North Dakota Shared Parenting Battle; Hawking  to Pay Huge Divorce Settlement to His Abuser

October 24, 2006

No Jail Time for Infanticide

"A woman who started a fire which killed her baby boy has been sentenced to three years probation. Danielle Wails, 22, was on trial for murdering little Alexander Lee but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of infanticide.

"She said she used her tongue to dial 999 after she was bound by the wrist by attackers but officers could find no sign of a break-in and eventually Wails admitted she had started the fire herself and responsible for her son's death.

"Paul Sloan QC, prosecuting, told the court: 'She has admitted infanticide on the basis that at the time the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of not having fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child.'

"Two psychiatrists are of the opinion that the balance of her mind was disturbed."

Interesting that she was too mentally ill to be expected to care for her baby without murdering him but not too mentally ill to weave an elaborate plot to try to cover up her crime and deceive the police. Men's activist Jeremy Swanson is correct in a recent email he sent in which he wrote "Imagine the little boy's last seconds on earth before the fire consumed him. He would have reached for his Mother and called her name."

Comparing the severity of sentences is always tricky, particularly across state lines or, in this case, international boundaries. However, for what little it's worth, in reading of this case--where a woman who intentionally set a fire in order to kill her baby receives a "sentence" of a whopping 3 years probation--I couldn't help but think of the case of Texas teenager Gerardo Flores. In my column Alito and the Rights of Men (Los Angeles Times, 11/1/05) I wrote:

"Fetal protection laws now severely punish anyone who harms a fetus--except for mom. A Texas teenager named Gerardo Flores is now serving life in prison for the death of two fetuses even though his former girlfriend, Erica Basoria, acknowledged asking him to help end her pregnancy. According to Basoria, four months into her pregnancy she regretted not getting an abortion and punched herself in the stomach while Flores stepped on her stomach to induce a miscarriage. Basoria, who stood by Flores and cried when he was sentenced, could not be prosecuted because of her legal right to abortion."

My recent co-authored column, America's Father Hunger (World Net Daily, 10/13/06), discusses Tim Russert's new book Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons. In 2004, Russert published Big Russ and Me about his father, and says he received an "avalanche" of letters from men and women who wanted to tell him about their own dads. Wisdom is largely a sampling of those 60,000 letters, and the book is a surprise runaway hit. Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers & Children, and I wrote:

"Are fathers irrelevant? Are they really the useless buffoons we see on TV? The irresponsible deadbeats the local DA says they are? The controlling abusers we see in domestic violence PSAs?

"That's not the way Tim Russert's readers see them...

"In heartwarming and heart-wrenching stories, Russert's readers remember their fathers as strong, devoted and honorable. In the chapter 'Daddy's Girl,' one woman tells Russert that she was her 'father's princess,' and explains 'growing up in a rural area of the Deep South could have been a harsh experience for a little black girl, but I was insulated by his love and tenderness.'

"Another 'Daddy's Girl' writes:

"'When I was a little girl and my father put me to bed...I had a litany of things I went through every night. 'Can I call you if I need anything?...Can I call you if I get scared?'...He would listen and say yes after each one, and I would fall asleep, secure that I was completely loved and cared for...'

"Perhaps the book's most striking feature is the overwhelming outpouring of love from women towards their fathers.

"The Russert dads also knew when to take a stand. One letter writer remembers:

"'By 1963, white flight was beginning to transform our neighborhood, and before long the first African American child took a seat in my Catholic school classroom. Birthday parties were about the biggest social events a third-grader had to look forward to, and I was delighted to receive an invitation to her party. Then I learned that none of my friends were going. I remember being confused by that, because we all went to one another's parties. But if my friends weren't going to this one, I wasn't going to go either, especially when they seemed convinced that there was something wrong with the very idea.'

"'...Dad put his foot down and told me that, like it or not, I was going to that party. He took me to the five-and-dime and we bought a card and a gift. The day of the party, he took me by the hand and we walked the three or four blocks to the girl's apartment. My whining and complaining were useless, and it wasn't until many years later that I understood why he made me go. He knew why none of my friends was there, and he wanted no part of it. No child of his was going to contribute to the hurt that would surely be felt by a little girl sitting at an empty birthday table."

