IF IT WASN'T SBS, THEN WHAT? DON'T KNOW? PRECISELY! LET THE CHILDREN GO! / 486

Maybe this will keep you going until Monday.

The questionable convictions in Ontario in the 1980's and 90's, some of which were were based upon Shaken Baby Syndrome, and some of which were because of testimony by now-disgraced pathologist Charles Smith, render Judge Crabtree's conclusion to the Bayne questionable if not impugnable.

If the Baynes' children should not be retained in the province of British Columbia foster care system because the judge dismissed SBS as a cause for one child's injuries, then there is no reason whatsoever for them to be in care. None whatsoever.

In the middle of a circle of cows

Don't tell me there is a risk. If the law cannot say that the risk is a definite 80%, or 50% or 30% then don't speak about a probability of risk. Then for Judge Crabtree to venture a 10% risk probability is fanciful nonsense, deplorable.

Of course the injuries were and are unexplained. We are back to square one. There is nothing for which the Baynes can be charged or even blamed, except for leaving an infant on a blanket on a floor where two small boys are playing and running. Keep the nature of that in mind for a moment. The most that can be said of the parents is that the girl received injury while in their care. But that cannot possibly warrant the prolonged retention of a couple's four children by a child protection agency. Three and one half years is a terrible sentence on its own. Then to tack on six more months and call it an opportunity for the parents is offensive. Children receive injuries every day while in the care of their parents and those injuries are not always easily explained. That is, parents have no excuse to offer for letting their children play alone in the back yard, or letting them climb trees, or ride mountain bikes over ramps, other than that's what people do! That's what parents do. That's life in normal families today. Our child protection sensibilities are so over the top that farm families with children who do chores would call it laughable. Where have farm family infants slept during harvest season? Have children not played on a grain farm with operating equipment and grain elevators? And more than one mother told me that she too had been in the habit of putting the baby on the floor and thinking nothing of it. I present that testimony in spite of the sanctimonious others who castigate Zabeth for having done that. I recall my friend telling me that her young sister, a Down Syndrome child went missing on the family dairy farm, wandered off. As they looked everywhere, they noticed their cows in a nearby field, assembled in a circle in a most unusual manner. At the scene they found the little girl in the middle of that circle, very safe, protected instinctively by cattle looking after the smaller creature. If our troop with its urbanized sensibilities heard about this they would likely have removed the child from the family.

Linda Nguyen, wrote a piece called Review sought for Ont. shaken baby deaths in which she mentioned that “A committee of medical and legal experts was tasked by the provincial government in December 2008 to revisit 48 convictions related to testimony and evidence in which "shaken baby syndrome" played a role. All the cases occurred between 1986 and 2006.” And then she wrote, “The theory of "shaken baby syndrome" has been in dispute in the medical community in recent years. In the past, many experts held the belief that a baby found with a specific pattern of internal head injuries must have been shaken to death, a theory that may no longer be the only explanation for the injury.”

That disputation was presented convincingly enough in court that Judge Crabtree said no to SBS. Well then, if he is still going to assess probability of risk, what is that risk, of battery, of striking with an object, of throwing, what? And why? What evidence? Suspicion is too flimsy for real justice. Let's get a grip on common sense in the midst of doing justice in this province.There was no assignable risk. 

(On Monday: Judge Crabtree's verbatim Conclusion)