CA Weekly Does Cover Story on Problem
of Default Paternity Judgments

July 25, 2006

Jones as Ethan's father on welfare paperwork. The 1996 Welfare Reform Act requires women to name their child's fathers in order to receive public assistance--a law designed to recoup government welfare costs by garnishing the wages of 'deadbeat dads.'

"Under California law, Jones had six months from the time he learned about Ethan to contest paternity. Unaware of this deadline, and unable to afford an attorney, Jones missed his chance. To this day, Jones does not have any proof that he is Ethan's father...

"Jones' story began 12 years ago in Sacramento when he met a pretty blonde girl named Michelle at a coffee bar. The couple struck up a relationship, hanging out at coffee shops and shopping at the mall. After four months, Jones decided Michelle wasn't the one and ended the relationship.

"Four months later, Jones learned secondhand that Michelle was pregnant--and claiming that he was the father. Jones contacted Michelle, offered to help and began preparing for fatherhood. Several months later the couple had an argument that escalated to the point where Michelle told Jones that the baby was not his. She told him to leave, and he did.

"Two and a half years later, living in Santa Cruz, Jones was visited by a process server bearing a hefty bill--Jones recalls $20,000--for child support in arrears. The bill compelled Jones to begin paying, and ordered his appearance in court to sign or contest the declaration of paternity.

"'I was completely surprised because she told me it wasn't my kid,' said Jones. 'I thought I'd just call Michelle and straighten things out.'

"Jones hunted for Michelle, and did not attend his court hearing--a decision he regrets to this day. By not appearing for his hearing, the court registered Jones, by default judgment, as Ethan's father in the California child support services database. A few months later, Jones' six-month window to contest paternity closed.

"Unaware of the severity of these occurrences, Jones continued to search on his own for Michelle and his alleged son. He called old friends and acquaintances. He took trips to Sacramento to scour old hangouts and neighborhoods where she had lived. At other times, exacerbated and angry, he simply ignored the situation, as it continued to worsen. The government started to garnish wages from his paychecks."

Nice.

AB 252

The article also discusses AB 252, a paternity fraud law passed by the California legislature in 2004. The article notes:

"[AB 252] is a short-lived law that allows men named as fathers in default judgments two years from the law's enactment to contest paternity via a DNA test."

"...The window for A.B. 252 expires on Jan. 1, 2007...Glenn Sacks...who writes men's rights newspaper columns, says A.B. 252 is better than nothing, but not good enough.

"'The problem is that time is running out,' Sacks said. 'A certain amount of men have been going to court and getting the paternity test and are getting let off the hook. But a lot of guys don't know about this. What should be happening is child enforcement people should be sending notices to everyone saying there is this new law.'

"Child support services don't disseminate this information, say critics, because doing so could mean losing paying fathers, and hence federal funding.

"Indeed, states must name fathers in 90 percent of their child support welfare cases, or risk losing federal money. To comply, states have taken liberally to the use of 'default judgments' when the alleged father cannot be located.

"In Los Angeles County, nearly 80 percent of paternity establishments (in 2000-01) came from default judgments. In California as a whole, a whopping 70 percent were default judgments, according to midyear reports from the California Department of Child Support Services...

"Says Sacks about fathers named in default judgments, 'It might be the right name, it might be the wrong name, it might be someone she thinks is the father but is not sure. Also, it might be Juan Gomez and there are 11,000 Juan Gomezes, and then the correct person is not properly served, and then a default judgment is entered against him for 18 years of child support for a kid he's never met, and in many cases, may not even be his.'"

As an aside, one can see an example of my assertion that there has not been enough outreach on AB 252 from this article, which mentions in passing that "Jones learned of A.B. 252 while being interviewed for this article."

To send a Letter to the Editor about Who's Your Daddy?, click here.

Michael Robinson and the California Alliance for Families and Children worked on AB 252 and also helped prevent the possible depublication of the 2004 Navarro decision. They have done great work on the paternity fraud issue in California.
 

