Fathers & Families

Fathers and Families^® improves the lives of children and strengthens society by protecting the child’s right to the love and care of both parents after separation or divorce. We seek better lives for children through family court reform that establishes equal rights and responsibilities for fathers and mothers.

MI Man not the Dad, but Owes the State Welfare Reimbursement Anyway

July 29th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

One of my first jaw-dropping experiences in the fathers’ rights arena came back in 1999. I was researching the phenomenon of men who had learned after the fact - and sometimes long after the fact - that they’d fathered a child. I was interested in what happened to their parental rights if a mother kept a man’s child secret from him. I was astonished to learn that the rights of such a dad could vanish into thin air. The rule in many states was that, since he hadn’t actively cared for the child, he had no more claim to it. The fact that the mother had intentionally deprived him of the ability to do that often made no difference to courts.

So I had lengthy conversations with a number of those dads, one of whom lived in Lompoc, California. He’d had a one-night stand with a woman 16 years previously. They both lived in the same community, but she decided he didn’t need to know about it when she became pregnant and gave birth to his daughter. Then she started receiving AFDC payments (now TANF) from the state which were required to be reimbursed by the father. Fifteen years later, the dad received a letter from the State of California saying (a) he had a daughter and (b) he owed the state over $40,000. This was shortly after he’d gotten married. He had to get a second mortgage on his house to pay off the state.

This case is very much the same, but in fact much worse (WXYZ, 7/8/10). This time it’s the State of Michigan that’s suing Gary Harper for AFDC payments made to a woman named Dorothy Hoose. She had a son in 1988 and named Harper as the dad. There’s just one problem, though; he’s not.

But the State of Michigan isn’t interested in technicalities like who the actual father is. It’s known for many years that Harper is not the dad and, as far as I can tell, lifted nary a finger to find out who is. That’s because it’s got Harper on its line and the hook is set. Why go after another fish when you’ve already got one reeled in?

You see, when Hoose named Harper as the dad, he was in prison. According to Michigan law, the state has to pay for a DNA test for any inmate for whom it seeks to establish paternity. The state knew Harper was in the joint because a Friend of the Court sent correspondence there about his case. But it never offered him the genetic testing.

After he got out, he didn’t have the $500 it would have taken at the time to determine whether he was the dad or not. He didn’t do the test until years later, when he had the money. That test proved he wasn’t the dad, but it was too late. His window of opportunity for disproving his paternity had closed. That’s one of those technicalities the state is interested in.

So as of now, Harper’s on the hook for $22,500, down from the $50,000 the state claimed at first. He’s got an attorney, Susan Pushman, who says that the state’s failure to provide DNA testing when Harper was inside means it can’t complain that he didn’t do it on his own when he got out. If Michigan had done what it was obligated to do, it would have known Harper isn’t the father, is her argument. The case is pending.

The “child” in question is now 22 years old. Perhaps oddly, he and Harper have gotten to know and like each other pretty well. That’s a positive development in an otherwise tawdry affair.

It’s worth asking why the State of Michigan has expended such effort in trying to bankrupt a man it knows has no responsibility for Hoose’s son. After all, Harper has been trying to get his life back together after his time in prison, and he’s done a pretty good job of that. But if the state has its way, it’ll tear down whatever he’s built. Nice.

What truly escapes me is why state welfare authorities don’t just ask Hoose who the father is, do DNA testing on him and, if she’s right this time, demand payment. What’s the problem with getting the right man and letting the wrong one go? What state interest is served by soaking a man who’s not the father and letting the man who is go free? One of the points of child support is that he who fathers a child should be financially responsible for it. In Harper’s case, the State of Michigan has it exactly backwards.

Thanks to Jeff for the heads-up.

Tags: AFDC payments, Child Support, Dorothy Hoose, fathers' rights, Gary Harper, Michigan
Posted in Bills/Initiatives, Elections, Politics, Court Cases, Child Support, Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody

British Columbia Gives a Whole New Meaning to the Term ‘Child Support’

July 28th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Here’s one we don’t often see (Calgary Herald, 7/25/10).

It seems that, years ago, Shirley Anderson was one of the worst of mothers. Her children, now aged 52, 50, 48 and 46, call their upbringing by her “harsh” and “brutal.” But for one of her sons, Ken, it was worse than that; she abandoned him outright 31 years ago when he was 15. He had to drop out of high school, get a menial job and crash on friends’ couches. He never completed high school and never attended college.

Sadly, as despicable as Shirley’s behavior was, it’s not the worst thing a parent can do to a child. But now, at age 71, she’s upping the ante; she’s suing her children for support. In fact, her suit began a long time ago, back in 2000. It all stems from a British Columbia law passed in 1922 that requires offspring to support their “dependent” parents. So back in 2000, Shirley Anderson asked for and received a court order requiring her children to pay her $50 a month, or $10 each (she has five children, but one is not part of the suit). Now she’s asking the court to increase the amount to $300 - $350 each per month.

