Some of you will be upset with me for
trying this.
I am asking you to try on something
hypothetical. Let's just suppose for a moment that either Paul or
Zabeth did actually harm their baby girl in September 2007. If a non
accident injury caused the medical issues that put her life at risk
three years ago, one of these parents lost control. That's what one
would conclude. These parents already had two sons. Affectionate and thoughtful nurture of
these boys typified
the Baynes' parental pattern. The arrival of a daughter was an astounding blessing to
them. When she was merely weeks old, this hypothesis would propose
that mommy or daddy lost it. It could hardly be deliberate cruelty.
It couldn't be abuse of that nature. That would be unmistakeably a
crime, a felony. Then what else could it be if not an accident or a
crime? It would have to be the unfortunate outcome of a fit of
impatience or annoyance or anger. A parent would have had to hit the
child's head, or knock the child's head to the floor, some
appallingly awful action. And if this had been done, one parent did
it and the other would somehow learn or know that truth. Both would
be complicit in this injury to a child because one perpetrated it and
one concealed it. These two people would have to be without
consciences or with flawed ethics.
That is not the Zabeth and Paul that
their family and their friends know. It is not the parental couple
that Judge Thomas Crabtree watched for twenty-two days in court.
Before their release and the dropped
charges, when Zabeth and Paul were arrested, the events were so
shocking to her that she had a physical, emotional meltdown and had
to be hospitalized. That is not a manifestation of cover-up but
violent astonishment and overwhelming fear at these out of control
circumstances.
Permit me to carry the conjecture
further. If one parent injured the child and the other knew about it,
could they both be so steel-hearted that they would endure the
sustained removal of all three of their children? If in those early
weeks, Zabeth knew that Paul had injured their youngest child and if
she herself assessed him as a risk, and if she were told that her
three children would be returned to her if Paul did not have access
to them, do you think that she would have chosen to be with Paul
rather than her children? Or turn that equation around the other way,
with Zabeth the guilty one and Paul the innocent parent. Is it
reasonable to think that these two people would say “our love for
one another is of greater importance to each of us than our children
are, so we will hang in together and hope for the best in trying to
regain custody?”
I will attempt one other scenario.
Let's speculate that both Paul and Zabeth are innocent of having
inflicted any harm to their third child, a helpless, infant daughter.
This proposal includes an accidental injury that caused the initial
injury that escalated with passing days. Let's further include a
tumble of one sybling upon the infant at a time that approximates the
start of the baby's physical distress. Let's suppose that Paul and
Zabeth were absolutely desperate to have medical professionals
ascertain what was wrong with this baby in her deteriorating
condition back in 2007. Each failed visit to a hospital made them
more frantic. This proposition portrays the parents as distraught and
sick at heart when they learned both the severity of their child's
injuries and the accusation against them of willfully hurting her.
Then let's see them in this script immediately and always asserting
their innocence, insistently, unwaveringly maintaining this
innocence, through every attempt by the social worker team and legal
counsel to make one of them cave. I can tell you now that Zabeth's
maternal instincts are so powerful that she has weathered the chasm
of suffering that have been these past three years and at last
endured insidious, slanderous statements from a Ministry lawyer
determined to end her motherhood. These parents have been so focused
upon regaining their family, there is nothing that is more important
to them as may be with some parents, not drugs, not alcohol, not
personal vacation, travel, career opportunities, acquisitions,
nothing! Nothing has sidetracked them. Not the Hope B.C. MCFD
callousness and intimidation. Nothing! Oh, wait a minute. That's right, this latter
storyline is the only one that is credible. Only this scenario
explains what we have witnessed for three years. Only this one
explains why Judge Crabtree has refused to act like other judicial
lightweights who might cow-tow to the MCFD allegations. Instead he
has increased visitation times for the parents and given them at home
visitation. That's because this last version is not an hypothesis but
the truth.