In my co-authored column Women Have a Choice--Men Should Too (Saginaw News, 4/2/06) I defended Matt Dubay's "Roe v. Wade for Men" lawsuit. Family law attorney Jeff Leving and I wrote:

"A 25-year-old computer programmer has done what has long been thought impossible--he has united the pro-choice feminist left and the pro-life right. Matt Dubay of Saginaw, Michigan is the plaintiff in a new lawsuit in which he seeks to wipe out the child support payments he is obligated to make to an ex-girlfriend. He says he had made it clear to her that he didn't want to be a father at this time, and that she got pregnant after she had repeatedly assured him that a physical condition rendered her sterile.

"National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy, conservative TV host Bill O'Reilly and numerous commentators from all sides have criticized Dubay's 'Roe v. Wade for Men' lawsuit. Yet when commentators make the arguments against choice for men--'if a man doesn't want to father a child he should have used birth control,' 'men need to take responsibility whether they wanted to have the child or not'--one can often detect a little confusion in their eyes, as if a part of them is whispering 'uh, wait a minute, but couldn't you say the same thing about women?'

Last week the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, dismissed Dubay's suit, calling it "frivolous, unreasonable, and without foundation and seeks to advance a theory that is foreign to the legal principles on which it is ostensibly based." To learn more, click here

I don't consider Dubay's conduct particularly admirable, and he ain't father of the year. However, he does have a good point. And it is also appropriate to question the conduct of his child's mother, Lauren Wells. Everyone is angry at Dubay for not wanting to pay child support, but why is it that nobody chastises Wells for bringing a child into such an unenviable situation?

The Real Solution for Choice for Men--the Male Birth Control Pill

Like most people, I didn't expect Dubay's suit to go anywhere. The lawsuit was essentially a publicity stunt, and a good one. As I've noted before, the real solution for Choice for Men is the Male Birth Control Pill. I discussed the issue last year in my column Do Women Really Want a Male Birth Control Pill? (Newsday, 4/11/05).

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who has clashed with fatherhood advocates on several occasions over the past few years, predictably rejoiced over Dubay's defeat. In his press release Cox Announces Victory for Michigan's Children in "Roe v Wade for Men" Case  he said:

"This is an important victory for the children of this state. Both parents have a clear responsibility for the support of their child, no matter the circumstances surrounding conception. The Court upheld that time-honored understanding today. Michigan will not become the state where parents can opt out of personal responsibility."

In early 2004 Cox launched a billboard campaign which featured a large pair of handcuffs, and boasted of jail time for fathers struggling with child support obligations. We did two His Side with Glenn Sacks shows on it--to listen, go to Michigan Fathers Under Siege (3/7/04) and Showdown in Motown: Michigan Dads vs. Leader of ACES (4/18/04).

That fall Cox announced an even more misguided and asinine billboard campaign--a contest wherein children would draw billboard designs critical of noncustodial fathers who have allegedly not paid child support. Fox News quoted me on the subject as follows:

"Custodial mothers are encouraged to coach their children to make designs critical of noncustodial parents behind on child support. And it doesn't take much imagination to figure out which noncustodial father many mothers will be encouraging their children to denounce."

I and others launched a Campaign to Help Michigan Activists Defeat Anti-Father Billboard Contest, and the Michigan activists did an excellent job protesting Cox's campaign. Cox pulled the contest in response to the protests. To listen to my radio call to action on the issue, click here To read it, click here.

I did two His Side with Glenn Sacks shows on the issue--see Michigan's Top Cop Tells Kids: Denounce Your Daddy (10/3/04) and Fathers Targeted by Cox Speak Out (10/10/04).

