Our lawyer said, ‘Tomorrow will be better for us, because it will be all our witnesses.’
At it turned out, it wasn’t all our witnesses. The social worker that had questioned Fat on that first day had to say her piece, which was basically that Fat and Haines couldn’t explain how Seth got injured, and that people like Fat and Haines, people who haven’t got experience with babies, and who might not be all that smart might shake a baby, not knowing it’s the wrong thing to do, just to make them be quiet, and not even realising the damage they’ve done.
The magistrate asked her a few questions about shaken babies, how old they are when they come in and so forth, and she said the ‘peak age’ was between eight and fourteen weeks, and so Seth was obviously in that group, and the magistrate wanted to know why that was the peak age, and the woman said oh, well, babies cry a lot, and by eight weeks, the parents, they’ve gotten over the thrill of having a new baby, and they are sleep-deprived and asking themselves, is this ever going to stop? And then, of course, after 14 weeks, the baby might still be crying but they get too big to shake like that, so the shaken babies drop off after 14 weeks, too.
This woman, she also said Seth had gone into hospital on a Saturday morning, and lots of babies get shaken on Friday nights and the magistrate wanted to know what was significant about Friday nights, and she said, well, people are drinking and the football is on, and when I heard that, I pretty near said out loud, ‘Oh, come on, who would shake a baby because the football was on?’ But this woman, she said it happens all the time, especially when men – and here, she looked at Haines – have to look after the baby while the mother is out of the house. She said a man in that situation – and by now I knew she meant Haines – will see the baby as a bit of a nuisance, something that’s stopping him from doing what he wants to do, which is have a beer and watch the footy, and he thinks if he gives the baby a bottle, or gives it a dummy, the baby should stop crying. But sometimes, babies don’t stop crying, and the man will think, ‘What kind of baby is this? It’s a shit of a baby’ and if the crying goes on and on – which it might, if the man doesn’t pick up the baby and rock and soothe the baby – then they might take the baby and shake the baby by the shoulders, saying, ‘Why won’t you bloody well shut up?’ and they don’t realise, when the baby does go quiet, it’s because basically they’ve rattled the baby’s brain.
The strange thing was, when the magistrate asked this woman whether she thought Seth should go into State care, she didn’t say yes. She was on the Department’s side, but she said, ‘Well, that depends.’
The magistrate said, ‘On what?’
The social worker, she looked at Fat, and she said, ‘It is quite rare for a mother to shake her baby. Mothers do sometimes hurt their children, but rarely by shaking. Shaking tends to be something that men – boyfriends, de factos – are more likely to do.’
For a second there, she looked like she might say more, but in the end, that was the closest she got – that anyone got – to saying, look, the chances are this wasn’t Donna-Faye. Chance are it was Haines. Fat had been at work, at Woolies. Haines was home with Seth, and it was a Friday night, and he was probably pissed, or stoned, or both, and wanting to lie on the couch, and Seth was probably missing his mum or needing his bottle, and Haines would have got fed up with him, and picked him up and rattled him and dropped him back in the cot, and left Fat to find him there, whimpering, and he’d lied about it, when Fat asked him whether anything had happened, and under those circumstances, why should Fat lose her baby?
I have often wondered, Your Honour, what Fat might have said about that, if she’d taken the stand that day. I don’t say that she would have pointed the finger at Haines. She was mad about him but also, in all likelihood, she didn’t know, not for sure, what he’d done. I’m absolutely certain she would have sworn blue that she had nothing to do with it, and maybe the magistrate would have heard her saying that, really saying it, and come down on Fat’s side. But Fat didn’t take the stand and Haines didn’t either. Our lawyer said, no, it’s up to them to prove their case. You don’t have to prove your innocence. You don’t have to say anything.
That being the case, there was only one more witness, and that was Neil Cowan, and he was so excited at this opportunity to get into the witness box to spout his cockamamie theories that he practically fell over his feet on the way up to the front of the court, which hardly worked in our favour.
The magistrate said, ‘If you could tell me your name, and your occupation?’ and he said, ‘My name is Neil Cowan and I’m a doctor.’
‘The magistrate said, “A medical doctor?”, which surprised me. I mean, I’d assumed he was a medical doctor. Why else would we have wanted him there, if he wasn’t a medical doctor? But he actually said, no, he was a doctor of something else, and when the magistrate wanted to know of what, he went all cagey and said, ‘From a university in the United States’ and when she wanted to know which one, he said it was ‘online’ and I think we can all admit it now, he had one of those degrees that you get in the mail.
Then he said, ‘My formal qualifications are one thing. The more important thing is my expertise in the ways of the medical establishment and the welfare industry, and the ways in which they operate – in cahoots! – with each other.’
The magistrate probably didn’t mean to roll her eyes but she did roll her eyes, and she made some small marking on the paper in front of her. She pushed her glasses back onto her nose, and said, ‘Go on, then’ and for Cowan, that was obviously the trigger he needed.
He started by saying, ‘I do not believe that Seth Atley-Haines was shaken.’
