Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 2 of 6 - Closed Minds

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 2 of 6 - Closed Minds

This is my synopsized prose version of Justice Walker's 140-page judgement presented in several segments that reveal the substance of Walker's overview of evidence that demanded his verdict against the Ministry of Children's Child Protection. No stated opinion or fact appears here that does not also appear in the Justice Walker's ruling (legal document). It is public information.

Mr. Strickland believed J.P. was acting maliciously toward B.G. Mr. Strickland shared these biases with his staff because he believed there was no merit to J.P.'s report that B.G. had sexually abused P.G., and consequently Strickland did not conduct an assessment of J.P.'s report, disregarding the standard of care and applicable legislation. Mr. Strickland's conduct adversely affected the case social workers and furthermore, as a result, the Director (she) did not assess the report of possible sexual abuse as required by her governing statute and the standard of care, nor did she investigate.

In mid December 2009, early in the VPD investigation of sexual abuse of P.G., her mother J.P. disclosed to both the Director and Mr. Strickland that her three children were all divulging that their father had sexually abused them and she was asking the Director and Strickland for help. The children spoke of sexual touching, digital touching of genitalia and the anus, oral copulation and partial penile penetration by their father. B.G. denied all of the allegations and the Director did not investigate these reports in the manner that the standard of care commands.

 Without suitable investigation of the children's disclosures, Mr. Strickland and other social workers marginalized this supportive evidence of the sexual abuse allegations, believing them to be fabricated, and that the children had been coached, and that J.P.'s relentless efforts to prove these abuses were indications of her mental instability. Subsequently, the Director did not carry out an assessment and investigation of the children's claims, and further concluded that J.P. was unable to parent the children. 

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 1 of 6 - Strickland and Tymkow

JUSTICE WALKER'S OVERVIEW OF THE CASE, LEADING TO HIS SCATHING 2015 RULING AGAINST THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN

My synopsized version of Justice Walker's 140-page judgement presents the substance of his overview of evidence that necessitated his ruling against the Ministry of Children's Child Protection. I present it in a prose style, in several segments. No stated opinion or fact appears here that was not in Justice Walker's ruling all of which has been made public.

Justice Paul Walker heard and ruled upon two cases between JP and BG. The plaintiffs in both cases were JP and her four children.  JP is the mother whose four children were sexually abused by BG, their father, her estranged husband. In the first case JP sought custody of her children as well as confirmation that BG was an abuser who should no longer have access to the children, and further that the Ministry was dead wrong in its assessment of both mother and father and had made a outrageous error in judging JP to be mentally unstable and placed children in BG's care. 

This second court case, J.P.'s lawsuit against the Ministry, began April 8, 2013 and ended July 3, 2015 with the published ruling by Judge Paul Walker on July 14, 2015.

Walker's SCATHING INDICTMENT - Part 1 of 6 - Strickland and Tymkow

The Director of Child Protection (CP) acted egregiously to the children's reports that their father sexually abused them.  The Director and her agents failed to assess and to investigate the children's claims and then imprudently apprehended the children and also granted the father unsupervised access to the children. The Director held an inflexible but unproven belief that JP had mental health issues and was unfit to parent and that BG was the most capable parent.  

B.G. was arrested and removed from the family home in October 2009 for assaulting both JP and her eldest daughter K.G. (then 5 years old), and on a charge of the uttering death threats against J.P. She immediately sought divorce and sole guardianship and custody. A restraining order was issued that prohibited B.G. from having direct or indirect contact with any of the plaintiffs. Investigative social worker Jeff Tymkow reported to the Director that K.G. had not been assaulted by B.G. Further, B.G. told Tymkow that P.J. suffered from mental health problems that Tymkow determined were not then a protection concern to the children.

Mr. William Strickland was investigative team leader responsible for assessing potential harm to children. He and Mr. Tymkow signed a letter at B.G.'s request that purported to clear B.G. of physical abuse of K.G. B.G. then used this against J.P. in court. J.P. confronted Mr. Strickland, accusing him of acting inappropriately and she also voiced her concern that B.G. may have sexually assaulted the youngest child, who was one year old at that time. Strickland apologized and assured her that he would send a written retraction and that the Director of MCFD would conduct an investigation into J.P.'s concerns about potential abuse of her children.  However, Strickland discouraged Vancouver Police Department (VPD) from taking J.P.'s claims seriously, suggesting to police that she was unstable and selfishly motivated.  Mr. Strickland's conduct adversely affected the police investigation.

