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FATHERS DAY 2000: Fathers Go To Washington!
WHY IS DADDY IN JAIL?: For the Crime of Wanting To See His Child
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RICHMOND VIRGINIA SUPPORT
FAMILY@RICHMOND.NET: Family
Resolution Council
SOMEDAY HOLLYWOOD WILL make a movie of this: A
father is sentenced to prison for wanting to take his son to a ballgame.
Up against him is his ex-wife, the legal system, and various women's
groups, all declaring him a deadbeat, and a batterer, all of it untrue.
But as a result, he's in a cell while his ex and her new boyfriend take
little Johnny to a Mets game.
Improbable? Only in the sense that Hollywood would
ever make such a movie. Unfortunately, it's an all too real scenario that
is taking place everyday across the country.
THE CASE OF a man we'll call Alan is fairly typical.
Without warning Alan came home one day to find his apartment cleaned out.
His wife and two-year-old girl were gone. Shortly afterwards Alan was
summoned to court as a "defendant," was ordered to stay away from his
daughter most of the time and to begin making child support payments. His
two-hour, thrice-weekly visits with his daughter were supervised and she
was not allowed to stay with him overnight, since his wife alleged that he
was dangerous and would kidnap her. The accusations eventually proved
groundless, and the supervision terminated. After a year Alan was
permitted one overnight visit with his daughter per week. His wife,
meanwhile, was never charged with making false accusations nor has the
fabrication counted against her in the custody proceedings. Various
experts testified that Alan is no danger whatever to his daughter and that
he is a devoted and loving father. All these findings were ignored by the
courts. More than four years after his wife left, the child remains with
her. He has spent a $160,000 inheritance on legal fees, not counting about
40 percent of his income for child support, and now lives hand-to-mouth.
Then there's Bruce, who was a truck driver in Boston
and who came home one day to find his things on the street, the locks on
his doors changed, and his wife's new boyfriend already moved in. Angry
and bewildered, Bruce kicked in the door and began shouting. (He did not
strike anyone.) His wife called the police, who arrived and took Bruce
away in handcuffs. She got a restraining order preventing any contact with
his three children. When his son was hospitalized with an illness, he was
not allowed to visit. Eventually Bruce was allowed to see his children at
a supervised visitation center with his wife and her boyfriend present in
the next room.
Another man, Tom, tells of how he was living with
his wife in California, where they were raising their three children as
vegetarians like themselves. He thought she was content until one day,
when she told him she wanted to move back to her native Virginia. He
agreed to the move. After establishing residency in Virginia, however, she
left with the children, and he was hauled into court.
Then, after an injury left him without an adequate
income he found himself in jail for failure to pay child support.
Eventually he relocated in the Washington area to find work. Tom now
drives three hours each way to get his children from his wife's place in
Virginia, twice every other weekend. His ex-wife subsequently gave up her
vegetarianism, and obtained a court order preventing him from discussing
diet with his children. His children are used as informers to monitor his
compliance, and their relationship is now strained.
More extreme cases exist than those of Alan, Bruce,
and Tom. Nevertheless these men are angry. Alan describes the system as a
legal "child-kidnapping and extortion racket". Even more though, they are
in shock. Like virtually all men in their position, none realized that
such a thing could happen until it did. Even after they realized the full
horror of their situation, they remained captive to the social attitudes
and public prejudices of which he had become a victim.
Tom now belongs to a fathers' group that meets in
Arlington, Virginia. Almost every member has a similarly painful story.
Some have not seen their children in years. The children of a few will no
longer speak to them. Others regularly drive hundreds of miles to visit
their children in hotels or visitation centers. Several with no previous
criminal records have spent time in jail.
The group is currently involved with the case of
Michael Mahoney, a father in an Arlington jail awaiting sentencing for
criminal contempt. Mahoney has already lost his job, his home, his
savings, his freedom, and most recently his health (he has developed
congestive heart failure, severe stomach ulcers, sleep apnea, and has
undergone brain surgery for subdural hematoma). His private life has also
been exposed to public view and he himself vilified on "Geraldo" and at
least one other nationally televised talk show.
And these fathers are angry. Alan describes the
system as a legal "child-kidnapping and extortion racket." Even more
though, they are in shock. Like virtually all men in their position, none
realized that such a thing could happen until it did.
