GUILTY BY SUSPICION / Part 286 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

This will never happen so I can conjecture with certainty while driving home a point. Don't become immediately alarmed but stay with my syllogistic reasoning long enough to hear the conclusion. Or you might call it silly thinking.

If Judge Crabtree eventually rules against the Baynes and does in fact grant to MCFD the Continuing Care Order for which it has applied, should the Baynes also then be arrested and charged with a criminal act? Wouldn't such a Crabtree ruling be tantamount to a guilty verdict? After all, the CCO application is pursued because MCFD considers the Baynes an ongoing risk to their children because they are suspected of having harmed a child.

I know what the easy legal answer is. The present case of MCFD versus Baynes is about the rights of three children to protection and security and not technically about the guilt or innocence of Paul and Zabeth Bayne with regard to physically harming one of the children.

I understand the import of the case and the distinction between these legal details. Yet logically, since the MCFD affidavit established that the entire CCO application is premised upon Dr. Colbourne's injuries assessment which she identified by the term 'shaken baby syndrome,' and by reason of which she or her medical colleagues notified MCFD and RCMP, doesn't the ruling to award the children to MCFD infer the guilt of one or both Bayne parents? And if it does, does it not make sense to hold them accountable by charging them with an offence?

Surely both parents did not gang up on the youngest of their three children and willfully hurt her. So one might say, we don't know which of the parents harmed the child and which one should be considered guilty of the suspected assault. Yes, but the non perpetrator parent is complicit in the crime by reason of silence, so both should be considered guilty by suspicion and receive the same penalty of childlessness. Equitable justice.

Ahh, but the cop-out argument can then be made that RCMP initially charged them with aggravated assault and investigated them and dismissed the charge for lack of evidence and that rather than pursuing that direction again, the Baynes can be made to pay through the removal of their children from them and the ending of their hopes for their family. That punishment will be accepted as a satisfactory payment. So, rather than charging them with an offence for which sufficient evidence must be garnered to support the charge, child protection services have been able to surmise violence and acquire enough suspicions to support the speculation. That is awkward to imagine but it is effectively a guilty verdict. It can be classified as guilty by inference rather than by evidence. That may not be on the books but it is the de facto feature of MCFD practice and interpretation of the mandate document called the Child, Family and Community Services Act.

After the first few weeks and definitely following the first few months that MCFD was involved with the Bayne children, MCFD justification for and management of the Bayne file became preposterous. This has been a comedy drama of MCFD incompetence mismanagement with tragic results for an entire family.

One commenter correctly suggests that 'incompetence' is not the appropriate word choice. Perhaps more suitable choices are malice, maliciousness, malevolence, spitefulness, venom, wrongful conduct, improperness, mismanagement, errors. I will substitute 'mismanagement' for 'incompetence.' Now I am thinking that 'comedy' is not apt either. I will substitute 'drama.'

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.

Zabeth and Paul Bayne – Part 39 – The Bayne Campaign for Justice

Man found not guilty of shaking his baby.

In this case the baby died. Twenty-seven year old Miles Lee Fergusan of Portsmouth Ohio was on trial for murdering his 5 week old infant daughter Mylee. For the past three years he has lived through a nightmare of stress and fears that he would be ruled guilty of something of which he was innocent and that he would spend years in prison.

On November 19, 2009 a jury found him not guilty. Defendant Miles Ferguson began sobbing when the court clerk read the verdict. Through his tears he mouthed "thank you" to the jury several times.

He wept uncontrollably and repeated, “Praise the Lord.” He hugged his wife Ashlee, and his lawyer Morgan Martin and his friends and family. The trial began on the 9th of November. When Mylee was admitted to hospital, Ferguson had been originally charged with assault and battery with the intent to kill and when the girl died of a closed head injury the grand jury indicted him on a count of homicide by child abuse. It was not an uncomplicated case or a straightforward verdict because Miles acknowledged that in an effort to revive an unresponsive baby he had indeed shaken her but as he claimed, to revive her not to kill her. On the other hand, Karen Sims of the Department of Social Services in Charleston received a call in reference to what appeared to be a shaken baby syndrome case and she said she responded by assuming that the child was shaken by somebody. In 2007, the 27-year-old Portsmouth resident had been vacationing in Myrtle Beach with his family, when suddenly his daughter Mylee stopped breathing and fell unconscious. Miles, who was trying to change her diaper, noticed this and patted her on the back, and even blew air into her mouth. He then called emergency services who took the child to the Grand Stand Regional Hospital.

The baby failed to live, succumbing two days later at the Medical University of South Carolina. The workers at the hospital claimed that they had noticed marks on the body of Mylee which are prominent with being shaken up. Police, charged and arrested Fergusan with a count of homicide by child abuse. The defense attorney presented a number of medical experts who testified in favor of Ferguson and said that Mylee had a head injury at birth which started bleeding again five weeks later due to a head infection. This was proved to be the likely cause behind the death of the baby. The diagnosis is so fragile. Read more:

Some adults unthinkingly do not understand what the mildest shaking may do to harm a small child. Adults frustrated with a noisy baby, who shake a baby to quiet or to get attention or to punish, are mindless and culpable of criminal brutality. I believe that this man is fortunate to have been acquitted. Defense Attorney Martin had told the jury before they deliberated for four hours, “this isn’t an ‘I think he might have done it … this isn’t a he probably done it … this isn’t a sure don’t look good case. This is a 'beyond each and every reasonable doubt'case and if there is a real possibility that this young man is not guilty then it’s your obligation to acquit him.” They did.
TV video journalistic post trial discussion

In the case of Paul and Janice Bayne and their baby Bethany, it did not go that far. But far enough. They said they didn't shake Bethany. They said one child fell on the other. Two years ago police reported there was insufficient evidence to pursue a case against the Baynes. Still today, their family endures a sentence of separation. Three children removed from their family home. Two years of that. Parents under suspicion. An opinion no longer justified. They are exemplary parents. Please, Minister, Deputy Minister, Prime Minister, Director, Case Worker please re-examine this.

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