crump's Memphis machine Tann's political influence in Tennessee was immense and unheard of for a woman, even now.

    Raymond argues that Georgia Tann invented, popularized and commercialized adoption as we know it today with its secret closed and codified system of identity erasure and falsified birth certificates.

    Tann's influence did not end with her death in 1950. It is carried today by the approximate 6 million adopted persons and their birth and adoptive families in the US (and more in Canada) whose records remain sealed by the state..."



    "The Baby Thief is both a mystery novel and a historical chronicle of 5000 wrongful adoptions. It is more than an exposé of bygone crimes committed by the notorious Georgia Tann. Throughout the book, the author weaves the stories of those who lost one another; children who remembered being wrenched from their mothers; siblings separated and meted out like puppies; mothers and fathers who searched until their deaths for the children they had lost. In order to cover her heinous crimes, Tann issued false certificates portraying adoptive parents as having given birth to the child they adopted. The practice caught on so that in almost all states today, adoptees even as adults cannot get their original birth certificates. Tann's legacy of introducing sealed birth certificates has resulted in generational harm for countless adopted adults who will never know who they are."


    Barbara Bisantz Raymond, who is an adoptive mother herself (and obviously pro-adoption) admits, in her book, that adoption still has elements of corruption. She cites the example of the woman who arranged for one of Angelina Jolie's adoptions, the American broker Lauryn Galindo, who between 1997 and 2001 arranged for adoptions of Cambodian children to Americans, making an estimated $8 million in the process. Eventually she would serve 18 months in prison for falsifying names, histories, passports and birth certificates for these children.

    So adoption, though it may be wonderful for some, is not a bed of roses by any means.

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  10. Ray,
    When a generalization is made (emphasis on the key word is capitalized) such as:

    "MOST children are placed for adoption by request of the parent, or because they are deserted or abandoned."

    which is set against an charactization of another comment which is also referred to as a generalization;

    "...which the writer EXTRAPOLATED one case to make assumptions about all adoptions. They are all caused by children being brutally deprived of their own parents."

    That is simply a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

    Not to be disrespectful of your craft, but in my limited interaction with 9 social workers and reading CW's responses online, and seeing the three Baynes social workers testify, it is my observation that a common social worker response to diffuse the impact of an otherwise stinging comment is to provide an offsetting counter comment that serves to draw attention away from the central issue at hand.

    Stick to the subject.
    The context is one set of parents who irreversably lost custody to an unknown adoptive couple selected by the state. This is an "oops" that is on par with capitol punishment where an innocent person is convicted and killed. Would you say this is an acceptable loss compared to an "overwhelming" benefit? This is what your story of the two babies found in a ditch who grew up as find adoptees would appear to infer.

    If law is adjusted to ensure this type of mistake is reversible, this does not affect children found in a ditch by good samaritans and raised to be wonderful human beings by other state-approved strangers.

    We need workable paths to remedies for inappropriate state intervention. We need the state to understand that everyone, including them, makes mistakes. Prove that birth parents who have children who lose them to the state do have recourse.

    The T-shirt image Ron posted aptly encompasses the situation: "so sad, too bad, oh well" perfectly describes an onlooker watching parent's plight, and the extraordinary effort by the state to preserve their beaurocratic status quo.

    Ostensibly this irreversibility of law is to protect "most" of the type of children who end up in ditches abandoned by their parents are happily adopted out and grow up to be outstanding citizens. By inference, the state is saying occasional irreversible mistake is acceptable loss for the larger good for "most" people. The state, of course, defines that is good and what people fit into this category. Ray, by inference, you are agreeing with this logic and continue to promote it.

    It is just that we do not know what exactly the quantifying terms "most" and "rare" refer to when discussing valid adoptions and mistakes.

    I will refer you to this "Injustice for One is Injustice for All" quote:

    "We are bound by an inescapable garment of mutuality, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." -Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.
    - letter from the Birmingham Jail, 1962


    I have met a number of adopted children in my lifetime. I have never had the bravery to ask the loaded question I itch to ask, of what happened to their birth parents, or are they interested in meeting them.

    Raising a quesion of how well children are brought up by loving adoptive parents or foster parents, is really out of context with the central discussion of solutions for resolving monumental mistakes made by the state, and where such mistakes are augmented by undo removal powers given to individuals, lack of accountability by these people, and lack of recourse by parents even when they are proven right and innocent.

    Success stories are irrelevant because they don't make up for even one mistake. Is 10:1 or 100:1 or 1000:1 the right ratio? Ask Chris Martell about the death of his son. Ask the Baynes. Ask me, and perhaps a dozen other commenters if citing other children saved from certain unpleasant future, serves to help us in our situations.

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  11. I accept this explanation, logic, and years of experience portrayed in this day's blog.

    The seed of starting a church with only two children, and nurturing and growing over many years, serving to attract other like minded parents with children who recognize clear benefits, and they in turn spread the word, this is an indisputable formula for success.

    I see that exact same forumula being used with this blog.

    Bravo.

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  12. Anon (ParentsRights.org) October 14, 2010 7:32 PM
    I am going to write a post about this...thanks for the heads up. Look for it on Saturday.

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  13. With the Comment Option available on this blog site, I must say that most commenters are respectful of my prescription for comments. I must also say that I am weary of comments by some of you who feel compelled to speak to the writer of a previous comment rather than exclusively to the subject, to find fault with the writer rather than to focus objectively upon the nature of your disagreement with the previous comment. If I were an unsympathetic MCFDr and I read this stuff, I would be chuckling all the way to my next intervention.

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  14. I also appreciate the encouragement some of you provide to me as I continue to listen, to learn and to write.

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  15. Ron, I don't think any MCFDer could ever again chuckle their way to anything after reading this blog! They must realize that the house of cards is going to fall, sooner or later, regardless of whatever little disagreements any of those opposed to CPS corruption may have.

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