Worse still, these men — and millions more like them
— have suddenly found that the assumptions they had made about wife
beaters, child molesters, "deadbeat dads," and O J. Simpson are now being
made about them. Many see themselves as having been abandoned not only by
their wives but by friends and family members, who assume they "must have
done something" to deserve losing their children. What their children
"must have done" to deserve losing the care of even an imperfect father is
seldom asked.
Fathers who attempt to contact their confiscated
children or separated spouses can be arrested for "harassment" or
"stalking," an offense that can be defined as "unwelcome conversation."
"Stories of violations for minor infractions are legion," the Boston Globe reported in May. "In
one case, a father was arrested for violating an order when he put a note
in his son's suitcase telling the mother the boy had been sick over a
weekend visit. In another, a father was arrested for sending his son a
birthday card."
The practice of arresting fathers for attending
public events such as their children's musical recitals or sports
activities — events any stranger may attend — is one many find difficult
to believe, but it is common. Last year National Public Radio broadcast a story on
restraining order abuse centering on a father who was arrested in church
for attending his daughter's first communion. During the segment, an
eight-year-old girl wails and begs to know when her father will be able to
see her or call her on the phone. The answer, because of a "lifetime"
restraining order, is "never."
At once the most extensive and well-concealed denial
of civil rights in America today, the plight of fathers and children is
all-but-ignored by the media and virtually unknown beyond the rapidly
increasing circle of its victims. Few people realize how easily and
frequently children are now taken from fathers who have committed no
actionable offense and for reasons that have nothing to do with the
children's wishes, safety, health, or welfare.
Contrary to common assumption, the prevalence of
mother-custody is not a matter of simple sex-bias against fathers in
mutually-agreed-to divorces. As American family courts now operate, a
mother can have the father summoned to court and, without producing any
evidence of wrongdoing, request that he be stripped of custody of his
children and effectively ejected from his family, and in almost every case
the judge will duly oblige.
Despite formal legal equality between parents, some
85 to 90 percent of custody awards go to mothers. One study in Arlington
found that over a recent eighteen-month period, maternal custody was
awarded in a hundred percent of decisions. This includes divorces in which
the father has given neither grounds nor agreement. Most people probably
accept some bias against fathers in custody cases when divorce is mutual.
What is happening in family courts, however, is very different. It is one
thing to say that young children need their mother; it is quite another to
say a mother should have the arbitrary power to keep their father away.
Yet current judicial practice throughout most of the
United States allows her to do just that. In fact, a mother can have had a
half-dozen previous divorces; she can have deserted the marital home; she
can abscond with the children; she can have committed adultery; she can
level false charges; she can have assaulted the father; and none of these
can be introduced as evidence against her in a custody decision. For a
father, the simple fact of his being a father will be used to keep him
away from his children six days out of seven, deprive him of any
decision-making role, and dissolve his marriage over his objections.
Part of the problem originates in the advent of
no-fault divorce in the early 1970s, which is often blamed by
conservatives for leaving wives vulnerable to abandonment. Yet it has also
left fathers with no protection against the confiscation of their
children. No-fault divorce laws did not stop at removing the requirement
that there be grounds for a divorce, so as to allow for divorce by mutual
consent; they also provided for what writer Maggie Gallagher calls
"unilateral" divorce and removed any consideration of grounds from custody
decisions.
Though changes in the divorce laws were legislative,
it is the practitioners of family law who have benefited both in terms of
power and profit, and they have not hesitated to exploit the opportunities
to the full. Dickens' observation "the one great principle of the law is
to make business for itself" could hardly be more strikingly (or
destructively) validated.
There is nothing in the no-fault laws that requires
a judge to honor a mother's initial request to remove the children from
the father's care and protection. A judge could simply decide that, prima
facie, neither the father nor the children have committed any infraction
that justifies their being forcibly separated, that they have a
fundamental human and constitutional right not to be forcibly separated,
and that neither the mother nor the court has any grounds to separate
them.