He said, ‘Moreover’ – he loved that word ‘moreover’ – he said, ‘I do not believe that Shaken Baby Syndrome exists’ and then he went on with his spiel about how doctors create bogus syndromes; and how he had written to the Prime Minister and had received a reply; and how there hadn’t been a single case of Shaken Baby Syndrome recorded before 1960, and suddenly, there were hundreds of them; and how that ‘epidemic’ of shaken babies coincided with a massive increase in funding to the welfare industry, and how ‘Seth’s parents are sitting here today trying to prove they didn’t do something. How are they supposed to prove that?’
The magistrate listened politely. She did not interrupt. Then she said, ‘Well, Mr Cowan, do you have any alternative theories for the massive injuries to Seth Atley-Haines’ brain?’ and of course, that really got Cowan going, because if there was one thing he had, it was theories. He said, ‘Well, it could be anything! Plenty of times, in America, with cases like this, they’ve found out it was a reaction to the vaccination. And if it’s not that, maybe Seth is allergic to something? Dust maybe, or cats? Lots of people are allergic to cats.’
Cats! I thought, please tell me he is not going to argue that cats had left Seth fighting for his life in a ward somewhere, far from his mother, and from me?
But Cowan was just getting started. He had miles to go in his campaign against the vaccinations, and so he got stuck into that, saying ‘the drug companies’ knew their shots caused all kinds of brain damage and they covered it up because they were in the cosy position of getting their drugs into every newborn in the country, and I have to admit, that made me pretty cross. I mean, like most people my age, I grew up when there was polio, and I saw what it did to some people, and maybe the magistrate felt the same, because she asked no questions about the vaccines. Instead, she said, ‘Mr Cowan, have you actually examined Seth?’
Cowan, he said, ‘No’ and she said, ‘No’ and he said, ‘No, of course not’ and she said, ‘But you seem to have such strong opinions?’ and Cowan said, ‘It’s not my fault I haven’t examined him. They won’t let me near him. They know how close I am to uncovering this conspiracy, and to exposing the myths and lies.’
The magistrate, she said, ‘So, it’s not only that you’re not a medical doctor, you’ve never actually met Seth?’ and Cowan said, ‘There’s not a chance in the world that securit
y guards at John Hunter would let me within a bull’s roar of Seth, and do you know why? They are in on the scam and, like the doctor, they will lose their jobs the minute I expose this scam!’
I guess it was at that point I really understood the monster I’d created with Neil Cowan. Security guards were in on the scam to disable babies and hide the results? It was embarrassing, not that Neil Cowan was the type to get embarrassed. The magistrate handled it pretty well, though. She said, ‘Alright, Mr Cowan (she never did call him doctor), thank you for your testimony’ and although he tried to resist standing down, she made him step down, and then she said, ‘Am I to hear from the parents?’ and our lawyer said, ‘No, your Honour’ and I have to say, it did feel strange to me that we didn’t insist on having our say, and that our lawyer didn’t want to give Fat the chance to say, ‘I didn’t do anything. I would never hurt my baby’ because surely that would have helped her? But I guess you always think, The lawyer knows best, but then, suddenly, that idiot, Haines, was on his feet and saying, ‘I do have something to say actually, and I’ve writ it down for you’ and before our lawyer could stop him, he’d pushed himself past my knees and was going up the aisle, towards the bench, and he was handing the magistrate a piece of paper.
She reached down, and she took it. It was a small square of white paper, folded many times. She pushed her glasses back on her nose and unfolded it, and unfolded it again, until it was normal size, and she started to read it, and she looked at Haines, and read some more, and handed it back to him, saying, ‘Well, thank you, Mr Haines. I’m not sure that’s appropriate for this forum’ and he said, ‘Well, that’s your opinion’ and she said, ‘Yes, it is’ and got up, and we all got up, and Haines came back down the aisle, and shoved the note at our lawyer and cracked his knuckles and said, ‘Let’s go see about my Swiss army knife. They better not have knocked it off’ and Fat went out after him.
I said to our lawyer, ‘How did we do?’ She said, ‘I guess we’ll find out’ and I said, ‘What did Haines’ note say?’ and she rolled her eyes and said, ‘Here, read for yourself’ and I took it from her, and read it, and I was amazed. I mean, it was absolutely out of line. Completely out of line. I’ve still got the note. I mean, people who say we didn’t care about Seth … I’ve still got every scrap of paper related to every court I’ve found myself in, and just to prove that, I’m going to paperclip that note here for you, so you can read it for yourself, and see exactly what we were dealing with, with that idiot Haines:
Donna Faye and me is writing to you to tell you that Seth is not youre kid he is our kid and you think you can just take kids of me and Donna Faye because we are shit and you are not you think your shit dont stink but at the end of the day you sit down and shit on the toilet like every body I will get a lawer and I will go to the highest court in the land and I will fight and see the prime minister and every other person I can think of its game on as far as Im concerned game on we did not do nothing to Seth you will not get Seth he is my boy and he will wear the HAINES name with pride.
