A BRIEF REPRISE/ Part 379 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

A BRIEF REPRISE

Yes of course issues of abuse and neglect affect children from every social and economic societal strata. The majority of families involved with MCFD however, are socially marginalized and economically disadvantaged. In 2005, 2006, and 2007 Paul and Zabeth Bayne did not fit that social classification. They were employed and had purchased a new home with property. They were beginning to fulfill a shared dream of family in a family home where children grow up well and happy and motivated to aspire to develop and to achieve. Paul experienced job layoff that many others do and then an on the job injury but they were okay and they would have been fine. They had a community of friends and family who responded kindly with help.

Their third child's injury sustained in the home in 2007 and the indicators which obligated the investigative pediatrician to base her diagnosis on her conviction and training turned their idyllic world on its ear. You who are familiar with this case hardly require a reminder of the precipitant diagnosis. In this physician's mind, the child's observed medical conditions corresponded unambiguously with non accidental causation. The injury(ies) had to be inflicted by someone. That was the assumption, not the evidence. That led to the understandable involvement of the RCMP and then MCFD. When the investigative dust settled, RCMP withdrew and MCFD based its opposition to the fitness of the Baynes to parent that injured child, on that first doctor's diagnosis. MCFD action can only be countered legally and the costs of that now marginalized the Baynes in this sense, that they forfeited their home and Zabeth's grand piano to cover legal costs. So they too could have been called economically disadvantaged I suppose. They needed to be available during day hours to attend meetings, court dates, and visitation dates with their children. Did they seek social assistance? Listen, they took night custodial jobs and have lived in rental facilities. But you need to know that they have an attractive, warm, clean, roomy house with a yard and ample space to which their children can return. They have food and security and friends and family. They have everything that is required materially and socially and emotionally and morally to manage this family.

And they didn't hurt their youngest child.

They provided the only explanation they could, and it was reasonable in the opinions of many experts who were asked to review the same medical evidence that the original pediatrician discovered. A playful running sibling fell on the baby. That much the Baynes knew. Neither child at the time appeared to be more than temporarily affected so the event was dismissed. When their infant newborn began to be distressed over a period of days and no medical professional in any of several medical facilities was able to accurately assess what was going on, they were desperate. They did mention the children's collision during one medical visit but that data was noted and ignored. Only when the serious findings were disclosed in Children's Hospital did they realize the impact of that earlier domestic accident. What else were they to deduce? Faced with an accusation that one of them had willfully harmed the child, that childish tumble now offered the only explanation. An explanation which was not accepted by the medical professionals at Children's Hospital or by the caseworkers assigned by the Fraser Valley MCFD. So it has come to this. We wait now for a judge to come to a judicial opinion. We may have eight or nine weeks to wait.

THE URGENCY OF THE RULING / Part 371 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

 Judge Thomas Crabtree is an active gentleman with more than enough responsibility. He has cases pending upon which he must adjudicate and he has his new duties as Chief Justice of British Columbia. Somewhere during his work days over these next several weeks he is allocating hours to read through the 237 pages of transcript generated over the twenty-two days in court when the case between the Director of Family and Child Services and Zabeth and Paul Bayne was heard. He has himself expressed his cognizance of the urgency of this outcome for all who are involved and that means he will deliver his ruling as soon as he can. He did provide an estimated window of eight to twelve weeks. That puts us into 2011.

Paul and Zabeth outside Chilliwack Courthouse

The Director's application for a Continuing Care Order for all three of the Bayne children is the causative legal action that finally brought this family to the Provincial Court. The application should be denied. The Baynes' three children were born October 18, 2004; June 12, 2005; and August 3, 2007 respectively and they have not lived with their parents for over three years because the Director removed them and kept them. This application should be denied because the quality of its supportive evidence is deficient. That deficiency is articulated for the Judge in the Baynes' Final Submission in refutation of the Finn Jensen closing summary. It should serve to underscore the impressions his Honour himself deduced as he listened in court hour after hour. Impressions that the Baynes are not baby abusers, that circumstantially incriminating information should no longer be used to punish these parents in the name of protecting the children, that the disparity between Ministry and Bayne resources to argue this case has not resulted in a conclusive victory for MCFD.

And yes, this case is crucial. The urgency of the ruling and the outcome to which Judge Crabtree alluded, for all who are involved, is not something we have thought much about. Its importance for Paul and Zabeth is patently obvious. Each day that they wake they face yet again the reality of their loss and the Director and his cast want to see this continue as a life sentence. The urgency of the outcome for the Ministry is not customarily considered but it should be. The Director can ill afford to lose another judgement because the publicity depreciates his reputation and this case has already garnered national and local televised news coverage and it will again. Reputation is invaluable and notoriety is to be shunned. What mystifies me is the modulation from sincere conscientious concern for the safety of children to the aggressive anti-Bayne/parent commitment that characterizes the evidence put forward during this hearing. Further, Minister of Children Mary Polak doesn't want to face media questions about the case handling of one of her regional offices. It is not an enviable aspect of her job. She was already stick handling her way at a news conference yesterday with regard to the young girl left with her dead mother's body at a Cultus Lake home. Her Ministry has not been forthcoming with information about that case, at least not nearly soon enough to satisfy Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the Children's and Youth Advocate who already went public with her disapproval and this week subpoena'd the information. Thanks to a reader today for supplying this Times Colonist link to Turpel-Lafond's statements.