North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative Almost Has the Votes

Mitchell Sanderson, coordinator of the North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative, reports that they now have over 11,500 of the 12,844 signatures needed to place the initiative on the November ballot. Sanderson says they're shooting for 15,000, to cover mistakes or duplicate signatures. There is one week left, and more signature gatherers are needed. I urge all North Dakota residents over the age of 18 to call Sanderson at 701 331-0410 and volunteer for this important effort. Sanderson can be reached via email at info@ndspi.org. The initiative is sponsored by the North Dakota American Coalition for Fathers and Children affiliate.

Once the effort is qualified we will be looking for Sackson Horde members to man phone banks to help garner support for the Initiative in the November election.

PBS broadcast the anti-father documentary Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories on many of its affiliates last October. The film accused family courts of anti-mother bias, attacked Parental Alienation Syndrome, and portrayed divorced dads seeking shared custody as batterers and child molesters aiming to steal children from their mothers. The film was extremely one-sided, and presented a harmful and inaccurate view of divorce and child custody cases.

Working with Fathers and Families, the American Coalition for Fathers & Children and others, we organized a campaign against the film, and over 10,000 of you called or wrote PBS to protest. Our  demand was that "PBS provide fatherhood and shared parenting advocates a meaningful opportunity to present our side."

The campaign generated considerable media attention and controversy, and both PBS's ombudsman and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's ombudsman expressed sympathy with many of our aims.

In November we made the bombshell announcement that one of the women profiled as a heroic mom in the film had been found culpable of multiple acts of child abuse by a California Juvenile court. While the film claims that the mother lost custody of the daughter because of the father's legal machinations, in reality the Juvenile court transferred custody to the father to protect the girl.

In December PBS issued a statement saying they would commission an hour-long documentary to examine the issues raised in the film and by our campaign. PBS said that "plans call for the documentary to be produced and broadcast in Spring 2006" and that the "hour-long treatment of the subject will allow ample opportunity" for those of differing views to "have their perspectives shared, challenged and debated."  We commended PBS for understanding our concerns and taking action to address the situation.

I know little about filmmaking but I was skeptical that PBS could put together a quality film between December 20, 2005, when they made their announcement, and the Spring of 2006. In April PBS spent two days filming Fathers & Families' meetings and lobbying efforts, and informed us that the new film will air nationwide in the fall, in a primetime slot on a Sunday evening.

I will keep you informed as we learn more. To learn more about our campaign, click here.

Thanks again to all of those who participated.

According to Domestic violence can end your career from the military-oriented publication Black Hills Bandit (7/10/06):

"An Airman and his girlfriend return from a bar -- both have had a few drinks. As the conversation turns sour it leads to an argument, which becomes a scuffle.

"Police come, charges are pressed and the Airman goes to court. Feeling ashamed and apologetic he pleads guilty to simple assault -- a misdemeanor.

"He may have just unintentionally ended his military career.

"An extreme result? Perhaps.

"Something to be aware of? Absolutely.

"Due to the Lautenberg Amendment -- a 1996 change to the Gun Control Act (18 U.S.C. ß 992) -- it is a felony to possess a firearm if convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor. This law affects not only members who may carry a weapon, but supervisors who issue those weapons.

"If you're a military member, convicted of a domestic violence offense, you're prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition, no longer eligible to train with any firearms, or go on any deployments requiring possession of small arms. If your AFSC requires that you qualify to bear a firearm, your AFSC will be withdrawn and you will be discharged or may be reassigned to a non-firearm bearing position...If you are being charged with an act of domestic violence, understand the potential ramifications to your military career of a plea of guilty or no contest. Always talk to the Area Defense Counsel or civilian attorney before you make a decision that could sink your career."

This is a major problem for police officers and military servicemen. In my column VAWA Renewal Provides Opportunity to Stop Destruction of Innocent Cops' Careers (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 7/19/05) I discussed the case of police officers caught in this trap. I wrote:

"Shot in the line of duty. Twice awarded the Medal of Honor. Named Essex County, New Jersey Police Officer of the Year. A highly decorated officer with an impeccable record. For 22 years police officer Eric Washington battled criminals on the streets of East Orange, New Jersey. On January 21, 2001 Washington was ambushed and brought down--not by an ex-convict bent on revenge or a shadowy gunman, but instead by a false accusation of domestic violence...