Not surprisingly, they’re resisting the whole idea of paying to support the woman who abused them. Shirley’s daughter,

Donna Anderson, who left home at 18, put herself through college and is the mother of two kids. She says she won’t pay a dime. “They can take me to jail.”

They may do just that. The law Shirley is suing under was passed at a time when circumstances in Canada were entirely different from what they are now. Then there was no state pension and no guaranteed medical care. So the law that placed responsibility for the wellbeing of the elderly on the shoulders of the children, has clearly been superseded by subsequent laws and policies. But it’s still on the books and Shirley Anderson is trying to cash in.

My guess is that the legal issues are pretty cut and dried. My guess is that Shirley will win. The law is the law and however unfair it may be to Ken Anderson and his siblings, it still applies to them.

Still the case raises some obvious moral issues, if few legal ones. Ken and Donna Anderson ask, “what is a parent?” I’m not informed on the intricacies of this statute, but it probably assumes a parent to be the biological one, and Shirley Anderson is certainly that, if little more. But in other areas of the law, a biological mother can have her rights terminated if she proves herself to be abusive or neglectful of her children. Apparently the law requiring children to support a parent has no such provision to relieve children of the obligation when the parent is unfit.

If I were Ken Anderson though, I’d argue abandonment. A mother can also have her rights terminated if it’s shown that she abandoned a child. Her unilateral act can, by itself, result in the loss of her parental rights. I would argue that she did just that when she left him behind with no support, no home, no money, no food, no love, no companisonship and no guidance. If that happened today, CPS would waste no time in terminating her parental rights. I would argue that the court should do so today in Ken’s case.

The irony of a law that’s meant to prevent children from abandoning parents being used to require support of a mother who abandoned her child is surely lost on no one. But the larger question is again, “what is a parent?” Depending on the situation, a parent is either a biological one or the active caretaker. Most often of course, the two are the same, but increasingly, not always. Our confusion about that and about to whom to give enforceable parental rights has, for many years, caused considerable grief, consternation and conflict.

But the answer to the question is not difficult. All law relating to parents and children should adhere to the following basic principles. With one exception, a parent is the biological one until that person demonstrates that he/she is unfit, unable, uncaring, etc. Only after that demonstration has been made following due process of law, can a biological parent be deprived of his/her rights and another person substituted. Therefore, a father who has been prevented by the mother from knowing about and/or caring for his child, is still a father with enforceable rights.

The only exception is in the case of paternity fraud. Where a man has been falsely or mistakenly led to believe that he is the father of a child and who has cared for and contributed to the support of the child, that man, though not the biological father, has rights. So does the biological dad whose ability to care for his child was denied by the mother’s fraud or mistake. His parental rights should not be compromised by anything but his own informed actions or inactions.

Meanwhile, the law under which Shirley Anderson is suing should either be repealed altogther or amended so that it benefits only parents who have acted the part.

Thanks to Jeremy for the heads-up.

Tags: British Columbia, Calgary Herald, Canada, Child Support, Ken Anderson, Shirley Anderson
Posted in Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Parenting

Where’s the Dad? Media Accounts Ignore Father in Paternity Fraud, Attempted Murder, Child Abuse Case

July 28th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

This is a lurid tale, so it’s no surprise that it’s received a good bit of media attention (Orange County Register, 7/22/10).

Back in August of 2008, Shawn Sepulveda was married and had two children. But she had an affair with a co-worker and became pregnant. Strangely enough, she was able to conceal her pregnancy from her husband, or at least she mostly did. He was suspicious, but whenever he or their children asked her, she denied being pregnant.

Sepulveda gave birth in the bathroom of their apartment, cut the umbilical cord with a kitchen knife, wrapped the newborn in fabric and put it in a dumpster outside the apartment complex in which they lived. Her husband sent their 11-year-old daughter out to look around and she found the baby in the dumpster. They called 911, the baby was taken into foster care and Sepulveda was arrested and charged with attempted murder, for which she could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted. Her trial started last week.

So this is another example of the many ways children can be abused by adults. There’s nothing new in that.

What I find interesting though, is the Amazing Disappearing Dad. The child’s life was saved and presumably it’s healthy and by now almost two years old. So who’s caring for it? The husband? The father? It’s odd how the writers of the various articles seem to care about the baby’s welfare, but never mention the actual dad. Where is he? Who is he? Does he have custody?

Under California law, the husband is presumptively the father, but no one believes that to be the case here. Has paternity been established? Has a child support order been made? Do the husband and the father share custody? Has CPS placed the child in foster care permanently?

I’ve written a fair amount about paternity fraud. It’s always seemed to me to be one of the least honorable things a woman can do to a man. But Shawn Sepulveda took the concept a good bit further than most.