Another says:

"'My dad's second job was serving in the New Jersey National Guard...In the summer of 1967, his Guard unit was sent to Newark, where a riot had erupted and the police were having trouble containing it...When he died a few years ago, we had both his memorial service and his wake in a local restaurant...one of dad's old guard buddies, Sergeant 'Jeep' MacAdams, grabbed the sleeve of my suit...Jeep rasped into my ear...'You know we were in Newark during the riots of 'sixty-seven. It was a combat situation, let me tell you. I want you to know what an excellent and brave soldier your old man was. He was a true leader.'

"'We were called to a building that the state police had their machine guns trained on. They said they needed backup because there were rioters in the building. They told us to help them take this position with tear gas, machine guns, grenades, whatever.'

"'Your dad challenged the state cops from the get-go. He asked them what made them think there were no innocent civilians inside the position. The state police were zealous, you see. They had already fired shots, and they wanted us to fire warning shots, but your dad asked them to please hold their fire. Then he volunteered to assess the situation. He stayed low and got to the big door of the building, which was locked, and he calmly announced, 'I'm with the New Jersey National Guard and I'm here to lead you to safety. Everything will be ok. Follow me.'

"'Suddenly, about twenty-five black high school kids came out of the building behind him, shaking and crying. Your dad was comforting them with one hand and giving the 'hold your fire' sign with the other. He asked if they needed water or food...If he hadn't gotten involved, I'm sure there would have been bloodshed, if not death.'

"This is what I learned for the first time at my dad's memorial service. Could I be more proud of him had he won the Congressional Medal of Honor? I don't think so."

"Wisdom's significance goes far beyond that of a sentimental journey. It's success is a testament to the hunger so many Americans feel for what recent generations have lost--their fathers. The book's letters are overwhelmingly from baby boomers--perhaps the last generation of Americans who could ever be reasonably confident that they'd have a father in their lives."

Partly because the mainstream media has given Wisdom of Our Fathers very little attention, and partly because I'm dense, I was not aware of the book's success until my friend Al Rantel, radio talk show host at KABC AM 790 in Los Angeles, contacted me about discussing the book on his show. To listen to our discussion of the book and of the crisis in American fatherhood, click here.

I am a great admirer of the English fathers' group Fathers 4 Justice and its founder Matt O'Connor. Fathers 4 Justice recently scored another success. According to this article:

"A Fathers for Justice campaigner has promised the 'fight will continue' after a jury decided a rooftop protest at the Palace of Westminster had not broken the law.

"Farmer Guy Harrison, who spent four-and-a-half hours perched on a spire, was mobbed by cheering supporters as he left the courtroom.

"He staged the effort to spotlight his fight for access to a nine-year-old daughter he had not seen for over five years.

"The father-of-one said his acquittal on a public nuisance charge meant, 'we have won a battle.'

"'But we have not won the war and the fight will continue.'"

"London's Southwark Crown Court heard the prosecution brand his demonstration as nothing more than 'an illegitimate and selfish' stunt.

"Ian Pattern, prosecuting, claimed the incident on September 27 last year risked Harrison's life, forced police to seal off Westminster Hall, tied up ambulance and fire brigade crews, and endangered others from possible falling masonry.

"But the 39-year-old, an amateur mountaineer, assured jurors his safety was never an issue, no one else was put at risk, and that the police response amounted to an over reaction.

"He also argued that the route he followed to the roof exposed a serious security loophole terrorists could have taken advantage of.

"In the event the seven women and five men trying him took just over five-hours to decide he had done nothing wrong."

I never hear anyone else say it, so I guess I'm the only one who thinks this way, but I can't describe how amazed and appalled I am that Gil Garcetti is the president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission. As Los Angeles District Attorney Garcetti treated California men and fathers so horribly that even arch-feminist attorney Gloria Allred protested the actions of his office.

