Zabeth and Paul Bayne – Part 69 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

This is Christmas Day

Merry Christmas visiting friends. Your reading visits please me greatly. For the past three months my GPS blog has concentrated upon the dilemma of one family – the Baynes. Reading regularly, you will have become familiar with their story of shock, despair, loss, faith, advocacy, encouragement and optimism.

The conclusion to their story has not yet been written. At least we don’t have access to the manuscript.

Paul and Zabeth Bayne and their children Boy K, Boy B, and Baby B have awoken this Christmas morning in different houses. Paul and Zabeth together today, are without their children for the third Christmas in succession. The children will open presents and foster parents will watch their faces. Behind the happy eyes of children at Christmas, what inarticulate, indefinable sadness is concealed? Customarily when young parents with children at home read this account, the needle of their sympathy meter is in the extreme zone. Grief and disgust are apt descriptors of the intuitive response that most of us have to the grim tale of the Baynes.

A child injured, a medical diagnosis, a suspicion, a confiscation of children, no opportunity for defence, no access to appeal, a shattering legal bill, sale of a home and grand piano, a stack of injustices, a catalogue of discourtesies, unresponsiveness to birth parents, a flouting of law, an unconscionable delay of legal hearing, an appalling demonstration of administrative incompetence and a family devastated but not yet broken.

And here is the reason why these particular parents are not broken. On this Christmas morning Paul and Zabeth rejoice in the birth of another child, not to them alone, but to the world. A birth of God’s own Son Jesus Christ. People of faith, Paul and Zabeth, before they had children of their own, committed their lives to trust exclusively in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour. They know that Christ came to make things right. Righteousness is the economy in which Jesus operates. They believe that during this year 2010, righteousness will be administered to them and to their children. Surrounding them even now is a vast number of supporters, some of whom do not necessarily share their faith commitment but who nonetheless are encouragers because it is the righteous thing to do.

Merry Christmas to each one of you and Merry Christmas to you Paul and Zabeth.

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Zabeth and Paul Bayne – Part 62 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

A THIRD CHRISTMAS WITHOUT THEM


This will be the third Christmas that Zabeth and Paul cannot celebrate Christmas with their three children in their own home. Christmas 2007, 2008, passed without resolution of the trauma that intercepted their family because of a household misfortune and an unsupported medical diagnosis of a child’s injuries. It appears that Christmas 2009 will be similarly spent by mom and dad without the clamorous sounds of three children unwrapping surprises. Three small children not waking up on Christmas morning running in pajamas to the Christmas tree in mommy’s and daddy’s family room. Three small children who have been one year older each of the past two Christmases so the memory of Christmas at home fades just a bit more.

Two of the three children are small boys, whom the Ministry of Children has been compelled in court to admit, have never been harmed by their parents. Two small boys whom doctors have told the MCFD, are healthy and normal. Still the MCFD retains these boys and does so against its own lawyer’s counsel. Of course that health assessment was made just after the boys were taken from their parents two years ago when the boys were four and two years old. Having torn a two year old from his parents and forced him to live with other people in four different homes for two more years, then test his normality. If he is maladjusted or deficient in any way, it is not the parents’ fault. 50% of his chronological natural life has been messed with and a greater percentage of his psychological and spiritual life. AND THIS DID NOT HAVE TO HAPPEN! There was every reason to let those boys stay with their parents even twelve months ago. The case of the little girl, whose injury precipitated this awful situation would of course require a more challenging settlement process – a court appearance. Somehow the 2007 medical diagnosis would have to be disproven or dropped. A court date has been set for January 12-15, 2010. Regrettably the court case involves the future of all three children and whether they will be permitted to spend Christmas 2010 at home for the first time in four years or never again to know a Christmas with mommy and daddy Bayne.

It is painful to write this when I know that Zabeth and Paul read it daily and I know how unbearable the sentiments expressed are for them. But they are realists and they are also people of faith in the God whose love gave a Son at Christmas - the son Jesus about whose life and work Paul and Zabeth desire to nurture their children. And with God, nothing is impossible.


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