Thanks to David for the heads-up.

Tags: dads, Orange County Register, Shawn Sepulveda
Posted in Child Protective Services, Child Abuse, Fatherhood

European Court of Human Rights: German Custody Law Discriminates Against Single Dads

July 27th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

At least in Germany they admit it.

In 2003, Harshad, a British citizen of Indian descent, had a baby daughter with his German girlfriend. Knowing nothing of Germany’s idiosyncratic custody laws, Harshad went along with his girlfriend’s suggestion that they skip the laborious process of registering joint custody.

It wasn’t until the couple split that Harshad discovered the enormity of that choice.

“I had no idea it would cause so many problems,” said Harshad, a 44-year-old IT professional. “My ex-girlfriend had said, ‘It’s nothing to worry about; from the paperwork point of view, it’s far easier not to do it, and I said, ‘Okay,’ not really understanding the situation.”

What it meant was that, after the separation, Harshad, who asked that his name be changed, had no claim to be the legal guardian of his daughter. Even if his former girlfriend were to die, custody would pass not to Harshad but to the mother’s parents.

In short, in Germany, single fathers have no parental rights without the consent of their child’s mother. In order to establish their rights, they have to file documents with the state and they can’t do that if the mother doesn’t agree. Apparently, she has to file along with him. If she doesn’t, it’s his tough luck.

This article tells us about German custody law and points out something I hadn’t thought of (The Local, 7/2/10). The law gives single mothers such total control over the parental rights of the fathers of their children that they can convert it into cash. As one single father said,

“I give (my ex-girlfriend) the regular child support and … then on the side, I pay her extra to keep things nice. I realised that I have to be nice because I’ve got no cards. I have nothing. There is no piece of paper saying I have any rights.”

There was a time that would have been called extortion, but apparently where fathers and children are concerned, it’s perfectly alright.

In the U.S. we’re far less candid about placing the rights of fathers, particularly single fathers, in the hands of mothers. We do it, but require subterfuges far more subtle than the one employed by “Harshad’s” ex. Here, in order for a mother to deprive a single father of his rights, she has to lie to him, avoid him, place the child secretly for adoption, lie to the court, etc. If they’re divorced or separated, she has to deny him visitation over a long period of time. Or, if the two are married and she has a child by another man, she has to convince her husband the child is his. That is, she’s got to jump through some hoops in order to deny the child the care of its father.

Now, for the most part, those hoops are perfectly acceptable to state legislatures and family courts. No state has passed a law that requires a mother to tell the father about his child. If she doesn’t, he’ll at best have real problems getting access to his child, if he ever learns about it. Again, his rights are in her hands. Does she commit perjury in family court for the purpose of denying the child to its father and the father to his child? For the most part, that goes entirely unpunished, as does the denial of visitation.

Up to now, German law has been far more frank about the matter of the rights of single fathers; they don’t have any without the mother’s say-so. That’s simple and easy to understand.

It’s also illegal - as of last December.

In December, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that German custody law discriminates against unmarried fathers by denying them custody without the mother’s consent. The government is now reviewing the law, with a bill expected this year.

“German law has to change and will change,” said Thomas Meysen of the German Institute for Youth Human Services and Family Law, which is conducting research for the government on international comparisons of child custody law.

“There should be a possibility for fathers to get into joint custody without having to rely on the mother’s consent. In that sense, the law is deficient at the moment.”

If Germany wants to change its laws, it has plenty of examples from which to choose that would allow it to continue discriminating against single fathers and still pass legal muster. Basically, it just has to create the fiction, like the U.S. does, that giving primary custody to mothers and “visitation rights” to fathers (a) is equitable, (b) likely keeps both parents in their children’s lives and (c) is good for children. Then Germany can dress the whole thing up with a nice pink ribbon called “joint custody,” and it all looks pretty good.

It looks good, that is, if you don’t examine it very closely. If you do that, you notice that our wonderful system harms children, denies fathers meaningful parental rights, enriches lawyers and enrages anyone with even a minimal sense of justice. It’s not really something to emulate.

I know Herr Meysen said that the law must and will change, but he may have been optimistic. It seems the government doesn’t agree.

Thorsten Bauer, spokesman for the Federal Justice Ministry, which has oversight of custody law, denied there was systemic discrimination in the courts…

Of course, as a member of the government, it may be difficult for Bauer to admit that “yes, we discriminate.” So his statement may just be posturing for the press. After all, when the law allows a woman complete power to grant or deny rights to a man, how can it not be said to discriminate? It’s the very definition of discrimination.

And then there’s this from Meysen:

“The mother’s rights or the father’s rights are not the most important questions,” he said. “In family conflicts, usually one parent feels they are the loser. The one that does might blame the authorities, in this case the Jugendamt.