Garcetti is regularly in the news here in Los Angeles for his role as an ethicist, such as in this recent Los Angeles Daily News article. With a straight face reporters quote Garcetti on "ethics" though, as I explained in my co-authored column Some Progress for California Fathers, but Still a Long Way to Go (Pasadena Star-News & Affiliated Papers, Daily Breeze [Los Angeles], 6/18/06), Garcetti is not morally capable of holding the office of dog catcher, much less President of the Los Angeles City Commission on Ethics. I wrote:

"In 1998 then-Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti declared a 'get tough' campaign against so-called 'deadbeat dads,' sending out thousands of summonses for paternity cases. The men were given only 30 days to respond.

"Many of the summonses targeted the wrong men, and many never reached the intended parties. Eighty percent of Garcetti's paternity judgments were made by default, locking the men into 18 years of child support. Many took DNA tests proving that they were not the fathers of the children they now had to take second jobs to support. Others were assigned huge support arrearages by mistake. Many became unable to support their own children. Some of their marriages broke up, and some of the men landed in jail.

"Garcetti created so much chaos and heartache that even diehard feminist attorney Gloria Allred protested. Allred, who has perhaps done more than anybody to promote the phrase and concept of 'deadbeat dads,' called Garcetti's office 'an organization without a heart, without any compassion, and without a sense of priorities...[it's] a system run amok.''

"Allred represented an impoverished, wheelchair-bound woman named Mary Smith, who Garcetti's office erroneously billed for $24,000 in child support. In a panic Smith called Allred, who agreed to handle the case pro bono. Allred made repeated calls to Garcetti's office to resolve the case but did not receive any response. She noted, 'Talk about trying to get blood out of a stone.'

"The Los Angeles Times described the men targeted by Garcetti as 'overwhelmingly blue-collar workers who ride the bus or drive aging cars, showing up for court in jeans and a work shirt.' According to the Times:

"The men almost always come to court alone because they cannot afford counsel. It can take months to get an appointment with the county-sponsored, free paralegal service."

"When they arrive in court, many are already awash in child support debt. Their failures to answer summonses routinely lead to court orders--even if the summonses never reached them.

"From that point on they are in trouble, with bills for delinquent child support quickly reaching thousands of dollars. But sometimes the accuracy of those bills cannot be relied upon.

"'People get the bills and they're almost always wrong,' said one prosecutor. 'It's like a bank putting in a hypothetical balance instead of putting in your real balance'... 

"'So pervasive are the mistakes that even the courts have lost confidence in the government's accounting...[the men targeted] square off against an office with dozens of prosecutors, who...are pressured by their bosses to speed cases through to secure more collections.'

"Jackie Myers, a former Deputy District Attorney under Garcetti, said that she quit her job because 'we were being told to do unethical, very unethical things.'

"Garcetti later acknowledged that many of the men had been mistakenly targeted but refused to relent, instead blaming the men for not responding within 30 days. 'The law is the law,' he told CBS's Bernard Goldberg. Incredibly, in 2002 Garcetti was appointed to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission."

Garcetti's appointment to the ethics commission is also sadly indicative of the weakness of our movement.

I sometimes get letters from custodial dads who complain to me that their exes aren't paying their child support. This isn't surprising--as I've mentioned in the past, according to US Census data, noncustodial mothers are 20% more likely to default on their child support obligations than noncustodial fathers. This is despite the fact that noncustodial mothers are less likely to be required to pay child support, and those with support obligations are asked to pay a lower percentage of their income in child support than noncustodial fathers. Partly because of this, custodial fathers are three and a half times as likely to work long work weeks as custodial mothers.