THE MINISTRY OF CHILDREN GOT BLASTED BY JUSTICE WALKER

A Woman known to us only as J.P. is the biological mother of four children whom we know as BT.G., K.G., BN.G., and P.G. has won a landmark lawsuit against the defendants, British Columbia (Ministry of Children and Family). The defendants are named as The Director of Child, Family and Community Services and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of the Province of British Columbia. Throughout the two-year long court case, the unacceptable treatment of J.P and the substandard supervision of these children's welfare were unconcealed. A condemning judgement was anticipated. This was an evidence-based judgement by Justice Paul Walker who discerningly assessed that grounding their case management on evidence is precisely what the Ministry personnel failed to do. 

Justice Paul Walker's Full Script Ruling from July 14, 2015, is found at this link.

J.P told the Ministry that her husband B.G. was molesting her children. Workers did not believe her. Exclusive of due diligence her husband was deemed more credible than she. The children remained unprotected to him and defenseless. 

Furthermore, Justice Walker heard the court case two years ago in which J.P was the plaintiff and B.G. was the defendant, and then he ruled against B.G. and in favour of the children's mother.  

ASSISTED SUICIDE AND AN ARTIST'S BRUSH STROKES

Words applied to a topic are like brush strokes applied to a canvas.  A commendable interpretation of a subject requires understanding of the theme and understanding of what words do.  Set ten artists at their easels to paint an identical subject and the result will be ten distinct renditions. Ten pairs of artists' eyes uniquely observe details and depth of field and darks and lights and call for personalized selections of brushes, colours and strokes. Ten opinions about Doctor Assisted Suicide assess the February 6, 2015 Supreme Court of Canada judgement individually. The words that are chosen to speak about this are critical to the social outcome. 

Parliament must within the next twelve months develop a legislative response. None of the three major political parties has expressed a position on this highly sensitive matter. Thousands of citizens, journalists, preachers will express a position.

An artist in good health and with vitality, asked to paint an interpretation of life and death, may spend a month developing two pleasant panels, one depicting a newborn infant in the arm of an ecstatic mother clad in pink and another panel featuring a flag at half-mast against a bright blue sky. A different painter, faced with the same art challenge but who is living with incapacitating pain and who can no longer focus for sixty seconds on the art that once filled his mind and life, might take a house painter's brush and slap one half of a canvas with black to represent life, and the other half with radiant yellow to represent death.  

 

It will be crucial for legislators, citizens, journalists, and preachers to understand why the second artist painted as he did. It is imperative that words are chosen that are precise and that appropriately respect, eternal values, Canadian charter rights, personal autonomy, and sanctity of life.  The painting rivals the complexity of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The Actual Supreme Court Judgement

CHRISTIE'S FINAL SUBMISSION installment 1of10 Introduction /489

I begin today a series of posts which are quotations from Doug Christie's final SUBMISSION IN RESPONSE to MCFD Counsel Finn Jensen who concluded his three days of summation in October 2010. Judge Thomas Crabtree had to decide whether or not to grant the MCFD a CCO, Continuing Care Order for three children born to Paul and Zabeth Bayne. Christie's submission was delivered on the Baynes' behalf on November 4, 2010. Judge Crabtree released his final ruling on March 2, 2011. He ordered not a CCO but TCO (Temporary) for six months. In this submission Christie countered MCFD allegations and evidence.

In the introduction, Mr. Christie's remarks were these. "This has been a long and complicated case....."

A SOCIAL WORKER'S CHALLENGE / Part 375 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Identifying abuse and assessing risk is a complex process. Seldom can social workers establish child abuse based upon a single call-in or information item. Serious injuries to a child do arouse suspicion yet the injuries may be the result of accident or illness. Further even when injuries are non accidental, the offender may not be clearly identifiable. Typically social workers must assemble a picture of the family as well as an account of the incident by fitting together conversations and information from many sources such as relatives, friends and neighbours and professionals. The information with which they deal possesses variable degrees of reliability but social workers must act and make judgements concerning the safety of children in a case. Moreover they must act quickly.