“In break-ups … people’s feelings get hurt and most of the time, they’re fighting about something else, not the custody. Then they make it an issue of rights: ‘I have a right to the child and the mother - or the father - does not.’ Where are the child’s interests in that?”

Isn’t it funny how the concept of parental rights all of a sudden becomes suspect when fathers look like they’re about to get more of them? We see this frequently. When fathers agitate for more time with their kids or even equal consideration as parents, then and only then do certain people call into question the very idea of parental rights. I’ve never seen anyone talking about mothers’ parental rights make that claim.

And reading what Meysen said, you’d think that parental rights in some way excluded children’s interests. No, actually it’s one of the major reasons for increasing and enforcing fathers’ rights; children do better with two parents in their lives. “Where are the child’s interests in that?” They’re right there beside fathers’ interests hand in hand. Children need their fathers; they tend to do better with fathers involved in their lives than without. We know this. Meysen pretends we don’t.

But if Meysen is so dismissive of parental rights, I propose the Germans just reverse things. Give all single dads sole custody of their children and complete control over mother’s rights. If the dad says she can see the child, fine; if not too bad for her. Of course Germans are never going to even consider such a thing and in truth I wouldn’t want them too. After all, I’m serious about this two-parent thing. But still it’d be entertaining to see, if the positions of the sexes reversed, how quickly people like Meysen decided that parental rights weren’t such a bad idea after all.

Thanks to Paul for the heads-up.

Tags: custody law, fathers' rights, Germany
Posted in Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody

Ohio Supreme Court: Rights of Biological Parents ‘Precious and Fundamental’

July 27th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

This case out of the Ohio Supreme Court does little but suggests much (Leagle, 7/22/10). Reading the court’s dicta, i.e. the verbal embroidery with which it decorates its actual holding, fathers’ rights in adoption cases just got a huge boost.

Back in July 2005, Susan Tuttle gave birth to a child. She was married to Jeremy Tuttle at the time and his name was placed on the birth certificate. The court’s recitation of facts leaves us to guess at just how and why certain events transpired, but, a month later, DNA testing on the baby had been performed. It showed that Tuttle was not the child’s father; Gary Otten was. Just who asked for the testing to be done is anyone’s guess. Whether Otten requested the testing or whether he even knew it had been done, the court doesn’t tell us.

Whatever the case, not surprisingly, Jeremy Tuttle divorced Susan in November of that year. A little over a year later, Gary Otten filed a suit to establish his paternity rights and presumably to get some sort of a custodial order. But then Susan married another man, Kevin Crooks, who filed a petition to adopt the child who was then almost two years old. In order for Crooks to adopt the child, Otten’s parental rights would have had to be terminated by the probate court.

At this point, it’s a good idea to recognize an important fact. There are two types of adoptions - stranger adoptions and non-stranger adoptions. Stranger adoptions are the kind most people tend to think about when they think about adoption. They’re the ones in which a couple adopts a child they don’t know, a child, in other words, who is a stranger to them.

Crooks wanted to do the other type of adoption. He knew Susan Tuttle’s child; he was married to Tuttle and wanted to formally recognize his parental relationship with her child and tie himself legally to the child should the pair ever divorce. That’s a non-stranger adoption.

In the United States, there are about 125,000 adoptions completed each year. Of those, about 75,000 are stranger adoptions and about 50,000 are the non-stranger variety.

Why does it matter what kind of adoption this was? If a stranger adoption doesn’t go through, it may well be that the child will have no parents at all, or at best a single parent. The child may sit unnoticed in an orphanage. If a non-stranger adoption doesn’t go through because the biological father asserts his rights, the child will still have two parents - a mother and a father - the same as if it had gone through. From the child’s standpoint, then, nothing is lost by allowing the dad to assert his rights.

When it comes to terminating fathers’ rights, the adoption industry often likes to pretend that all adoptions are alike, and therefore that if we allow the biological dad to prevail, the child will miss out on having two parents. That can be true in a stranger adoption case, but not in a non-stranger one. It’s an important distinction that those who make money off of completed adoptions often prefer to overlook.

Back to the case. The Ohio Supreme Court held that, because Otten is the biological father, Crooks can’t adopt the child (and terminate Otten’s rights) unless he can show that Otten is unfit.

One important thing about that holding is that Otten had never registered with the Ohio Putative Father Registry. So according to that law, he wasn’t entitled to notice of the adoption proceeding. The Court of Appeals held that his failure to register foreclosed his paternity suit. The Supreme Court said that’s not so. Essentially, a biological father who’s asserting his parental rights can stop the adoption of his child whether he’s filed with the Putative Father Registry or not.

