On Friday I quoted Christie's Submissions and Analysis points 5-7. Today it is... points 8-10 discussing possible options for the judge's ruling.
Submissions and Analysis, continued ….
8. Options. Your honour asked Mr. Jensen to describe what options were at present open to the court. The court is no doubt acutely aware that all the time guidelines in the CFCSA have been trampled on. The intention of the act is that temporary orders on young children shall not exceed three months and one year if extended. Yet by means of extending interim custody, the director has been given de facto temporary custody for over three years. Section 4 urges that cases on young children be expedited as quickly as possible. The expectation under the act is that hearings will commence within 45 days. Yet these children were held for nearly two and a half years before any evidence was entered under due process. In addition, it is now approaching ten months since hearings were started and the conclusion may well exceed a year. Your honour’s deliberations may well take as long as the allowable time for a temporary order. In spite of this length of time, all the options remain available to court as if the hearings had been concluded within a couple of months. However, we do not think that it would be in the best interests of the children to make a temporary order or a return under supervision. As the ministry has failed to make a convincing case, it would seem that the only real option is to return the children unconditionally. There is one option available to the court, which was not mentioned by Mr. Jensen. The court still has the power to vary the interim custody order. In view of the fact that it will take eight to twelve weeks to finish your deliberations, we ask that the Baynes be granted unsupervised weekend overnight access until you deliver your judgement. You had enquired about last chance orders. The court can call an order anything it pleases, and you could call such an order the last chance order if you wish. We presented arguments as to the advantage of such an order before. It would be a great advantage to us to have time to bond with their children and adjust their lives. It would reassure the director that the children are perfectly safe with them and it would save him a lot time and expense. It would also take some of the time pressure from the court in trying to complete the written judgement. It would also be in the best interests of the children.
9. Before dealing with Mr. Jensen’s summary, we would like to draw to the attention of the court some documents, which have been filed in evidence. These are letters between a manager called John Fitzsimmons and Mr. Finn Jensen. In January 2008 Mr. Jensen advised Mr. Fitzsimmons that without criminality, the complaint would not succeed with proper defence. Although cleared by the police, the director persisted in pursuing the case aggressively. Again in July 2008, Mr. Fitzsimmons acknowledged advice from Mr. Jensen that the boys should be returned home and if things went well the sister could follow. Mr. Fitzsimmons expressed reservations, but stated a plan to resolve the dilemma posed by all the dissenting medical opinions. They would consult an independent doctor to evaluate all the reports. There was also the problem of justifying the abrupt removal of the boys from relative care. It seems that 18 months passed and they had not pursued the plan. It was only on the eve of the hearings commencing that they approached Dr. Randall Alexander. He was far from impartial. By this time the children had been in care for over two years and it was getting difficult to withdraw from the case without looking very bad. The time for decision had been in July 2008. The strong inference here is that the Director was more concerned with avoiding embarrassment than in thinking about the best interests of the children.
10. From the beginning the director was adversarial to the Baynes. In a contested case that is not unreasonable. He eventually became consistently aggressive and sometimes distinctly hostile. He was obstructive in every way. If it is the expectation of legislation that hearings be commenced within 45 days, then it follows that the required disclosure must be made within that time frame. Yet many documents were not disclosed for nine months and only after repeated requests. In the summer of 2008, the Baynes had become desperate. They had gone bankrupt paying legal fees and were forced to sell their house and some treasured possessions. They could not afford a legal defence and no lawyer would take their case without a guarantee of $100,000. They despaired of obtaining justice and the return of their children. On advice of friends they went on two social justice TV programmes to air their case. The director’s response was extreme and punitive. The Bayne boys had been living quite safely with the maternal grandparents. The director caused his staff to enter the home with armed police in the middle of a birthday party and forcibly remove the terrified children. They were moved to three different homes during the next year. The director at first justified this appalling act by claiming to be protecting the children’s privacy. He later changed this to saying that the grandparents had lost control of the home. He then changed this to saying that the parents may have had periods of unsupervised access to the boys and this put them in jeopardy. This clearly illustrates the hostility of the director towards the Baynes. He followed this up by imposing draconian rules of supervision on the parents at all access meetings and these rules still prevail. This proven hostility shows why the Baynes are terrified of him and why they think that they dare not trust any of his staff.