"Variazione - Latin - Change Opinion"

Michael Taylor, leather mask

There is a need for haste if danger is real and also because the governing act has time constraints. So social workers form rapid opinions about parents and often upon limited evidence. It would be reasonable and wise therefore that such opinions would be considered provisional and open to revision. There should always be a willingness to consider many sources of new information that may challenge the initial opinions. In this difficult area of child protection work, social workers are fallible. They cannot make the 'right' decision in any absolute sense. Judgements and decisions can only be deemed the 'best' based on the available evidence. As the case progresses and new information and ideas are received, judgements have to be reviewed and sometimes changed. Social workers therefore often have to recognize, that although their former views were reasonable at the time they were made, they were nonetheless, wrong. They were mistaken. One might even safely say that mistakes are an inevitable part of practice and a preparedness to recognize them as mistakes is an essential element of good practice.

The tension created for social workers is constantly reflected on this blog because on one hand we, the public, want to insure the protection of children against parental abuse and on the other hand we want to champion the family as the citadel of democratic freedom with which no one, including governments should interfere.

Therefore, it is imperative that initial information be checked thoroughly for accuracy of reliability since child abuse is so emotive and reports can be exaggerated or false. Certainly the social workers must make rapid judgements about the character of people, parents and informants but all these should be checked and rechecked for a thorough investigation. Properly following investigative procedure can result in further details that revise the initial case assessment and there must be a willingness to change the opinion. Further, a social worker may find that given some reflective time away from the child and the parents, and in collaboration with others such as a supervisor, the facts produce a different picture of the case.

I have listened to the divergent opinions of a Ministry lawyer and a parent/defendant lawyer, one arguing that the investigation was thorough and all pieces of the puzzle fit together to portray the truth that one or both parents injured an infant, and the other counselor arguing that the investigation was a cursory, inferior narrative to substantiate a medical report and placement of blame to which the social workers had committed themselves early, and that the truth lies in their innocence and in a mistaken diagnosis and blame assessment. I accept the latter position and I am confident so will Judge Thomas Crabtree.

SWs LEARNING FROM MISTAKES / Part 364 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne

Eileen Munro wrote a 2006 volume called "Effective Child Protection.”

One of her most poignant lines quoted from page 141 is, "The single most important factor in minimizing errors is to admit that you may be wrong." This is fundamental to turning MCFD around. I explore that premise today.

Among the hard realities of child protective work is that we do not live in a perfect world and there are no perfect parents. Good parents sometimes make mistakes. All parents may not meet the arbitrary standards that a social worker has developed as a model. These parents can nonetheless function capably as loving caregivers and have a right to do so. They might benefit from services offered with no attached strings and provisos. Another hard reality is that child protection workers do make mistakes, yet if there is a willingness the same workers can learn from those mistakes and improvements can be made to practice. Reluctance to learn informs superiors that these workers may not be made of the right stuff for this work.

We would begin to minimize the mistakes that are being made in child protection if we employed the right people. Hiring and retaining the right people for child protection in British Columbia is a difficult science. I don't believe that the Ministry of Children and Family Development has yet mastered it. It's easy to be critical and I must sound like that often. If employing the right people for child protection is a priority for us, then what must be understood at the top of the stuctural chart is that there has to be a balance between acquiring people with an academic ability to meet the job demands and the emotional intelligence to work with families, colleagues and other professionals.

Did you catch that? Emotional intelligence is not to be shunned but valued. Child protection is not merely an academic exercise whereby one follows the letter of the law. This is human welfare with which we are dealing. These parents are fellow humans of the same stuff as you are social workers, and these parents are not antagonists by nature. Their adversarial buttons have been pushed sometimes by the mistaken actions of social workers who have failed to, or been unable to use emotional intelligence.

“The skills and knowledge Eileen Munro thinks are needed to do the job properly include:

• using comprehensive and rational frameworks to make decisions
• using both current and historical information in relation to making judgements about families
• being prepared to change their beliefs about a family based on new information i.e. not clinging to old beliefs whilst ignoring new information
• workers testing their hypothesis about a particular judgement.
• having a critical approach to the work they are undertaking
• refraining from letting first impressions of the family shape case direction
  

These skills should be the common framework or language between the team leader and worker. A common ground that is used to measure and monitor what is happening in a family.”
“Mistakes will continue to be made in the helping professions. Child Protection is not immune from this. The challenge is to be proactive in developing systems that enable practitioner's to make the best decisions possible. Where mistakes are made, it is important that processes are put in place to salvage whatever lessons are possible.”

(This post inspired by the Child Protection and Youth Justice Professional Development Unit of State Government of Victoria, Australia, Department of Human Services)