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of the court’s language in this case. First, it focuses on core principles of parental rights - principles long acknowledged but often ignored. For many years now, I’ve written of my astonishment at the U.S. Supreme Court’s calling parental rights “far more precious than property rights” and then approving the most bald-faced deprivations of due process in cases construing the rights of fathers. Significantly, those are often in cases involving putative father registries.

Here’s some of the court’s dicta:

[T]he right of a natural parent to the care and custody of his children is one of the most precious and fundamental in law…

Few consequences of judicial action are so grave as the severance of natural family ties…

[W]e have held that any exception to the requirement of parental consent (to adoption) must be strictly construed so as to protect the right of natural parents to raise and nurture their children.

Finally! Here’s a court that sees the obvious - that the rights of biological fathers have legal importance, and that courts and legislatures must respect them for the welfare of all concerned. Not only that, as important as parental rights are, in termination proceedings, states’ rights are virtually nil until a parent has been proven to be unfit.

the parent’s interest is fundamental but the State has no legitimate interest in termination unless the parent is unfit, and finding that the State’s interest in finding the best home for the child does not arise until the parent has been found unfit.

Second, I believe that the Ohio Supreme Court is signalling a change of direction in adoption matters. That’s because in two instances it cites, not the majority in U.S. Supreme Court cases, but dissents. That suggests to me that Ohio court is ready to break with the past. I believe that it is ready to turn away from the notion, clung to for so long by so many jurisdictions, that any adoption is a good adoption even though it’s unnecessary. When a fit father wants to be a parent to his child, there is no legitimate state interest in denying him his parental rights.

This case can be viewed as extremely limited and many will argue for that reading of it. But courts often prefer to obscure the full impact of important cases. Judges fear being tagged “judicial activist.” Given the language of the case, I would not be surprised to find it holding unconstitutional Ohio’s Putative Father Registry law at some time in the not too distant future. Either that or so limiting its scope as to render it all but impotent.

And let’s not forget that, just last month, right next door in Kentucky the state Supreme Court ruled that biological parents rights were “inherent and equitable.” Here’s my piece on that case. It too suggested a significant expansion of parental rights based solely on biology.

It’s important to understand what this case does not do. Somehow, Otten learned about his child and was able to assert his rights. Thus the case deals only with a father who was able to make a timely claim. This case does little or nothing to protect a father from whom a mother successfully keeps his child. What if Otten had found out he was the father, not a year later, but five years later? Could he have asserted his rights then? The case doesn’t say because that’s not what happened.

Some day, that case will come before the court and it will have an opportunity to decide whether a father’s rights can be prejudiced by the fraud of the mother. That happens frequently in adoption cases as I’ve reported on before. But this is a court that says it respects the rights of biological parents. We’ll see how far that goes.

But remember that Kentucky case. That’s exactly the issue it ruled on and it held that a father who’d been kept in the dark about his paternity until the child was three years old, could not be denied his parental rights.

As Bob Dylan once said, “the times they are a-changin.’”

Tags: Adoption, fathers' rights, Gary Otten, Jeremy Tuttle, Ohio Supreme Court, Susan Tuttle
Posted in Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody

Victory—Crucial Bill from Opponents of Recognizing Parental Alienation Defeated!

July 26th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director

Fathers and Families and its legislative allies have succeeded in killing one of the worst family law bills in modern history–California’s AB 612. The bill, put forward by the well-funded advocacy group Center for Judicial Excellence (and supported by the California National Organization for Women), would have banned Parental Alienation from being mentioned in any way, shape, or form in a California family court. Because of California’s tremendous influence in shaping the laws of other states, this loss would have led to a mushrooming of similarly damaging legislation in other states.

Fathers and Families’ legislative representative Michael Robinson helped cobble together a coalition of family law professional organizations and experts to oppose the bill. We were able to bottle the bill up in the Senate Judiciary Committee last year and keep it there until last week, when it died. To learn more about the bill, see our co-authored column Preventing courts from considering parental alienation will harm kids (Capitol Weekly, 2/25/10).

The defeat of AB 612 is a victory for the family court reform movement and for children everywhere. Victories cost money, as does our deep, professional involvement inside the political system—please support our successful work by making a tax-deductible contribution by clicking here.

This is the second time in two months that Fathers & Families has been instrumental in defeating a Center for Judicial Excellence bill—in June, we helped kill AB 2475, which was also related to Parental Alienation. To learn more, see F & F Helps Defeat Radical Bill from Opponents of Recognizing Parental Alienation.

Whereas Fathers & Families’ family court reform bills have been moving swiftly through the California legislature, the Center for Judicial Excellence is now 0-2 in the 2009-2010 legislative session.

The CJE claims that there’s a “crisis” in family courts, and that courts are handing over custody of children to physically and sexually abusive fathers. They promote reforms which will make it easier to deny parents shared custody or visitation rights based on unsubstantiated abuse claims. As we’ve noted before, there is no empirical basis supporting this claim. The vast majority of the cases that groups like the CJE put forward as alleged examples of this “crisis” of abusive fathers winning child custody are being badly misrepresented–to learn more, click here.

