FLASHBACK - ZABETH & PAUL BAYNE

This is a flashback to well over a decade ago when I officiated the wedding ceremony for Zabeth and Paul. Today they have four vibrant, growing, intelligent and lovely children. They could never have imagined as they knelt before me (their choice), that within a few years they would experience yet endure the gravest assault upon their family, their hearts and their reputations. In 2007, accused (but unproven) of hurting their youngest of three children then, all three children were removed from them. For four years they maintained their innocence and fought passionately through hearings and court cases. Then as a crowning insult, their newborn fourth child was removed shortly after birth in 2011. With the help of the late Doug Christie (barrister extraordinaire) and Ray Ferris (former MCFD supervisor turned critic) and through their own faith and determination and the moral support of hundreds of advocates, they received their children back in 2011, and in the five years since then, their thriving family provides the continuing evidence of a wrong diagnosis, incorrect assumptions of guilt, the risk of unfettered power among blasé bureaucrats, social workers and litigators; as well as the evidence of the diligent, honest, upright and loving parents and people that Paul and Zabeth are. They are a continuing inspiration to many troubled people. I will never forget them, Zabeth in particular with whom I maintained an almost daily contact through the years of their ordeal. Thank you God, for setting them free.

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.

Zabeth and Paul Bayne – Part 61 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

How Does Innocence Act?

Innocence is a term used to indicate a general lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, sin, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence refers to the lack of legal guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime.

The Innocence of people is legally assumed. Before the law a person is to be considered innocent until he or she is proven to be guilty. The law prefers to take the risk of freeing a guilty party over convicting innocents. What frequently can happen within the child protection arena is the assumption of guilt by reason of suspicion. When an explanation for a child’s physical, emotional, and psychological condition does not satisfy the agents of a child protection organization, the default position may be an assumed guilt of someone in whose care or company the child has been. Even though insufficient evidence exists upon which the law can base charges of abuse, the suspected abuser may be free yet nevertheless be treated as someone convicted. If that person is a parent, the child protection organization may still exercise custodial control over that child so that punishment by reason of separation of child and parent is still exacted. If the Government ACT that regulates the operations of the Child Protection Organization is not tight enough, the organization may exploit power and abuse innocence under either a genuine or malicious child protection motivation.

How does innocence act? How would you expect innocent parents to behave when their children are taken from them by people with government approved authority?

Even when promised that the children will most likely be returned sooner if the parents will admit to alleged improper treatment of the child or children, how should you expect innocent parents to respond? Powerless and frantic parents may opt to acknowledge culpability and do so against their own consciences.

If innocent parents refuse to admit to something of which they are not guilty, and instead react in fear and desperation and helplessness by written and telephone appeals to every government official and news media source and help agency, one can either see this as the predictable and expected response of innocence or see this as indicative of inherently difficult, trouble making and guilty people. The former assessment is made by socials workers for whom the old adage, “there but for the grace of God go I,” is still a relevant filter for facts. The latter assessment when made by a trained social worker demonstrates how jaded child protection workers can become because of the cruelty they frequently see inflicted on children by caregivers who do not deserve to have children in their homes. Questioning innocence carries with it the obligation to thoroughly investigate and know the characters and persons whose lives and families are being interrupted.


The art image is a painting entitled L’Innocence by staunch traditionalist and French academic painter, William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Photo is of Zabeth (mommy) and Bethany.

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On the Afternoon_Play on BBC is a program called 'Guilty_Until_Proved_Innocent' writtten by Deborah Davis. It is a gripping and timely presentation. Scenario: When Dina and Jake rush their baby daughter to hospital, little do they realize that it is the beginning of a Kafkaesque nightmare from which it seems there is no escape.