Josiah is six months old and he has been living with Zabeth and Paul for the past month.His siblings, Kent, Baden and Bethany have been visiting the family home off and on for a few days and nights at a time as part of the reintegration programme agreed upon by the Baynes and the Ministry of Children and Family Development.
BUT, TODAY IS THE DAY!!! YES TODAY.
BY NOON TODAY, THURSDAY AUG 25, 2011, the eldest three children will be received into the Bayne home and care. The Bayne Family will have their chance for a restart.
BY NOON TODAY, THURSDAY AUG 25, 2011, the eldest three children will be received into the Bayne home and care. The Bayne Family will have their chance for a restart.
Zabeth and Paul were so excited last evening when we chatted. They wondered whether they would be able to sleep, and perhaps they haven't slept much but their pensive rest will have been filled with happy thoughts. The children too have been counting down the days. This is right and good.
It was close to four years ago when a quake rocked their world culminating in newborn Bethany being retained by the Ministry and the two older but still little boys being apprehended as well. It's old news now and I won't retell it this time. The Bayne path became rockier before it ever was evened out to this point.
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| Bethany cozy on the couch |
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| This past Father's Day |
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| Zabeth and Josiah |
On Saturday, family and friends in great numbers will join them in a grand party celebrating the occasion of this reunion and taking time to thank God whom the Baynes ultimately credit with this result.
A long awaited day! I am rejoicing with them!!
ReplyDeleteThis is THE day that we have all been looking SO forward to for far too long!
ReplyDeletePaul and Zabeth...we are so excited for you and your precious family! I can't even imagine just how happy you must be! Happy can't even begin to describe your thoughts and emotions.
God Bless you big time...this will be the best day of your lives...YAY, FINALLY!!!
See you Saturday! Can't wait to see the joy in your faces.
Love you guys!
MaryEllen
Hail the long-awaited day! I am so happy for the Baynes. They will still need our help and support until they are safely out of the dark shadow of the children's ministry. It seems the people who run this sinister organisation have a bad record of re-snatching children under any pretext. Particularly if they have been beaten in court.
ReplyDeleteI do not want to darken this happy day, but I do remind readers that we still need to be wary. For that reason, I hope that Ron will keep open the blog until the supervisory period is over. A couple of times a week would help.
If it were not for our dysfunctional court system this return would have taken place three years ago. As I have said before, systems are run by people and when systems fail, it is because people fail. Readers can identify the people who failed with great ease.
One of the people who definitely did not fail was the magnificent Doug Christie. The Baynes would never have got the children back without him. He in turn could not have done it without the great support team that he had. I name specially Charter Lau and K-John Cheung of the alliance for justice who raised so much money for the defence. All those magnificent doctors who came to the conference and gave so generously of their time. They gave unlimited advice on cross-examining the ministry doctors. The Baynes themselves, who worked tirelessly on the preparation of documents. Ron Unruh who kept the matter in the public eye and whose appeals made signigicant contributions to the defence fund. It was a privilege to have been part of that team and to have been able to use my own particular expertise in the service of justice. It was a special privilege to work closely with Doug Christie for two years and to be united in our passion for seeing the family reunited. We did not always agree and we had some pretty heated arguments, even though most of our communications were by email.
Finally, I want to make a quick comment about a point made by a reader two days ago. The reader said that the social workers need more than training, but they also need a moral compass. I heartily agree and that is why I maintain that training should include ethical training and the use of a code of ethics. The moral compass has to also be in evidence at the top of the organisation and we should look for it in the minister and the deputy minister. We looked for it in vain in the Bayne case and many others. Will the new chief bureaucrats do better? Only time will tell. Watch them closely.
My momma always told me, "beware of strangers."
ReplyDeleteImagine, someone coming up to a small child and taking their ice cream away and start licking it in front of the child, teasing them, relishing in the child's agony and ignoring pleas to return it. The child does not give up, but despite the help of friends, neighbors, family -- none are able to convince the stranger to return the ice cream. The only effect is that the stranger keeps the ice cream longer and waits for the crowd to go away.
After the tears and fight and hate and the crowd of supporters has left the child does the stranger eventually return the ice cream. The child by then knows the stranger can take the ice cream at any time, and thanks the stranger for returning it and resumes eating the treat.
The child is aware the stranger is now always watching. Meanwhile, the stranger goes off in search of another child with an ice cream.
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I lie awake at night wondering how to solve this bullying problem, and I remain at a loss as how to solve it.
The story represents the simplest aspects of nature, that of predator and prey. The latter runs and warns their neighbors when a predator approaches. The predator attacks the slowest and weakest. It is rare when prey is able to put up enough of a fight to escape.
The difference applying this analogy to child protection is that the predator is practically blind. In order to feed, others who wish to avoid being eaten, or those who wish to join in on the feast must point out the target to the blind predator.
I'm not about to post a solution, as I don't have one at the moment. My only wish is to know of all such cases similar to the Baynes, so when the opportunity arises to deal with the imbalance of power, I will be better equipped to fight when that time comes.
It should be clear that child protection has entrenched itself, and is not going away anytime soon.
My suggestion is to hand off the blog as opposed to closing it abruptly. This would likely require coordinated effort in finding contributors and maintaining editorial guidance so the focus and objectives remain the same.
It would be a real loss to those parents in BC, and all over the world, if this blog was closed. It is one of the very few high traffic sites that is exposing the true nature of child protection.
ReplyDeletePlease find a way to keep this blog open. Children like Ayn, and their parents, Derek and Amie, really, really need you.