The events surrounding AB 2475 and AB 612 are further validation of Fathers and Families’ emphasis on the need for the family court reform movement to employ full-time legislative representatives and engage in the political process on a professional level. To support this work with your tax-deductible gift, please click here.

Together with you in the love of our children,

Glenn Sacks, MA
Executive Director, Fathers and Families

Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S.
Chair of the Board, Fathers and Families

Posted in Bills/Initiatives, Elections, Politics, Court Cases, Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group, Parental Alienation/PAS/PAD

Your Letter Wanted: Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board Demands that Family Courts Enforce Visitation Orders

July 26th, 2010 by Glenn Sacks, MA, Executive Director

“Youngsters need two loving parents in their lives, and if a father has been deemed fit by the courts and is ready and willing to be a good parent, no one should be allowed to stand in his way.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board

After discussing child custody and child support with Ned Holstein, M.D., M.S., Chair of the Board of Fathers and Families, the Editorial Board of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, called for more shared parenting in their Father’s Day editorial Making sense of child support in Ohio: editorial (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/19/10). Now the Plain Dealer’s Ed Board has come out with a strong editorial calling for enforcement of visitation orders and criticizing the sole custody for mothers norm. To write a Letter to the Editor, click here.

The Board writes:

When parents fail to pay child support, the consequences are clear — seizure of driver’s licenses, and a new nickname: deadbeat. But when custodial parents — usually mothers — refuse to allow their legally entitled ex-spouse or boyfriend to visit their children, they often escape punishment. Yet both are disobeying a court order.

It’s a problem across the country, but it’s time court officials in Greater Cleveland find a fair resolution…Youngsters need two loving parents in their lives, and if a father has been deemed fit by the courts and is ready and willing to be a good parent, no one should be allowed to stand in his way…Child visitation works when parents behave as adults and consider what is in the best interests of their children. Let’s end the practice of allowing children to suffer collateral damage in the war between parents.

The Board also commends a Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court plan to “add a mediation program this fall that encourages parents to come up with a child-visitation plan early in divorce proceedings, before both sides are arguing bitterly over other issues” and calls on “all Ohio courts to put mothers and fathers on an equal plane from the start. Currently, the courts presume that single mothers automatically have sole custody. In an age when many fathers care for even the youngest infants, it’s hard to defend that presumption.”

The full editorial is Visitation rights must be enforced (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 7/17/10). To write a Letter to the Editor, click here.

Posted in Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group, Media, Shared Parenting, Single Fathers/Single Mothers

Dave Nash and Ken Thompson: Two Dads, Similar Quests

July 23rd, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Dave Nash is running. Ken Thompson is cycling. Nash is running across Canada. Thompson is an Australian cycling across Europe. Nash’s message is broad; Thompson’s is entirely personal.

But the two have much in common. They’re both about connecting fathers and children.

Dave Nash has vowed to set the Guiness Book of World Records for the fastest time by a male crossing Canada on foot. He’s doing that remarkable thing for one reason - to try to get Canadian MPs to see sense and finally pass bill C-422 that would establish in Canadian law the presumption of equally shared parenting post-divorce.

Here’s his website, and it’s a good one. Its title is “For the Sake of the Children,” and that’s no accident. That was the title of a 1998 report by an all-party committee to the Canadian Parliament. The report examined shared parenting after divorce and recommended that Parliament enact it into law. The committee’s report was filled with gender-balanced notions and even contained this:

there shall be no preference in favour of either parent solely on the basis of that parent’s gender.

What a concept. It recommended that mediation should come before litigation in divorce and custody cases and criticized the widespread use of false allegations of abuse, while retaining exceptions for legitimate cases of abuse or neglect. In short, both parties got together and recommended the type of legislation that would make possible wholesale changes to the way courts treat fathers and children in Canada.

Not surprisingly, it was ignored.

So Nash’s mission is the passage of MP Maurice Vellacott’s equal parenting bill. He gives visitors the opportunity to send a letter of support for bill C-422 to their elected representatives. I strongly urge our many Canadian readers to do so.

Meanwhile, Ken Thompson’s ex Melinda kidnapped their son in Australia and he’s bicycling all over Europe looking for the boy. The German magazine Viel Spass has an article about it, but I can’t seem to get a link to it. My German is worse than passable, but I managed to read the piece well enough. For example, I can reliably report that Melinda told Ken he would never see his five-year-old son Andrew again. Thompson has ridden some 3,500 kilometers throughout England, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium looking for Andrew with the help of police.