In my column Not the Era of the Deadbeat Dad but the Era of the Hero Father (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 6/19/05) I noted:

"While divorced dads are unfairly stigmatized as stingy, some noncustodial fathers raise their children in their homes but still pay child support to the children's mothers. Many others never ask for child support. In the face of a family court system which usually grants mothers a monopoly of power over children, these fathers must buy or rent their children back. When mothers allow their children to live with their fathers--or send them there because they've become unruly or inconvenient--fathers often won't  challenge custodial and financial arrangements because they fear doing so will mean they'll be pushed out of their children's lives. "

When asked my advice in these situations, I sometimes tell fathers that if they can live without the money it's sometimes best to not bother trying to get child support, for the following reasons:

1) the ex probably won't pay anyway

2) if she does, it won't be much

3) asking for the support might enrage her--as family law attorney Lisa Scott says, "you've never heard complaints about paying child support until it's a woman who has to pay it."

4) Once she's enraged, the odds are that she's going to make a false accusation against you and cause you far more misery than any benefit you'd get from her child support.

I suppose the dads to whom I've given this advice could accuse me of being generous with their money, but the other day I received a letter which provides a classic example of what can happen when a custodial dad asks for child support:

"I am writing you on behalf of my brother. He is the custodial parent to his 8 year old special needs son, which he was granted after their divorce over 5 years ago. And until he filed for child support against the mother only 2 years ago, he never had any problems out of her. Her interest in her son was lackluster at best. Now that she has been order to pay child support she is trying to make his life a living hell.

"She is constantly calling CPS and the local police department to make accusations of physical abuse against the child that are never substantiated. But each time he has to defend himself, especially for CPS. The local police normally ask her for proof which she is never able to provide and they dismiss the report, but CPS is always requiring him to come there for interviews, setting him up for counseling, and also notating these events in a file that has to be maintained because reports are being made.

"This is so devastating to him because he's having to take time off from work, which he really can't afford to do. It seems so endless is there anything that he can do to put a stop to this madness. Any legal way to prevent her or CPS from pulling him into this craziness all because she is the WOMAN and there is a more sympathetic ear even if she's NOT the custodial parent."

Still want to ask for that child support, dad? 

One of my readers is a social worker who has an interesting, insider's perspective on domestic violence and child abuse. He wrote me after reading my columns on AB 2051. The social worker wrote:

"I have been a child protection investigator and currently work in a capacity where I do therapy with families in crisis, usually dealing with CPS in some way. I do not have statistics but a majority of abuse/neglect cases are related to behaviors of women, either in picking loser guys for boyfriends or they are the perpetrators.

"One of the worst abuse investigations I ever did the mother was the perpetrator, and a few years ago I worked a case where the mother beat her 4 year old daughter to death. The child had so many marks you could hardly find a place not marked-bruised, cut, or scraped.

"Regarding domestic violence, I agree that men are usually the perpetrators. However, there are many cases where the men are arrested for simply trying to get way from the wife/girlfriend punching or throwing things at him. I also often run into cases where a woman has lied about what she has said to police to keep a father away from his children in divorce/separation cases. It is a very common tactic in divorces, and in most cases the courts will take what the woman says as fact when there is absolutely no truth in the accusations. And protective orders are issued with false allegations, which results in supervised visitation or no visitation between fathers and their children, or no chance for custody of the children.

"Some of these issues were quite a wake-up call for me because I used to believe all the stories about abused women and abuse/neglect issues with fathers/men as the perps. However, life experience has shown me that women are just as capable as men to be violent and that women are the perpetrators much more often than people want to believe. It is a part of society that seems to escape having the truth exposed. I had to learn to take each case and start from the beginning and not to assume a thing.

"Kids also learn, in abuse cases, that they can lie about allegations against parents to get them into trouble. Kids learn to behave from their parents (or primary caregivers), so it is any wonder why this problem is increasing?

"Domestic violence courts are a joke because the people/alleged victims take it that way. Protective orders are filed and then dropped when they want to make up with the alleged perp. I have been to too many DV courts where women joke around talking about how they are going to show their man what they can do."

Glenn Appears on the Lynne Breidenbach Show

I discussed my new co-authored column Are Single Mothers the 'New American Family?' (World Net Daily, 9/28/06) on the nationally-syndicated Lynne Breidenbach Show on October 11, 2006.

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com

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