Unfortunately, not only is the legal machinery an
accomplice; in some ways it is the principal instigator. A mother who
consults a divorce attorney will be advised that her best chance of
gaining custody is simply to take the children and all their effects and
leave without warning. If she has no place to go, she will be told that by
accusing the father of sexual or physical abuse, however vaguely (often
simply stating that she is "in fear"), she can easily obtain a restraining
order immediately forcing him out of the family home. She will also learn
that even if her claims are false, there are no legal consequences she
will face for making them; her trumped-up accusations cannot even be used
against her in a custody decision. In fact, they work so strongly in her
favor that failure to advise a female client of these options may
constitute legal malpractice.
Far from being punished for child-snatching and
false accusations, then, she is almost certain to be rewarded. Mothers who
abduct children and keep them from their fathers, with or without abuse
charges, are routinely given immediate "temporary" custody. But it is
almost never "temporary" Once a mother has custody, it cannot be changed
without a lengthy (and, for the lawyers involved, lucrative) court battle.
The sooner and the longer she can establish herself as the sole caretaker,
the more difficult and costly it is to dislodge her. Further, the more she
cuts the children off and alienates them from the father, slings false
charges, delays the proceedings, and obstructs his efforts to see his
children, the better her chance for obtaining sole custody. She can then
claim child support and perhaps (usually. Ed.) her own legal fees
from the father.
In the absence of paternal wrongdoing, the
Kafkaesque logic of family courts readily supplies a rationale for
summarily stripping the father of custody. Usually it is said that the
parents "can't agree," so naturally the parent who is trying to exclude
the other should get the children and make the decisions, even if the only
thing the left-behind parent can't agree to is the taking of his children.
Or the father is alleged to be planning to "kidnap" his children back —
usually with no evidence other than his opposition to the initial
abduction by the mother.
As for the father, any restraint he shows throughout
all this is certain to cost him dearly, as most discover too late. On the
other hand, reciprocal belligerence and aggressive litigation on his part
may carry enough hope of reward to keep him interested in the game. But
the vast majority (about 90 percent who cannot pay the five- and
six-figure sums required to fight a full-scale custody battle are branded
as having "abandoned" their children and simply pushed out of the family.
Some fathers' rights activists are now determined to
fight fire with fire, and imitate the techniques of mothers:. If you think
she is about to snatch, snatch first. Then conceal, obstruct, delay,
accuse, and so forth. "If you do not take action," writes Robert
Seidenberg, author of The Father's Emergency Guide to Divorce-Custody
Battle ( FOR THE LEFT-BEHIND parent, the loss of his children
is only the beginning of his troubles. It may also be the beginning of
ours as well, for the legal and political implications of these decisions
extend well beyond the family. Other violations of basic civil rights and
liberties logically follow when courts successfully asserted the power to
invade a family (and) remove children from the care of parents who have
done no wrong.
Despite the protection of the First Amendment,
family courts may decide what religious worship parents may take their
children to. The 1997 ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Court preventing
a fundamental Christian father from taking his children to services
against the opposition of the Orthodox Jewish mother was unusual only in
that it made the papers.
As it is, some twenty-three million American children now live in
fatherless households, virtually half a generation. Nearly 2.5 million
will join their ranks this year,
Parents' discussions with their children about
matters such as religion and politics may also be controlled by family
court judges. Tom's court order preventing him from discussing a
vegetarian diet with his children is not unusual. Another father in the
group had weekend visits with his children reduced when a judge decided
that soccer was a more important Sunday activity than church.
The Fourth Amendment's protection against
"unreasonable searches and seizures" similarly seems to mean little to
family court judges. Parents who are accused of no crime and who have
given no grounds or agreement for divorce are routinely required to
surrender personal diaries, notebooks, correspondence, financial records,
and other documents — all ostensibly to determine their fitness as
parents, even when it has never been questioned. They are regularly
interrogated behind closed doors about intimate family matters that most
parents would not normally discuss with strangers. If the strains of
losing their children or undergoing this legal nightmare are too great,
they are wise to conceal any contact with therapists, family counselors,
psychologists and psychiatrists, since these otherwise privileged
consultations and records can be subpoenaed and used to separate them from
their children. Parents swept into this litigation are terrified to
discuss anything with their children or spouses for fear that what they
say will be used against them in court. The use of children as informers
is common.