"Former Torrance, California police officer John Brumbaugh recently won a seven-year legal battle after an ex-girlfriend falsely accused him of battery. Though Brumbaugh's conviction was overturned and his name finally cleared, the false charges cost him his career as a police officer and several hundred thousand dollars in legal expenses and lost wages and benefits."

My recent co-authored column North Dakota Shared Parenting Initiative Will Help Children of Divorce (Grand Forks Herald, 7/18/06) refutes many of the arguments made by the Initiative's numerous opponents. I co-authored the piece with Mike McCormick, Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children.

Opponents of Fatherhood, Shared Parenting Unite Against Us

As we noted in the column, "A misguided collection of federal and state officials, divorce attorneys and women's advocates have all united to oppose a simple proposition: children need both parents." In fact, our opponents formed the North Dakota Concerned Citizens for Children's Rights Committee specifically for the purpose of defeating us. Again, to support the effort, contact Mitchell Sanderson at 701 331-0410 or info@ndspi.org.

Los Angeles Foster Care Outrage--Father, Daughter Separated for 10 Years

According to Long-Separated Father, Daughter Sue L.A. County Foster Care Agency (Los Angeles Times, 7/17/06):

"There were plaudits all around last fall when a troubled teenager who spent 10 years in foster care was reunited with the father she had hardly known, thanks to what Los Angeles County supervisors described as a 'groundbreaking effort' at family unification.

"But the genesis of that heartwarming story is now the basis of a lawsuit alleging that Los Angeles County officials condemned Melinda Smith, now 17, to a decade of foster homes and institutions by failing to take the most basic steps to find her father.

"Melinda's parents were not married when she was born in 1988, but her father, Thomas Marion Smith, agreed to pay child support in 1989. He saw Melinda often, he said, but when she was about 4, her mother moved and left no forwarding address. Two years later, in 1995, after the county had received two complaints of suspected child abuse, Melinda's mother turned the girl over to foster care officials.

"Meanwhile, Thomas Smith continued to receive monthly bills and make support payments to the county for several years, while Melinda was -- unbeknownst to him -- being shuffled through a series of institutions and foster homes.

"The Department of Children and Family Services -- required by law to use 'due diligence' to locate a foster child's noncustodial parent -- never notified Smith that Melinda was in foster care and never gave him a chance to claim her, the lawsuit alleges.

"The department listed Smith's whereabouts as unknown in court documents filed a decade ago, even though department records indicate that Melinda's caseworker knew that Smith was paying child support through a separate county agency and his address was on file there.

"'He's a registered voter with a valid driver's license and an open child support case,' said his attorney, L. Wallace Pate. 'All they had to do, at any time during those 10 years, was pick up the phone and ask the L.A. County Child Support Services Department, 'Do you have a contact on this man?'

"Ultimately, Smith was located last spring by retired social worker Peggy Crist, who was brought in to help the Department of Children and Family Services launch a program to find permanent placements for teenagers who had spent years in foster care.

"After meeting Melinda -- who told Crist 'the most important thing she could think of...was that she wanted to find her father' -- it took the social worker one day to find Thomas Smith, who was living with his wife in a comfortable two-bedroom home in Pine Valley, east of San Diego.

"Last July, the father and daughter saw each other for the first time in more than 10 years. In November, Melinda left foster care and moved into her father's home...[for years] social workers misled Melinda and family court officials by portraying Smith as a 'deadbeat dad,' the lawsuit said, even though they knew he was paying child support and had received 'no notice that his daughter was being detained.'

"Melinda grew up in seven different foster care placements. For five years, beginning at the age of 7, she lived in a residential treatment center alongside older children convicted of criminal activity because social workers decided her emotional issues ruled out placement with foster parents.