Originally, Thompson, 56, thought he had found the woman of his dreams in Melinda, now 48, but needless to say, that’s all changed. He’s alerted police, but thinks that Melinda and Andrew are in hiding with friends somewhere. Now, he’s doing his best to locate his son and swears “I will never give up my search for my son whom I love above all else.”

Here’s Thompson’s website with photos of Melinda and Andrew which will be a valuable resource for locating the boy.

Thompson’s is a lonely quest, aimed solely at regaining his son. Nash hopes to change the laws of an entire country. Thompson would be satisfied with a glimpse of Andrew. Nash stalks bigger prey. But both are traveling across broad expanses of territory for a similar goal - reuniting fathers and children.

We should congratulate and support them both.

Tags: C-422, Canada, Dave Nash, Ken Thompson, MP Maurice Vellacott
Posted in Family Law/Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Fatherhood, Parental Kidnappping, Shared Parenting

Scottish Police and Social Worker ‘Broke Almost All the Rules’ in Attempt to Frame Dad for Sexual Abuse of Daughter

July 23rd, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Here it is 2010. It’s been over 20 years since the McMartin Preschool, Fells Acres and other scandals sent innocent people to prison for sexual abuse of children that never took place. The primary weapon used against them was the manner in which children were induced to make up fictional abuse and then testify to it in court. Essentially, adults questioning the children were so imbued with the righteousness of their cause that they ignored the children’s persistent answers that no abuse had occurred. Through relentless suggestive and leading questioning, the adults got the answers they wanted.

And what they wanted was nothing less than the most lurid, salacious accounts imaginable. Small children tied to trees and sexually mutilated by adults wielding large carving knives was a favorite of the Fells Acres mob. Sexual perverts? You’d better believe it. But they weren’t the children’s teachers; they were their inquisitors.

By the early 1990s, social science and law enforcement had combined to produce protocols for the proper questioning of children in cases of alleged physical or sexual abuse. One of the signal features of Tonya Craft’s recent case is that those protocols weren’t used. That failure was a key element of Craft’s successful defense. It likely will also be a key element of her civil suit against her accusers.

The fact that the protocols for questioning children are so well established, makes this case out of Scotland all the more outrageous (The Scotsman, 7/16/10). To put it in a nutshell, a father was attempting to gain some form of custody of his two children. To combat his claim, his ex-partner’s attorney,

advised her of “dirty tricks” that she might use to secure residence with the children and cut off contact with the father completely.

And that’s just what the mother did. She reported to the court that the father had sexually abused their five-year-old daughter. An “investigation” ensued in which the child’s questioners did exactly what you’re not supposed to do when questioning a child.

The court found there was a catalogue of inappropriate direct questioning, including leading and closed questions.

According to the judgment, the interviews broke almost all the rules set out in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Protocol which is regarded as the gold standard of interviewing children.

Here’s how that “investigation” is now being characterized by the sheriff who’s been investigating the “investigators:”

He described the second interview as “one of the worst I have seen”.

He continued: “Dr R (a child psychologist] considered the interviewing of (the girl] to be worse than the interviewing of children that led to the Orkney inquiry because here it was so deliberate.

It alarmed them that all these years later there was direct questioning of the child because she was not saying what the interviewers wanted to hear. (The witness] was concerned at the driven nature of the interviews in drawing things out of the child and putting things in the child’s mind.”

The Orkney case happened in 1991 and, like our own McMartin Preschool and other cases, it spurred Scottish authorities to establish their own protocol for questioning children. It’s one of the signal features of this case that, nineteen years later, those protocols were forthrightly ignored.

And, as with all such cases, it’s not just the father who’s the victim of the zealots, it’s the little girl too. Here was a five-year-old who was coerced into saying the most outrageous and false things about her father whom she presumably loves. What did that do to her psyche? And, having finally knuckled under to her inquisitor’s demands, she was then subjected to a pelvic exam by a stranger. Nice.

A full investigation, including joint interviews with police and social workers, led to an intimate examination of the girl, a move the child psychologist said was “unjustified”; had been a “significant event” for a girl of that age; and one she was uncomfortable with.

Who were the sexual abusers here? It begins to look like the lawyer, the mother, the police and the social worker. The father, after all, was completely exonerated.

But there’s more - much more.

According to the sheriff investigating the matter and many other experts, the problem is not just in this one, isolated case; it’s system-wide.

In a devastating court judgment - which experts said highlighted “serious systemic problems” of malpractice throughout the child protection service - their conduct was described as worse than in the interviewing of children that led to the Orkney child abuse inquiry in 1991.

The country’s leading expert on the forensic interviewing of children said the case exposed a problem at the heart of child protection that was harming youngsters’ welfare…

In an article published in the Scots Law Times today, Dr David La Rooy of Abertay University and advocate John Halley said they wished to “highlight a serious systemic problem which is harming the welfare of children”.