As well, a custody trial will likely be held behind
closed doors and without any record of what is said, free of scrutiny by
press and public. Delays of months and years are common, as the parent
with "temporary" custody tries to stall. Since custody cases are not
criminal prosecutions, they do not fall under the protections of the Sixth
Amendment, but given other abuses they often amount to the same thing,
being the first stage in the criminalization and incarceration of fathers.
Indeed, while the same article stipulates a right to
counsel in criminal cases, fathers can be jailed without a lawyer. One of
the most notorious and common abuses in family courts is the incarceration
of fathers for extended periods without charge and without trial. The
guarantee of "due process" does not prevent family courts from jailing
parents on civil contempt for weeks, months, or even years without trial.
a mother can have the father summoned to court and, without
producing any evidence of wrongdoing, request that he be stripped of
custody of his children and effectively ejected from his family, and in
almost every case the judge will duly oblige.
The notorious Elizabeth Morgan case in which a
mother abducted her child and, for refusing to reveal her whereabouts,
spent two years in prison for civil contempt, was publicized only because
it involved a mother. Much more common instances of fathers languishing in
prison for years seldom receive any publicity. Buried as a filler in the
Washington Post last
January was an Associated Press
report that Odell Sheppard, a father in Chicago who also would not or
could not reveal the whereabouts of his 2-year-old daughter, was released
after serving ten years for civil contempt. Despite what "may have been
the longest jail term for civil contempt ever in the United States," the
case seems to have prompted no comment in either the local or national
press or among civil libertarians.
Courts routinely order fathers whose children have
been taken from them involuntarily and with no grounds to support those
children financially. They can and do summon fathers to court so
frequently that they lose their jobs and then incarcerate them for failure
to pay child support. Courts these days will even order men to support
children who are acknowledged not to be theirs. In 1994 Maryland court of
appeals refused to rescind a child support order against a man who,
according to DNA tests, could not possibly have been the father of the
child he was ordered to support. This was despite the fact that the mother
and the true father joined the falsely-accused man in requesting the order
be changed. An October series in the Los Angeles Times reported that
in Los Angeles alone there are 350 new cases each month of men required to
support children who are established by DNA testing not to be theirs. Yet
the Los Angeles County District Attorney has insisted that he had no
intention of seeking to overturn support orders based on false
identifications.
The Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and
unusual punishment" does not stop family courts from summarily depriving
fathers of professional licenses, drivers' licenses, and passports that
bear no connection with their alleged offence. Fathers who are alleged
(but again not formally charged and never proven) to be delinquent in
child support payments have had their cars booted and confiscated and
their names published in the newspapers.
Fathers are also ordered by courts into employment,
the wages from which are then confiscated. Last February the California
Supreme Court overturned 100 years of precedent when it ruled in the case
of Moss v. Superior Court that this is not contrary to the Thirteenth
Amendment prohibition on involuntary servitude. In the past the Supreme
Court has recognized that "Congress has put it beyond debate that no
indebtedness warrants a suspension of the right to be free from compulsory
service. This congressional policy means that no state can make the
quitting of work any component of a crime, or make criminal sanctions
available for holding unwilling persons to labor " Yet states now
routinely do precisely this.
In April 1998, a custodial father in Illinois who
stayed at home to care for his three children and who received no child
support from the mother was arrested under "a little known state law that
makes it a felony for a man to be 'deliberately unemployed' ". "Men in
Illinois have become the target of a witch hunt," the man's attorney told
Reuters. "Men are hounded if they owe child support and Mom is on welfare.
Now Mom is the deadbeat parent, and the man is hounded because he is on
welfare "
As for the children, courts that piously proclaim
their commitment to "the best interest of the child" seldom hesitate to
employ heavy-handed methods against them as well. To take only a recent,
documented example, in April the Los Angeles Times reported that
"three children, whose only crime was their reluctance to testify against
their father, were jailed for 12 days in Los Angeles County's overcrowded
Central Juvenile Hall and brought to court in handcuffs and leg chains"
the conservative campaign for "responsible fatherhood" may
unwittingly reinforce the vilification of fathers in the media and by
politicians and feminists.
), "your wife will." Thus we now have the nightmare scenario
of a race to the trigger: Whoever snatches first survives.