PART ONE OF FIVE A conference has been scheduled for early August in which you may have interest. So many child protection cases worldwide are premised upon medical judgements. Children are removed for investigative purposes and remain in foster care for months and years. Lawyers and judges rely upon the opinions of medical professionals. The Paul and Zabeth Bayne case which has been featured on this blog site for the past two years is one such case. Their children have been in government custody for three years and seven months. The medical diagnostic basis for the original seizure was thrown out by the attending judge in the 2010 court case. Still the children are being held in care.
A conference is schedule for August 4-6, 2011 in Surrey (Vancouver),B.C. It is called the Evidence Based Medicine and Social Investigation Conference (EBMSI). In succeeding days I will share some facts about this conference so that you will consider attending and also that you will get the word out to others. It has an online Facebook location as well as its own web site at Evidence Based and Social Investigation Conference.
An impressive list of Canadian and International speakers will address a variety of topics such as evidence based medicine, medical differential diagnosis in cases of suspected child abuse, establishing standards and requirements for a medical expert’s defense witness, legal challenges associated with defense of those who are innocent but accused of child abuse, standards of practice and guidelines for child protection investigations, and the failure of the legal systems to protect innocent people.
Among the medical experts will be a pediatrician, ophthalmologist, neuroradiologist, biomechanic, pathologist, legal counsel, advocate, journalist, and child protection social worker.
The Keynote Speaker is Ms. Christina England, a UK Journalist. She has spent years researching vaccines and the adverse reactions some children may have to them. The medical crises that result have often been mistaken as either parental neglect or abuse. England's main area of expertise is in researching the areas surrounding false allegations of child abuse. Her work is now read internationally and has been translated into many languages. She speaks at seminars worldwide and her topic at this conference is entitled, ‘False Labels Affect Real Families and Real Lives.’ She is the co-author with Harold Buttram MD, FAACP of the book entitled, 'Shaken Baby Syndrome or Vaccine-Induced Encephalitis' - Are Parents Being Falsely Accused? The Book is available at the following websites SBS Web Info, Amazon UK, and Amazon. Here is a web page with an extensive list of her articles.
Again here is The Conference Website
Good Heavens Ron! What next? Why if you start introducing evidence, you will wreck the whole child protection system and the whole court system. Lawyers will starve and the bureaucrats will be in total disarray.
ReplyDeleteAs you can see from the Bayne case, there were 22 days of heariings and on most of those days not a scrap of factual evidence was presented. What we had was opinion, hearsay, gossip, rumour and junk psychology. There was total ignorance of child welfare and the developmental needs of children. The judge lapped it all up and even seemed to enjoy it. Along with the social work staff he seemed oblivious to the guidelines of the act, or the reasons why they are there. The director and the judge both seemed to agree that it is absolutely splendid for young children to be kept in attachment limbo for three or four years.
Take a parental capacity assessment and think of it in terms of evidence. What are the facts in the Bayne case. There was lots of good fact based evidence to show that they have a history of being clean, diligent people, with a good record of schooling, additional training and work. Financially responsible and good church members. Totally abstinent from alcohol and tobacco and with excellent health histories. There is a total lack of any evidence of negative interaction with society. Add to this their diligent pursuit of contact with their children, their willingness to sacrifice everything to pursue the court case and you build up a very positive profile. Their doctor supervised the care of their fifteen week premature son and could not praise them highly enough. Add to this the fact of numerous enthusiastic personal references and you have a picture. Now all this is based on facts for which there is a sound basis in evidence. These facts are beyond dispute, and yet when I record them, I am called 'biased.' What is biased is the labelling of my assessment without even reading it. It is a matter of "don't bother me with the facts when my mind is made up." No, no let us spend twelve grand so that a psychologist can give them intelligence tests and ink blot tests. This will be more reliable of course. Besides if we don't string it out the lawyer will get paid less.
Welcome Back Ray.
ReplyDeleteEvery time we review what has been done to the Baynes, we are astounded by unprofessional and unethical manner with which human lives are manipulated.
As we know, this family is not the only family to have been so shabbily treated.
It's difficult to applaud the commendable aspects of child protection when the shortcomings are so vile.
When enough lawyers and experts discover that money can be made suing the government (which is, unfortunately, us - we the taxpayers will pay the price, financially, as we always do), maybe the balance of power will shift. The government just seems to want to keep itself employed. And judges, government lawyers, etc., could be employed from here til who knows when dealing with the injustice that child protection has perpetrated throughout the last few decades.