Chapter 12
JUDGEMENT OF SENIOR MAGISTRATE ANNE ALBRIGHT, in the matter of Seth Atley-Haines
Citation: Re, Seth (2006)
Jurisdiction: Children’s Court of NSW.
Parties: Director General of Department of Community Services, Donna-Faye Atley, Paul Jack Haines
Place of hearing: Parramatta
Date of hearing: 3 and 4 May 2006
Magistrate: Senior Magistrate Anne Albright
Legislation: Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998
1. These are care proceedings.
2. These proceedings have been brought to court by the NSW Department of Community Services, henceforth known as ‘the Department’.
3. These proceedings relate to Seth Atley Haines, born 23 December 2005.
4. Seth is the son of Donna-Faye Atley, henceforth known as ‘the mother’ and Paul Jack Haines, henceforth known as ‘the father’.
5. The Department of Community Services seeks an order that Seth be removed from the care of his parents.
6. Seth’s parents oppose the order.
Case details:
7. On March 27, 2006, Seth, then aged just under 14 weeks, was brought into Forster General by his parents.
8. Seth’s mother told hospital staff Seth was ‘sick’.
9. After initial examination, Seth was transferred by ambulance to the paediatric intensive care unit at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, where a number of tests, including a CT scan and MRI brain imaging were undertaken.
10. Seth was found to have subdural haemorrhages and retinal haemorrhages.
11. Seth’s parents have been unable to provide an explanation for Seth’s injuries.
12. Other than the parents, no person had care of Seth in the 48 hours prior to his admission to hospital.
Evidence for the Department:
13. This court has had the benefit of oral testimony from Dr Theodore Blewett, paediatric registrar, John Hunter Hospital.
14. Dr Blewett is acknowledged as a leading authority in his field and is well known to the Children’s Court.
15. Dr Blewett’s report says injuries of the type seen in Seth are typically associated with what has come to be known as ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’.
16. Dr Blewett believes it unlikely that Seth’s injuries are due to any other cause.
17. Dr Blewett believes injuries to Seth were most likely caused by ‘violent shaking’.
18. This court has also been provided with a written affidavit by Dr Paul Tate, consultant paediatrician at the Sydney Children’s Hospital.
19. Dr Tate is a leading authority in paediatric neurology and is well known to the Children’s Court. He has examined Seth.
20. Dr Tate believes it is unlikely that Seth’s injuries were caused by birth trauma.
21. Dr Tate believes it is unlikely that Seth’s injuries were caused by vaccinations.
22. Dr Tate believes ‘shearing injuries’ – where the veins connecting the brain to the skull have ripped away – are ‘almost exclusively’ caused by forceful acceleration of the head (shaking) which cannot be accidental, and cannot be caused by the child acting alone.
23. Dr Tate believes other explanations are ‘rare, and can be excluded’ in the case of Seth.
24. Dr Tate believes retinal bleeding – bleeding behind the eyes – is a clear marker for Shaken Baby Syndrome.
25. It is therefore Dr Tate’s opinion that Seth’s injuries were caused by shaking.
Evidence for the Parents:
26. Seth’s parents have been unable to provide the court with an alternative explanation for Seth’s injuries.
27. It is common ground that Seth was in the care of no other adult in the 48 hours prior to his admission to Forster General.
28. Seth was in the exclusive care of his father, Paul Jack Haines, for six hours on 26 March while Seth’s mother worked the night shift at Woolies.
29. There were no times when Seth was in the care of his mother, but not his father, in the 24 hours prior to his admission to hospital.
30. A witness called by the parents, Neil Cowan, has told this court that Seth’s injuries cannot have been caused by shaking. He submits that Shaken Baby Syndrome is a myth.
31. Mr Cowan has an interest in Shaken Baby Syndrome that might fairly be called a crusade.
32. Mr Cowan is well known for his campaign against mass vaccination programs.
33. Mr Cowan has not examined Seth nor, in fact, met Seth.
34. Documents presented to the court by Mr Cowan to support his claim that brain injuries may be caused by vaccination amount to documents downloaded from the internet and pamphlets produced by anti-vaccination groups.
35. There is no evidence before this court to support Mr Cowan’s claim that Seth’s injuries were caused by vaccination.
36. It is my view that Seth suffered a ‘non-accidental brain injury’. I make no findings as to who is responsible for th
at injury.
Social matters:
37. Seth’s father has a poor history of impulse control.
38. Seth’s father has a history of violence and criminal behaviour, including assault.
39. Seth’s father has substance abuse problems.
40. Testing conducted by independent, court-appointed analysts prior to this hearing suggest that Seth’s mother is of below-average intelligence. She produced low scores for resourcefulness, although high scores for empathy.
41. Testing conducted by independent, court-appointed analysts prior to his hearing suggests that Seth’s father is also of below-average intelligence, and produced low scores for resourcefulness, empathy, and impulse control.
42. Seth’s parents have known periods of great stress, including income stress. Seth’s mother provides the only known source of income to the household, and returned to work just 10 weeks after giving birth.
I Came to Say Goodbye Page 13