"Agency records cited in the lawsuit detail a litany of behavior problems: She threw toys, punched windows and walls, and was frequently restrained by staff members when her tantrums escalated into kicking and biting attacks.

"When Melinda was 8, her social worker reported that she refused to speak, suffered from extreme depression and was so 'oppositional and defiant' that she was 'not appropriate for adoptive placement'...

"...Crist initiated her search [for Melinda's father on] May 16, 2005. By May 17, she had Thomas Smith's current address, along with his addresses for the last 15 years, the lawsuit said.

"She enlisted a San Diego social worker to visit Smith, who called Crist and said that he had tried unsuccessfully to find his daughter for years. All that time, he said, he thought she was living with her mother."

A Story Right Out of a Glenn Sacks Column...

As many of you have written to me, this Los Angeles Times story is a perfect example of the problem I laid out in my recent co-authored column New Report: Foster Care System Disregards Fathers (Boston Globe, 6/8/06). In that column family law attorney Jeff Leving and I wrote:

"When a mother and father are divorced or separated, and a child welfare agency removes the children from the mother's home for abuse or neglect, an offer of placement to the father, barring unfitness, should be automatic. Yet according to a new report by the Urban Institute, few fathers are able to reunite with their children, who are instead pushed into the foster care system.

"...The report contains a shocking finding: when fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children with their fathers in only 8% of cases.

"All fit parents have a fundamental right to raise their own children without state interference. Moreover, fathers can offer their children a sense of permanence, security and emotional support that a foster family (or a succession of foster care placements) cannot provide.

"Fathers are also a much better source of long-term resources and sponsorship. Many foster children are pushed out of their homes and into a tenuous existence when they turn 18 and the foster parents no longer receive state subsidies...

"Many absent fathers are not a part of their children's lives because mothers have driven them out by denying visitation, moving far away or employing spurious abuse charges. Some fathers only find out that their children have been put in foster care when they are hit for child support to repay the state's costs. Many had no way of knowing that their children were in peril. Others were brushed aside by authorities when they asserted that their children were being abused.

"For example, in one highly-publicized case, seven year-old Kaili Warrington-Sims was starved down to 29 pounds and imprisoned in a bedroom by her mother and her mother's live-in boyfriend before being rescued by her father, Daniel Sims. The couple had spirited the girl around New York state and then to Florida to deny Sims access. Sims struggled through a maze of bureaucratic indifference and hostility to get to his daughter. He arrived just in time--the girl would have only lived a few more weeks in her condition.

"[The report] makes it clear that many child welfare workers treat fathers as an afterthought. The report found that even when a caseworker had been in contact with a child's father, the caseworker was still five times less likely to know basic information about the father than about the mother. And 20% of the fathers whose identity and location were known by the child welfare agencies from the opening of the case were never even contacted.

"These policies are seriously misguided. When a mother is deemed unfit to care for her children, dad shouldn't be just one option out of many. He should be first in line."

Women's eNews' Man-Bashing Cartoon

Feminists fiercely resent criticism of women's behavior, or attempts to limit women's "freedoms." In this Women's eNews cartoon, a man is taken to task for criticizing a woman for having a baby at age 60. However, such criticisms are borne not of a desire to limit women but instead to protect children. Spin it how you want, but there's no way you can tell me that a woman having a baby at age 60 is a good idea. The cartoon instead attempts to shift attention (and blame) to the man's behavior because he is in a relationship with a younger woman.

While we're on the subject, the stereotype of older men dumping their wives for younger women is largely a myth. In my co-authored column The Rise in 'Gray Divorce': It's Always Hubby's Fault (Houston Chronicle, 2/19/06) family law attorney Jeff Leving and I wrote:

"In both the United States and Japan, divorce among older couples is on the rise. The American Association of Retired Persons detailed the phenomenon among American seniors in a study last year, and Japan's wave of gray divorce is expected to swell into a deluge, since Japanese women will soon be legally able to claim half of their husbands' retirement pensions.

