Today, Finn Jensen, MCFD counsel delivers the closing words of his Summation so a Ministry can keep 3 children from their parents.
In Chile hundreds of metres below ground, thirty-three gold and copper miners have been surviving since August 5th, when their exit tunnel collapsed. They were trapped without hope until August 22nd, when a probe made contact with their airspace. They were able to send back a message stating that they were alive. The plan for rescue was formulated above ground and the world was shocked to know that it could be close to Christmas before a rescue tunnel was drilled and adequate for their safe extraction. We could hardly imagine the men huddling in a dank cavern for months.Now we have heard that they are just days away from actual rescue, perhaps ten or so. The Chilean President Sebastian Pinera announced it could be by October 15th.
For all these weeks, capsules of communication and food and keepsakes are exchanged from ground surface to underground shelter.
The elation and joy and gratitude upon reaching the surface is unimaginable now and it will be a remarkable personal experience for each of these men.
I wonder if even one of the 33 miners will ever return to the mine shafts to work.
The analogous nature of a story like this automatically applies to the Baynes in my mind. I can hardly help myself. If and when these children are returned to Paul and Zabeth what words will be sufficient to capture their happiness? Five members of one family have been trapped in a collapsed family life with only brief capsules of exchanged affection and communication with one another. They will do everything in their power never to return to the darkness of these past three years. How soon can life for them seem normal again. Will their dreams, both adults' and children's contain recurring reminders of the loneliness and fear and longing? Will challenges seem overwhelming within their restored family life? Will they resume normalcy with ease? Will Paul and Zabeth be able to encourage other families still experiencing the dark nights and distance? Will the darkness reach out to grab them again?
So much remains to be written about their story.
Those who support the child protection industry will claim that such brutal separations - "removals" or "apprehensions," or whatever twisted, lying term they use - are not traumatic, or not always traumatic. This is rubbish. Anyone with an ounce of common sense realizes that anytime you take a child away from his or her parents - and at the same time, of course, you take the parents away from the child - you are inflicting severe emotional harm.
ReplyDeleteThis family, like the miners, will never really recover from such brutality. The effects will be lifelong. But we must still rejoice in their rescue, and know that life goes on, and there will be much happiness to help dissipate all the trauma.
I look forward to the children being returned where they belong - in their own home, with their parents, the two people who love them most in the world. I can't see how it can be otherwise. Even this corrupt government wouldn't dare to do otherwise.
I doubt the Chile mining accident used as an analogy works with the Baynes case. Imagine if the government responded "we can't comment on this matter."
ReplyDeleteThe "airhole" in the Baynes case would be the supervised visits. MCFD is trying to close off that airhole permanently in order to hide their shortcomings.
In Chile, the government is actively helping to free the miners. They will hold the mining company accountable for this accident, as well families of miners able to sue the company for damages. As it should be.
In the Baynes case, the government and many other third parties are the ones filling in the dirt as their children and public helplessly watch. The parents, virtually alone, struggle to dig themselves out of the hole MCFD put them in.
The exhausted parents, if they win and survive this ordeal, still have to take care of their children and live with this trauma.
Think of how many other families in need that the resources the government has expended on fighting the Baynes could have helped.
If it takes $1,000 worth of courses that satisfies MCFD that their "concerns" are addressed (as in the case of another mom who had her CCO reversed and her children subsequently returned), that million or so dollars the government has spent fighting the Baynes due to legal fees, foster care, supervision and whatnot, that amount would help 1,000 other families.