So very much depends upon a Judge's discernment right now. 

An earlier blog post, Part 238 July 3, 2010 entitled 'The Importance of the Bayne Ruling' also spoke to the significance of the outcome but anticipated it much sooner than it will come. The delays of the court case have been lengthy. 

THE LAST STAND / Part 331 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Call this installment One. The last day in Court was yesterday. Finally! I do not envy the Judge. Although perhaps he thinks he has an easy task on this one. 

Paul and Zabeth invited me so I was present at the home assessment session in Baynes' home on Tuesday afternoon when two social workers visited. They appeared to be satisfied with the place then and on Wednesday in court the assessment report was discussed. The children have their first six hour visit in the home on Saturday, supervised yet nonetheless, a wonderful opportunity to be a family in a home environment where the two boys will recognize so many familiar items.

I was also in attendance in court on Wednesday at the final episode of Finn Jensen's Summation for the Ministry application. We met in a small court room with nine chairs.

Jensen began at 9:30 and he concluded by 12:30 pm. He concluded with a statement to his honour Judge Crabtree, that the Director, meaning Bruce McNeill was asking for the Judge to rule that the children were still in need of protection and therefore to award a Continuing Care (Custody) Order for all three children.

First Afghan War, January 1842, 4500 British and Indian troops against 30,000 Afghans and Ghilzai tribesmen

He had built up to this of course over three days of Summary presentation and today, the last day, he put the finishing touches on a compendium of what he said was a large body of medical evidence that supports an acceleration/deceleration (Shaken Baby) non accidental cause for the sequence of serious injuries sustained by Baby B in autumn 2007. This is in contrast to what he terms a small body of response material from the Baynes.

This is the kind of case in which the injuries to the child are unexplained. He said that the Baynes' explanation for the injuries was unsatisfactory. He told the Judge that it was the Director's obligation in this kind of case to effectively demonstrate a balance of probabilities. He was fully confident that this had been convincingly conveyed, that is that the balance of probabilities fell to the Director's position that the risk has not been eliminated and that Zabeth's testimony should not be accepted. He asserted that the Baynes have not worked with the Director (eg. The social workers) or participated as parents in the risk assessment. He questioned their ability to sustain themselves financially and suggested that at the time of Baby B's injuries the parents had been stressed by joblessness and were isolating themselves and not accepting help and even suggested they are in a similar position today and that the potential risk remains.

I digress from the court report for the moment to say that some of what Jensen said here is not merely disputable, it is also inaccurate or incomplete. We are speaking about a three year period. During the past several weeks there have been overtures by the Ministry to talk with the Baynes (a little - too late) and the Baynes have declined during these final days before a case conclusion. In declining they knew they were opening themselves to this precise criticism of not working with the Ministry but they listened to their advisors. After three years MCFD is at the end of this long delayed hearing designed permanently to take from the Baynes, THEIR CHILDREN, and now mcfd wants to talk. During the first year and one half there were meetings and while the meeting invitations suggested an agreeable, even promising agenda, the meetings were invariably designed to elicit a confession from them. This persisted until the Baynes' trust in MCFD eroded and hope of cooperation by the Ministry evaporated too. Paul and Zabeth have been employed at menial labour to be sure, but adequately providing for their needs and confident to be able to support their family. They live in a comfortable family rental home with adequate facilities for all their children and large yard outside for the children to play. Please recognize once more that they work evenings doing custodial work, because visitation with children is scheduled for day hours and they have not missed one of those opportunities but even asked for more. If there was normalcy to their home lives, other job opportunities with better income would be considered. That is a reasonable expectation.  Further, there are many families who make a go of it on less than a professional's standard of living and have learned how to shop and to live with less. And to infer that joblessness for a term was sufficient to trigger violence against a baby is pure invention. That is a guess-assessment of a man and a woman who are unknown to the guess-assessor who certainly did not know them at all in 2007. They are certainly not in a similar position today. If job stress were sufficient reason to suspect risk, then no one in that court room would be risk-free. Nor were the Baynes isolating themselves back in 2007. That is a lawyer's statement based upon a social worker's report of a collateral witness' opinion. But the couple's own testimony counts as certainly as does such an hypothesis and they said they were disassociating merely from one couple for reasons that were stated in court as interpersonal issues and having nothing whatsoever to do with the nurture and well-being of the Bayne children, or desiring to withdraw from society. It makes a person think that everyone associated with MCFD would be better judges of character if they were employed as border guards. "And what was the purpose of your trip?"