"There are various explanations for the trend but media commentators agree on one thing--when the husband divorces his wife, it's hubby's fault. When the wife divorces her husband, well, it's hubby's fault too.

"In a recent New York Times article Terry Martin Hekker, whose husband of 40 years divorced her, criticizes what she and others in the media are calling a trend: selfish older men dumping their wives for younger women...[however] the stereotype of the husband trading in his wife for a younger model is by and large a myth. The women in the AARP study were 60% more likely to claim that they ended their marriages than the men were, and men were almost twice as likely as women to say that they never saw their divorces coming. In contrast to the Porsche and trophy wife stereotype, the AARP study found that these divorced men had many serious concerns, high among them their fear of losing touch with their children after their divorces."

To express your view of the cartoon, write to Women's eNews at editors@womensenews.org.

Not Entirely a Myth...

Of course, while the stereotype of older men dumping their wives for younger women is largely a myth, it's not entirely a myth. We wrote:

"This is not to say that there's no validity to women's complaints. Radio host Howard Stern recently interviewed television commentator Geraldo Rivera, who in 2003 married a woman less than half his age. Stern was only half-joking when he asked 'aren't you worried about your future? Think of it--when you're 75, you're going to be stuck married to a 45 year-old woman.'

"In this area biology dictates much--if men found 60-year-old women as attractive as they found 30 year-olds, the human race would have died out a long time ago. Yet marriages break up for a variety of reasons, most of them having little to do with male perfidy. There's a big distinction between dumping your wife for a younger woman, and pursuing a relationship with a younger woman after your marriage has ended."

Baseball, Domestic Violence, and Me & Tawny Kitaen

After my comments last week on baseball and domestic violence--see The Brett Myers Saga: Baseball Player Beats Wife on Boston Street and the following two entries--several of your wrote to me about the case of former pitcher Chuck Finley, who was a victim of domestic violence perpetrated by his then-wife, actress Tawny Kitaen.

Kitaen was arrested in April of 2002 for attacking Finley as he was driving the couple home. Police officers reported seeing abrasions and scrapes on Finley's body after Kitaen had allegedly kicked Finley repeatedly with her high-heeled shoes, grabbed his ear and twisted it, and put her foot on top of his, forcing the accelerator to the floor. After Kitaen's arrest, Finley was granted temporary custody of their two daughters, then ages nine and three.    

Pam Sheek, a 51 year-old nanny who has cared for the Finley children for six years, made a sworn declaration shortly afterward stating that Kitaen has a severe prescription drug addiction and that her erratic and abusive behavior has often put the children at risk. She described an incident in March 2002 when Kitaen turned on the gas in the gas fireplace log without lighting it and then called the two children to come into bed with her to go to sleep. Sheek, suspicious, entered the room and, smelling the gas, turned off the fireplace, probably saving the lives of both Kitaen and her children.

In September of 2003 Kitaen went on the Howard Stern Show and denied everything, claiming that she was the victim of abuse, and that she was getting railroaded. I criticized her for this on His Side with Glenn Sacks, and sure enough I got a letter from Kitaen the next week, telling me that I was wrong, irresponsible, unfair to her, etc.

A little while afterwards I was amazed but not surprised to see that Inside Edition did an interview exclusive with Kitaen shortly after the Stern Show, and in it Kitaen admitted that she had attacked Finley.

Kitaen's letter of apology to me must have gotten lost in the mail...

From Bitter Father Wins Ruling: Ex-Fiancee Ordered To Pay Damages (Hartford Courant, 7/2/06):

"A Superior Court judge has awarded $3.5 million in damages to a local man, saying his former fiancee falsely accused him of sexually abusing their daughter during a bitter custody dispute five years ago.

