CRIMINALS AND LAWBREAKERS

Today's post has been contributed by Ray Ferris who provides occasional and always informed and helpful counsel to parents who seek him out for advice to deal with the personal crises they are encountering when dealing with the social service agency known as the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Today he deals with the Justice/Law and this is worth the time to read it.

What is the difference between a criminal and a lawbreaker? Is it just a term, or is there a real difference? Well it seems to me that lawbreaker is a generic term, which applies to anyone who breaks any law, but a criminal must specifically break the criminal law. We know what happens to criminals, because they go to prison, or get fined, or put on probation. Some countries put them to death.

What about all the other laws which are not criminal. Civil law and administrative law? What happens to breakers of these laws and who are typical lawbreakers? Well we know all about speeding tickets and parking fines. We know all about income tax penalties and divorce and custody orders. There can be unpleasant consequences if you fail to pay maintenance or fail to return a child on a court ordered access visit.

Do we find lawbreakers in family court in child protection cases?

Does it need Reform you Ask? / Part 415 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

I know that I rarely write about positive achievements of the child protection sector of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. Of course there are children that are secured from neglect and abuse. Sadly some parents are immature, reckless, substance addicted, or maladjusted and they are not properly caring for their children. MCFD steps in. Surely it is understandable if I do not mention these cases. That is after all what MCFD is mandated to do. When it is well done it doesn't need applause here. MCFD congratulates itself enough. Look at its web pages. This blog has focused upon that which is not working effectively in MCFD because that is what requires attention. That's what needs to be fixed so that is where I concentrate. Do I hit it right? I make no claim to thorough journalistic research. I am a listener. A host of similar stories inform me that MCFD is in trouble.

Much abuse goes unnoticed yet we are spending millions of dollars to keep children safe. Each year Ministry workers falsely accuse some parents and none of the money stems that transgression. Poverty is frequently and unjustifably equated with neglect, yet as one late night commenter stated yesterday, poor families do not equate to a higher incidence of child protection. The stories of how families are treated once they have come within the sweep of MCFD's radar are never happy. Some of the innocent families that have been victimized have hit the public news channels and front pages but not enough, because there are so many others.

A shift occurred in the 1960's when child abuse and neglect which were once treated as crimes began to be viewed as a treatable illness for which therapists, doctors and social workers were prepared to provide advice and to order help and resources. In conjunction with this diagnostic shift,  cases of abuse and neglect were no longer prosecuted but rather sent to family court which orders treatment. What I believe is forfeited is fairness and timeliness. So many of you readers have already told me that. Criminals are fully informed of their rights. They have an attorney to represent them even when they cannot afford one. The same is not true for accused parents. They do not get a jury of peers. They do not have the opportunity to face and to cross-examine their accusers. They do not even receive the right to insist that any evidence that is employed against them should meet the highest of standards. And we have underscored before the absence of presumption of innocence and the insistence of guilt being beyond all reasonable doubt? Or, what about not being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, because that is precisely what some clinical dispassionate MCFD operations look like. There is no protection for parents accused of maltreatment of a child. Oh, but here is the disparity. If the Baynes had been formally criminally charged and tried, they would have been afforded all sorts of protections and provisions. Oh, so that imbalance and disparity is not MCFD's responsibility? No, but MCFD certainly works it.

This Blog has been advocating the return of three children to their biological parents, Paul and Zabeth Bayne, for which a ruling is expected from Judge Crabtree within the next eight days. Stay posted.

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.