To
be continued …...........
While Mr. Christie alludes to the existance of various bits of evidence that supports his various statements, he does not refer to the exihibit number. I would like to suggest if possible, the letters between Fitzsimmons and Jensen would made available and linked (or written out as excerpts) within this post.
ReplyDeleteI note Finn Jensen not only lists exhibits by number so this appears in this transcript, but in some cases he reads out actual testimony and other materials verbatim in order that the judge have this material before him as he writes his ruling.
It is funny to read of Dr. Randall Alexander being hired by MCFD in a failed attempt to bolster Dr. Colbourne's shaken baby diagnosis, then to read that on Friday April 1st, the Director's lawyer was apoplectic the Baynes submitted a Parental Capacity Assesment by a retired former MCFD social worker Ray Ferris who has about 50 years of experience creating such assessments because of a concern that he was not impartial.
ReplyDeleteI note Judge Crabtree's ruling in its entirety is posted on a parent advocate site at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pa-pa.ca/Bayne.html
The text of the judgment is located at the bottom of the page inside a scrolling box.
CRABTREE'S Reasons for Judgement are also posted here:
ReplyDeletehttp://baynefamilyjustice.ca/2011/04/03/reasons-for-judgement-2-march-2011/
This is a new website which appears on a cursory examination to be intended to support the Baynes and to expose the unjust practices of the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Don't you just love the Internet?
BayneFamilyJustice.ca
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Baynes are running this website, however.
Well Anon 2:25 April 4th
ReplyDeleteYours was an interesting revelation. A peek at that new attractive website with its purpose statement clearly articulated suggested to me at first glance that perhaps someone else can take over the challenging responsibility of daily chronicling the Bayne story and I can set my efforts aside. A closer look at the purpose statement of the new site informs me that the literary approach may be more combative than mine and perhaps that is the reason the author has begun this site. Perhaps I have written with too much civility and control. Even though I have been critical of MCFD and some of its employees, I have wanted MCFD personnel to read the blog as well and that is precisely what has happened. They follow both the posts and the comments. Without question, in challenging the way MCFD has operated with the Baynes, I have definitely chosen at key times for the sake of the Baynes, to be careful with the things I said and the comments I have published. I welcome the additional coverage of the Bayne story.
Ron, allow me to commend you that without question you have been very civil. It is something that I find admiring and worthy of emulating.(Matt. 5:44)
ReplyDeletePerhaps, Ron, another opportunity with a different audience is the objective but I do appreciate that you have spent thousands of hours on this post without renumeration and very little mental relief from the subject. You have given a lot to the Baynes and to the people of the province and the world as you have worked this post. It easily could be the most far reaching thing you have done or ever will do on this earth. What I have noticed is that those involved in this MCFD fiasco are now disappearing from the scene or just wish they could. One of the results of this blogs reach is that awareness has come to a widening audience and now that audience is outraged enough to pick up the pen sword, too Bravo! so many roles to play to bring this case to a place it would never, ever have come to without Ron, Ray, Doug and all those terrific supporters.
ReplyDeleteWow. I just checked out those other websites and saw the picture of the bruises - as a mom, I would be absolutely freaked out and to have no power to change their circumstances would be horrible. The fact that Social Services did not reply to her concerns leads me to agree with the statement on the website "It appears that MCFD does not wipe out child abuse, it wipes out competition." I'm impressed with how you run this website, but several of their comments really hit home also. eg. "State officials can do arson while citizens are not allowed to light a candle." I'm am seriously hoping that when everything is done - not only are the children fully reinstated to Paul and Zabeth without any more interference from Social Services - but also that Social Services is held fully accountable for the things they have done wrong and allowed to be done wrong. It's not okay that the most basic rights of parents to raise and protect their children have been so fundamentally violated.