"It was a bittersweet victory for Ajai Bhatia, who lost his $100,000-a-year engineering job and his house, and spent tens of thousands of dollars in a tumultuous legal battle to clear his name.

"Bhatia was escorted out of his engineering job at the Shelton office of Pitney-Bowes in handcuffs, accused of being a pedophile, on Dec. 26, 2001. He spent four days in jail. He endured a long criminal trial, was acquitted of sexual assault charges resulting from his fiancee's complaint and has been the subject of multiple child-abuse investigations involving the state Department of Children and Families.

"But the whopping monetary award is little solace to Bhatia, who acknowledges that he will probably never recover anywhere near that amount from his former fiancee, Marlene Debek of Bridgeport. And he remains distraught over the damage the accusations have caused in his relationship with his daughter, now 9...

"After Bhatia was acquitted of the criminal charges in 2003, he filed a malicious prosecution lawsuit against Debek. Connecticut law allows individuals to sue their accusers in a criminal matter if they can prove the accusation was baseless and made with malice.

"In a ruling in that lawsuit earlier this month, Superior Court Judge Julia L. Aurigemma found that Debek had no probable cause to accuse Bhatia of a crime.

"'She did so with malice in that her motive was to harm the plaintiff and keep him from having any contact with their daughter,' Aurigemma wrote. 'In the custody battle, Ms. Debek used the claim of sexual abuse as the final weapon in her arsenal against Mr. Bhatia when her other weapons, false-claims of physical violence and danger of [his] flight to India, were not effective.'

"Aurigemma awarded Bhatia $2.5 million in damages for his emotional distress, loss of reputation and humiliation, which the judge said was 'staggering.'"

A few comments:

1) I salute this ruling as a nice first step, but where is the criminal prosecution of Debek? Debek belongs in prison for her crime, a minimum of several years. Her cellmate should be Bridget Marks. Yet her only punishment is a monetary judgment which she'll never pay anyway.

2) Contrast judge Aurigemma's wise words with the gigantic moral failure of New York courts and New York media in the Marks case. Marks gained notoriety in 2004 when she lost custody of her twin four year-old daughters to John Aylsworth, her ex-boyfriend. Marks alleged that Aylsworth had sexually abused both daughters during a supervised visitation. The neutral experts appointed by the court concluded that Marks' allegations were false, and that Marks had coached the girls to make statements corroborating her charges. All three experts recommended to the court that custody be awarded to the father, and Family Court Judge Arlene Goldberg gave custody to Aylsworth.

Last year a New York Appellate court ruled that Bridget Marks did in fact coach her 5 year-old twin girls to make false allegations of sexual molestation against their father--and then granted her sole custody of the girls! At the time I labeled it "one of the most stunning and unconscionable court rulings of our time." While Marks denies any wrong doing, every judge who has heard this case--all five--have concluded that Marks coached the girls to make the false allegations. The fact that Marks was still awarded sole custody of her daughters speaks volumes about the anti-father bias of the family court system.

In contrast to the New York Appellate court--which evidently doesn't think false allegations are a big deal--and the New York and national media, which was solidly behind Marks, in this case Judge Aurigemma wrote:

"It is difficult to imagine anything worse than being falsely accused of sexually assaulting your own child and having the accuser brainwash the child into believing the false allegations."

Well said.

3) I'm not crazy about the Courant's headline for the story, either--Bitter Father Wins Ruling. Like how could anyone imagine a father being bitter at a mother over her behavior in family court... 

Of all the bias and nonsense on gender issues that has pervaded our culture over the past 35 years, perhaps none are more ludicrous than the pretense that men and only men are responsible for the explosion of out-of-wedlock births. In my column Do Women Really Want a Male Birth Control Pill? (Newsday, 4/11/05) I wrote:

"While most women are responsible and want to have children with a willing, committed partner, studies show that lack of reproductive control can be a major problem for men today. For example, the National Scruples and Lies Survey 2004 polled 5,000 women in the United Kingdom for That's Life! magazine. According to that survey, 42% of women claim they would lie about contraception in order to get pregnant, regardless of the wishes of their partners.