They wrote: “The failures in this case are not dissimilar to the kinds of malpractice [we]regularly encounter in our respective practices in other cases of joint investigative interviewing of children in Scotland.”

The senior advocate said: “There is a problem that the social worker allocated to a case controls the narrative and I see frequently in child contact cases and child referrals, that they find themselves seeking to prove an allegation - often in a haphazard way - and that isn’t in the interests of justice or of the child.”

So what happened in the case reported on happens frequently. The result is that adults are accused of heinous crimes that never occurred and children are subjected to the type of abuse by social workers that took place here. And why? Not because they don’t know better. After all, the rules are written down in black and white. Anyone may read them.

But the type of zealotry that certain police officers and social workers bring to their perceived mission of proving the validity of any and all child abuse allegations regardless of how specious, apparently knows no bounds. In vain do the more responsible among them attempt to do the thing that is known to be right. The zealots will have none of it. What does it matter that the perils of their approach to child abuse allegations have been known for some 20 years? What does it matter if innocent people are jailed and children subjected to needless trauma and indignity? Why worry that their approach abuses the very children they’re supposed to protect, children who have not been previously abused?

Face it; there is a mindset that we see time and again in these situations. It holds that all allegations of child sexual abuse are to be believed, even in the absence of any evidence to support them. Does the child deny that he/she has been abused? No matter; he/she must be embarrassed, covering for a loved/feared adult, ignorant, unable to describe the abuse, etc. This mindset has no room for due process of law, for the presumption of innocence, for hearing the other side of the story. This mindset is unnaturally attracted to the idea of child sexual abuse.

It is not enough to establish rules for the proper questioning of children. That was done long ago and yet, by the very people who should know most about those rules and their proper application, they are ignored. If rules did the trick, the abuse of Scottish children by child “protective” authorities would not be ongoing. But it is.

No, rules are not the answer for these people. The answer is to fire the offenders and subject new hires to a rigorous vetting process that weeds out applicants with the mindset described above. Another answer is to subject them to civil suits for damages of the type Tonya Craft has filed. I don’t know if that remedy is available in Scotland, but it should be. It is in this country and can be an extremely effective deterrent.

And on that note, be advised that the sheriff investigating the case called for the two police officers and the social worker to be taken off of child abuse cases until they’re properly trained. The police department did just that,

But Edinburgh City Council insisted, despite having removed Ms Black from the case in question, it retained full confidence in the social worker and she remained on child protection duty.

A council spokesman said: “We are satisfied that our social worker was acting in the best interests of the child and they continue to work in child protection.

Thanks to Malcolm for the heads-up.

Tags: False Accusations, Scotland, The Scotsman
Posted in Child Protective Services, Child Abuse, False Accusations

‘When entering family court, fathers must leave their constitutional rights at the door…’

July 23rd, 2010 by Staff

worchetserholstein David Brasington, Board Secretary of Fathers and Families, recently published a newspaper column ‘Deadbeat dad’ raids unjust (7/1/10) in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Massachusetts’ third-largest newspaper.

Brasington wrote the piece in response to Worcester County Sheriff Guy Glodis’ recent announcement of what he called “the largest one day roundup of deadbeat dads in Worcester County history,” as his deputies marked Father’s Day by arresting 16 alleged offenders.

David Brasington

There have been many Letters to the Editor published concerning the piece. One of them is Murray Hunter’s More to story on ‘deadbeat’ dads (7/23/10). Hunter wrote:

When entering probate and family court, fathers must leave their constitutional rights at the door. The state removes any incentive for paying child support by: not enforcing visitation; guidelines that leave a father homeless; issuing restraining orders (209A and 51A) without evidentiary hearings; and treating fathers as criminals from the first time that they enter the court…

All these things cause the frustration, anger and high suicide rate among divorced fathers.

Read the full letter here.

In Brasington’s column he wrote:

The [child support] problem is particularly acute in Massachusetts. A published 2004 study by Arizona State University professors Sanford Braver and David Stockburger concluded that Massachusetts’ guidelines for determining how much child support an obligor will pay were among the highest in the United States. Since then, the state’s guidelines have actually been raised—in January, 2009, in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Moreover, Massachusetts charges 18% interest on child support arrearages—the highest interest rate in the nation. Most “deadbeat dads” are poor, but there are many reasons why even educated middle-class or formerly middle-class fathers can fall behind on child support.

That most of Glodis’ “deadbeats” are really dead broke is evident from looking at the “10 Most Wanted” child support evaders list put out by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, who worked closely with Glodis on the recent raids. The list is comprised of blue collar laborers who do low wage and often seasonal work. This is typical of the lists put out by many attorneys general and county sheriffs—the only surprise is that the Massachusetts DOR list actually does contain one educated professional.

To read the full column, click here.

Posted in Child Support, Fathers & Families Advocacy Group, Media