ReplyDeleteThere is definately room for more exposure of MCFD practices. The more, the better. We need all different kinds of perspectives and styles.
ReplyDeleteSee, the Ministry is not so bad after all. They are bending over backwards to bring Josiah to his parents, paying some kind soul to strap the little guy in securely into a car seat eight times a week, stuffing extra blankets and padding so he fits properly.
ReplyDeleteIt's all water under the bridge. Forgive and forget. Watch this Pastor's view on the subject of forgiveness : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHIUYpC-v2Q
I note that Mr. Christie uses court tactics that traditionally work very well in family relations court matters where judges can be significantly swayed by emotional impact.
ReplyDeleteA perfect example would be providing the judge with imagery of the Director ording removal of children with unecessary police presence and doing so deliberately so the event becomes as traumatic as possible for the children and parents.
Any family judge would be appalled if a parent did the same thing. Judges rightly castigate parents who call police when there is no reason to do so.
However, it is my belief that Judges in MCFD cases who wish to keep their jobs or at least preserve their future job prospects are not allowed to get upset at the antics of MCFD and their lawyers. Ergo, a lot of the argument by Christie uses falls on deaf ears.
MCFD lawyers have an immense advantage in court because in most cases they know the judges they face, they see some of them weekly and for extended periods of time. They know what style of presentation is required to get the judge to agree with them.
Lawyers on opposing sides hob-nob with each other in the scheduling offices, setting up lunch dates with each other.
Court environments present the image of blind justice, but the reality is more they are contestants in a social engineering exercise more akin to the reality series "Survivor."
A parent cannot be caught demonstrating the same poor parenting MCFD exhibits. Because it is the state, who is seen as having no vested interest in the outcome, and are further separated from the children by foster parents who rarely see the inside of a courtroom, any attempt at villification of the state by parents is viewed as sour grapes and poor strategy.
MCFD social workers are essentially officers of court and they work with the courts hand in hand. As with Police, judges place no weight on any attempts by defense that tell the judge of the deplorable tactics of the opposition.
What might work is publicity, but there has to be lots of it. Not just for one case, but many cases.
Even in this scenario, parents are still at a huge disadvantage because publicity can backfire on them. Parents names may not be allowed to be published. Social workers as public servants should have their names in the paper, but this does not happen for some reason. Hence, kamikaze publishing approaches by parents unskilled with media.
Arguably, the most important stage of child protection litigation is the Presentation Hearings. Mr. Christie tried to underscore the importance of the outcome of Josiah's Presentation Hearing last Friday by stating the last presentation hearing was held nearly four years ago. It is a running joke that in the best interests of the children matters are supposed to be concluded in 45 or even 90 days.
The other major shortcoming that would allow publicity to work effectively is that actual trial transcripts and interim rulings are never published, so we the public cannot see what is going on. There is no printed record that would serve to expose inconsistent and nefarious state tactics.
Anon 11:28 AM
ReplyDeleteThanks for the interaction.
As you wrote I picked up on your comments about Christie's approach and your point that appealing to emotion by citing the hardships experienced by parents due to MCFD mismanagement or low level performance will not customarily sway a judge who want to keep their jobs. I wanted to remind you that in this Bayne case, Judge Crabtree is in no jeopardy of job loss since he now sits as Chief Justice of BC, and it was my impression born out by several evidentiary moments in the 2010 court case, that Crabtree was commendably impartial, objective and fair. While I was disappointed with his decision in the Bayne case I am still of the mind that he was reasonable. As to opposing lawyers fraternizing over a cold one or a coffee I am sure that it is done as in other lines of work, but in this case, without a doubt, Jensen and Christie have almost nothing in common and do not want to spend time together outside of court. I wish you have evidence to back up what you say about the linkage between courts and social workers so it wouldn't seem to me so much like an hypothesis coming from our common anger at injustice. I too believe publicity aids the parent. Eventually this will accomplish more purposes even as it already has.