ReplyDeleteJudges and lawyers like to appear to be fighting the cause of justice, but will only engage in what is considered socially acceptable forms of injustice fighting, largely because most government lawyers and judges aren't really independent thinkers, and follow the crowd. Child protection injustice hasn't reached that stage yet (of being a socially acceptable injustice to fight), but it will. Charles Randall Smith helped move us closer to that stage, as will the injustice that has been, and will continue to be, revealed via the Bayne case. Pendulums swing.
Eventually, people will see child protection for what it is: a massive fraud upon the public, responsible for destroying untold innocent lives. Then, the guilty parties will be spending (as is Charles Randall Smith) a great deal of time in the news.
Marquardt, who had two sons put into the foster care system following her conviction, said she's still looking for them. She blames (Charles Randall) Smith for ruining her life.
ReplyDelete"Personally, I'd like to see him to go jail, at least feel a little bit of what we felt: fear for your life on a daily basis," Marquardt said. "Live your life on a constant fight-or-flight and tell me how your body's going to hold up to that."
Read more: http://www.canada.com/Panel+calls+actions+disgraced+pathologist+Charles+Smith+egregious+repulsive/4503179/story.html#ixzz1OawmR292
Charles Randal Smith was a Canadian pathologist who was the head pediatric forensic pathologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, from 1982 to 2003....
ReplyDeleteIn 2008, the chief forensic pathologist for Ontario, Canada's most populous province, began a public inquiry into 220 cases of SHAKEN BABY SYNDROME to determine if anyone was wrongfully convicted in the babies' deaths.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Randal_Smith
Hello Anon 6:01,6:04,6:05
ReplyDeleteThank you for drawing attention once more to pathology mistakes of Charles Smith. 'Mistakes' is too minimalist a word to describe the careless work that helped to ruin or affect so many individual and family lives in Ontario.
Charles Smith has been references in previous posts on this blog, 520, 493, 486, 427, and 413, most notably the last one 413 because that featured an Ontario ruling that totally dis-empowered Shaken Baby Syndrome in their courts.
What an interesting looking book; I'd love to read it or hear this journalist speak.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently attending child welfare training at the Justice Institute; my 2 day class on "Abuse & Neglect" included some brief information on Shaken Baby Syndrome as presented in a video by a Dr Hladly at BC Womens/Children's.
No alternative information was presented, however, my fellow trainees and I are regularly encouraged to consider multiple hypotheses in ALL reports of abuse or neglect.
Thanks Alison. Keep us informed. This is important for us to know as well.
ReplyDeleteAlison,
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting to get your input. Can you tell us how you are regularly encouraged to consider multiple hypotheses in ALL reports of abuse or neglect? That is, are you encouraged by your instructors, or via videos, or guest speakers, etc.? And, could you tell us, what sort of other hypotheses are you encouraged to consider?
I would be very interested to hear what the reaction of your classmates is to, for example, Dr. Hlady's video. After seeing a video on Shaken Baby Syndrome, I would imagine - and I can only imagine - it must be somewhat of an emotional experience. If it is an emotional experience, do you think that colours the thinking of yourself, and your classmates, in terms of leading to a propensity to see child shaken baby syndrome as a common syndrome?
It is interesting to see the Wikipedia entry on Dr. Charles Smith. Tammy Marquandt is mentioned.
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting to again hear the name of Dr. Hlady, who is one of B.C.'s most prominent child protection authority figures.
I would like to see similar pages on this individual, as well as Dr. Colbourne, Dr. Alexander and the rest of this ilk.
Hi Anonymous June 7, 2011 10:00 PM
ReplyDeleteWe are verbally told to consider multiple hypotheses by our instructors at the Justice Institute, many of whom have been MCFD employees (for example, one is a retired CP worker who is now a mediator, another is a CP worker on educational leave, a third has worked in CP and is now an instructor in conflict resolution for the JI, is a mediator, and is a PhD student).
Also, during clinical supervision, our supervisors (team leaders) ask us what we think, and then ask us to come up with alternate explanations, even posing further explanations themselves.
Each intake presents it's own hypotheses, but one example might be a school calling about a child who routinely comes to school without a lunch. Maybe the family is poor, but too proud to seek the charity of the school by not paying for the lunch program. Maybe the child is expected to make her own lunch, but is developmentally not capable, despite her chronological age. Maybe the parent makes lunch every day, and the child is turfing the lunch in the ditch on his way to school.
The Dr. Hladly video was about physical abuse, sexual abuse, failure to thrive, Munchhausen's by proxy (not the current name...), as well as shaken baby syndrome. The info on SBS was short, but did indicate that the shakes are enough to make baby's chin hit his chest, and the back of baby's head to hit his back. Such force apparently causes irreparable damage to the brain cells (by bleeding?) within minutes. Perhaps this was an example of severe abuse, I'm not sure. Regardless, as a result of this blog, I will be unlikely to take a medical opinion at face value in the future.