"Jo Checkley, the editor of That's Life!, is correct when she says 'to deliberately get pregnant when your partner doesn't want a baby is playing Russian roulette with other people's lives.'

"According to research conducted by Joyce Abma of the National Center for Health Statistics and Linda Piccinino of Cornell University, over a million American births each year result from pregnancies which men did not intend."

I saw an interesting example of this the other day while reading Tom Ellis' The Rantings of a Single Male: Losing Patience with Feminism, Political Correctness... and Basically Everything. It concerns his ex-girlfriend Petra and speaks volumes about the way women are often responsible for out-of-wedlock births and fatherlessness. Ellis writes:

"A few years later Petra empowered herself again. I was in Munich so I stopped by to say hello. I knew what to expect of her by that time and knew she wanted a child, so I asked her if she was pregnant. She was. In fact, the tests had just come back, and I was the first person to find out. Not even her boyfriend knew. I got the straight story before she had a chance to construct the fictional version. Her 40-year-old boyfriend was divorced and already had three children from his first marriage and didn't want more. He could barely afford child support and lived alone in a small apartment. None of this mattered to Petra.

"She had a plan.

"She went off the pill without informing him. She thought since she was already 36 it would take a few tries, so she wanted to get started. She figured there was no need to tell the guy she was off the pill because she would take complete responsibility for the child if she got pregnant. It was her idea alone, she said. She would not ask for his help at all. It wouldn't be fair, since he didn't want more children. She would raise the kid by herself. After all, a father is only necessary as a means of financial support, and she wouldn't need him for that. Her practice in holistic medicine would cover it. She wouldn't even ask for assistance from the government. Petra got knocked up on the first try. I asked her why she would choose a man to father her child who didn't want children. What right did she have to deliberately go against his wishes? Why had she not even asked me? I may have been willing to contribute more than just the required raw material. She responded in the same way as all women when confronted with their selfish and irresponsible behavior. She cried. I never felt so free, being able to walk away from the impending dilemma.

"In the letters I received from her that year, she described how furious the guy was. I don't know exactly how she spun it, but it must have been clear to him that her pregnancy was the result of a deliberate act. He refused to speak to her again. By this time, Petra had her official story ready. She had completely forgotten about the total responsibility she was going to assume. Now she was angry at him for not wanting to acknowledge he had 'fathered' the child. She put his name on the birth certificate and forced him to pay child support. The pregnancy had been 'unexpected,' and what an awful man he was for not wanting to be a part of his child's life. 'How can men do that?' she asked. She was also getting some kind of aid from the German government, which she complained was not enough.

Ellis reports that five years later he visited Petra in Munich again, writing "I met her daughter Gabrielle, who was simply adorable...this playful 4-year-old child. She had never met her father."

According to Teenage mothers see pregnancy as a 'career move' (The Independent, 7/16/06):

"An extensive study published today reveals that girls as young as 13 are making a career choice' by deciding to have children, since they see parenting as preferable to working in a dead-end job.

"The findings from the Trust for the Study of Adolescence challenges the assumption that schoolgirl mothers are all irresponsible adolescents who are ignorant about using contraception. The revelation that teenage girls are actively choosing motherhood is backed up by official figures obtained by this paper which show that nearly a quarter of pregnancies to under 18 are second children...

"interviewees were well aware how to protect against pregnancy and were strongly anti-abortion. Nearly three-quarters were in steady relationships with the father of their child. Only a handful of girls said they regretted getting pregnant."

Read the full article here In the US when these voluntary teen pregnancies occur, boys are often turned into child support debtors, usually to repay the state for the welfare costs the mother has accrued. As usual in family law, it's her choice--and his responsibility. 

Best Wishes,
Glenn Sacks
GlennSacks.com
 

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