I'll tell you more tomorrow.

Fact and Evidence - Opinion and Probability / Part 327/ For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

The police need to operate from a fact base, evidence base.

Fact: Baby B was born healthy although somewhat premature August 2007 and she progressed well in following weeks.
Evidence: Baby B's development was charted and confirmed by weekly visits to the family doctor.

Fact: An event, a trauma, an impact, a significant physical experience occurred that dramatically affected Baby's B's well-being.
Evidence: In October 2007 Baby B was taken by parents to local hospitals, Hope, Chilliwack and Abbotsford to discover why she began to exhibit listlessness, loss of appetite and feeding, chronic vomiting and resultant weight loss.

Fact: Over several days the area hospitals failed to adequately identify Baby B's issues but sent her home without remedy.
Evidence: The symptoms continued for several days, and hospital and doctors records disclose the days that several examinations took place until the final referral to Children's Hospital, Vancouver.

Fact: Extensive examinations at Children's Hospital Vancouver in October 2007 revealed Baby B had serious injuries, skull fracture, retinal hemorrhaging and brain hemorrhage and fractured femur.
Evidence: Hospital and Doctors' records contain the findings with dates and times.

Fact: Injuries required explanation and the Baynes' 2007 story of an accidental fall of a toddler sibling on the infant did not convince medical professionals.
Evidence: A couple of the doctors reports and the RCMP and MCFD 2007 reports contain the Baynes' story of a fall of one child on the infant.

Fact: The injuries were of a nature which the attending medical professionals customarily associate with abuse by care providers.
Evidence: The Child Protection department of the hospital notified RCMP and MCFD.

Fact: Paul and Zabeth in 2007 were horrified at the implication that they had harmed their infant and insisted that they were innocent of abuse to their child and their story has never changed.
Evidence: Their attested innocence has been recorded in every record that pertains to this case from 2007 to the present time 2010.

Fact: In spite of arresting and interrogating the Baynes, the RCMP dismissed the case as one for which there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a charge of abuse or assault.
Evidence: The Baynes were released in within hours in 2007, their fingerprints and photos were discarded and the case as an aggravated assault has never been revisited.

The expectation is that the Ministry of Children will also operate from a fact base, evidence base. MCFD is people. Did they? Have they? OR, is there a proclivity for opinion and probability when it suits them, that is, when the fact and evidence is absent.

The Bayne Story / Part 304 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

Soon compelling documentaries will publicly review the B.C. government's victimization of a five-member family. Victoria is not going to like this. News networks are ready and waiting.

Paul and Zabeth Bayne had it all. They were young. They had love for one another, faith in God, a home and property for children to play on. They had one son whose birth was not easy for Zabeth, and then another son born with the challenges of serious prematurity, born at 25 weeks. Zabeth and Paul had strength, resiliency and determination. They took this child for medical checks several times each week and various services to assist his development were brought into the family home, services to assist with feeding and muscle toning and general health developmental. Their family doctor was pleased with the children's health and the parents' care of their children. And then a daughter was born and their joy was immeasurable. She too had a premature birth.

The Ministry of Children became involved with the Baynes during the first year of their second child's life, prior to the arrival of the baby girl. At his sixth month he was suddenly crying inconsolably and as he squirmed they noticed his arm hung limply. Tests at hospital revealed a fracture. Standard protective procedure you might say. Both parents were questioned. Paul was asked to leave his house for two weeks. A study identified prematurity of bones in the child and Paul was permitted to resume his role at home. But a Bayne file had begun in the MCFD database.

Paul and Zabeth have looked forward to a large and thriving family and they love their children, so the family of five was just beginning their lives together when that determinative day occurred. The new baby was doing well, fed well, slept well – all was well. Of course she, like her brother would contend with the conditions that pertain to premature birth. Then a household accident. Can be perceived as preposterous but then how many similar mishaps have occurred in our homes. This one had serious consequences. One child active and happy fell on the baby resting on a blanket on a carpeted floor where daddy could see her and to whom mommy would soon return from the other room. Zabeth says she saw the fall. You know much of the rest of this story. Within hours their girl's feeding habits changed and other serious signs prompted Paul and Zabeth to take her to local hospitals and clinics without anyone accurately identifying her issues over several days. Then at last the baby was taken to BC Children's Hospital where the brain bleed and other symptoms were noted and the shaken baby syndrome assessment was made.

Even the RCMP needed to investigate a possible case of abuse but closed that down early. The MCFD was loath to discard the SBS and Abuse storyline, even when other medical experts disputed the SBS diagnosis. What you will not know is the archived attitudes, tactics, setups and actions by the local MCFD to sustain the assumption of risk to the children at the hands of their parents or to trip up the parents. I won't bother covering it. Journalists are poised and will be all over this. I am guessing that when these become public, Victoria will not be pleased.