Author: Super User

“Bungling cases isn’t anything new at Friend of the Court. In recent years Action News has repeatedly showed you how Friend of the Court has accused honest men of being deadbeat dads even when they had proof they were paying child support or didn’t owe a penny.”

Critics of divorced fathers and so-called “deadbeat dads” are often unaware of the many problems with the way child support is set and enforced. One of these problems is the phenomenal amount of errors Child Support enforcement agencies make. I’ll be running stories about them as part of my series called “Child Support Enforcement’s Endless Errors.”

According to the Detroit TV station WXYZ’s news report Friend of the Court (11/10/06):

“It’s a system designed to protect children from the hardships of divorce, but one family says Wayne County Friend of the Court made life miserable instead.

“The Wayne County Friend of the Court is a place with a history of botching simple cases and turning them into a maddeningly confusing mess.

“No one knows that better than Ruth and Dale Akers, who married 6 years ago and had a baby named Dale IV.

“But then they got a notice from Friend of the Court saying their son wasn’t theirs. Instead, it said, he belonged to Dale’s ex-wife and Dale owed child support.

“Bungling cases isn’t anything new at Friend of the Court. In recent years Action News has repeatedly showed you how Friend of the Court has accused honest men of being deadbeat dads even when they had proof they were paying child support or didn’t owe a penny.

“Terrance Hale said Friend of the Court misspelled his name and had him paying support for a newborn named Marjae to a stranger named Toni Etters.

“‘All they could tell me is this is your kid because the computer says it’s your kid,’ he said.

The piece is satirical, of course, but I think many parents have felt the same kind of disappointment that the dad in this Onion article felt.

Child Unimpressed With Aurora Borealis After Whole Day Of Tekken 3
The Onion
November 17, 1999

INTERNATIONAL FALLS, MN–A wide-eyed gaze of childlike wonderment over the incomprehensible majesty of creation was not elicited Monday, when 7-year-old Kenny Meier, son of local high-school science teacher Stan Meier, was unmoved by the Aurora Borealis after spending an estimated 12 hours playing Tekken 3.

“I have never forgotten the magic night that my own father, like his father and his father’s father before him, gently woke me, bundled me up in a warm blanket and quietly led me outside to see the Northern Lights for the first time,” said the elder Meier, dejectedly sipping a cup of hot cocoa on the back porch as his uninterested son ran back inside to his Sony PlayStation. “It was a moment I’d always looked forward to sharing with my own son.”

“Well, so much for that dream,” added Meier, heading to the kitchen to pour the boy’s untouched mug of cocoa into the sink.

The shimmering curtain of iridescent light known as Aurora Borealis is fabled in story and song as one of nature’s most beautiful and awe-inspiring phenomena. For Kenny, however, it paled in comparison to Tekken 3’s 3-D graphics and impressive 64-bit motion-capture animation, inspiring him to say, “I’m cold, Dad. Can we go back in now?”

The Northern Lights occur when the Earth’s magnetic field interacts with the “solar wind”–charged particles blowing away from the sun. The resultant luminescent display, visible in most northern latitudes during the winter months, stretches from 40 miles above the Earth’s surface in its lowest fringes to upwards of 600 miles above the Earth.

Though the sheer immensity of the glowing nocturnal spectacle makes it one of the most glorious sights in all of nature, the Aurora Borealis nonetheless fell far short of Tekken 3, Kenny said, due to its lack of interactive combat-mode features, substandard two-dimensional interface and undynamic, non-action-packed graphics.

Read the full article here.

“Idiots. Utter, unbelievable, jaw-dropping, unpardonable idiots. It is beyond farce, past comprehension, criminally irresponsible and beneath contempt.

“All those lectures from government and authorities about keeping our personal data safe; every statement ever made about the security of the proposed NHS database of everybody’s personal medical records; each claim that the Children’s Database containing all their personal details will somehow make our kids safer; and of course each and every promise about the safety of the national identity register — exposed as quite, quite worthless. Because as soon as you put it on a computer, a bloke in an office can download it and stick it in an envelope and send your most personal details and mine and our children’s across the country with a dodgy courier.“It is shocking, it is risible, it is hilarious. Someone gave a disc containing confidential data about 25 million people to a bloke on a bike? And he lost it?”

I’m sure there will soon be a well-deserved, Night of the Long Knives-style purge of those connected to the scandal. Perhaps the axed employees can get jobs working for child support enforcement agencies–given the agencies’ relentless bureaucratic bungling, they’d fit right in.Miles’ column can be seen here.

Background: I’ve criticized Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott on numerous occasions, including my co-authored column When Beating up on ‘Deadbeat Dads’ is Unfair (Houston Chronicle, 1/7/07).

Abbott often beats his chest during his frequent crackdowns on low-income fathers he labels “deadbeat dads.” I get as many complaints about Abbott and the Texas Attorney General’s Office than I do about Child Support Enforcement in all other 49 states combined. To learn more about Abbott and his abuses, click here.

Below is a letter from “Sandra,” a loyal wife whose husband is being manhandled by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office.

Dear Mr. Sacks,
 
I am writing this letter to you because I recently found your articles on the travesties that the Texas Attorney General’s office brings on men.  My husband, an otherwise law-abiding citizen, seems to be the target of a witch-hunt by the OAG.  He owed less than $2,000 dollars on November 20, 2007 and was reduced to fear of jail, placed in a separate part of the court room and made to sit there for over 5 hours. 

We were told to have $1,000 dollars plus $100 attorney’s fees, as if they are not paid by salary. When we brought the money, they demanded another $400 or once again he was to face jail.  It was by this time 3:00 pm and we had 30 minutes to get the money to them or we would have to wait until after the Thanksgiving Holiday. 

We brought the money and were treated like the dirt of the earth. I, his wife, was told to “walk faster,” since apparently I walk too slow, on our way to the District clerk’s office to pay the money… 

My husband also has a separate case with the Texas Attorney General OAG where he is owed over $6,000 dollars from his ex and, wouldn’t you believe it, nothing is being done to the mother. She has never even seen a court room. 

Sandra
 

“The study involved an analysis of data originally obtained through the National Violence Against Women Survey in the mid-90’s. Felson and Outlaw looked at the 10,000 respondents (out of the total sample of 16,000) who were currently married, and found that adult women are just as controlling and jealous towards their male partners as the other way around. “They also found that the relationship between use of control and jealousy and physical violence existed equally for both male and female respondents, and that ‘intimate terrorists’ can be either male or female….

“It should be pointed out that the National Violence Against Women Survey was designed, conducted and analyzed by feminist researchers, whose intentions from start to finish were to make the case that violence against female intimate partners is serious social problem, and one that is much more serious than violence against male intimate partners. This, I believe, lends quite a bit of added credibility to Felson’s findings.”

John Hamel, LCSW, a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse, sent me an interesting letter recently about a couple of new domestic violence studies. I find the one referenced above particularly interesting. Feminists often claim that men and only men “control” their partners through “intimate terrorism,” and that only men abuse out of “jealousy.” I’ve often thought this was one of their more unlikely claims. This study–which uses feminist data and research–contradicts this notion.

From Hamel:

“You might want to be aware of two very important recent papers that have only recently been published on the topic of gender similarities/differences in intimate partner abuse. For the past few years, I have been especially interested in new research that examines the context of intimate partner abuse. What the research tells us has significant implications not only clinically, but also in terms of public policy.

“The first paper, by Daniel Whittaker and colleagues, appeared in the May, 2007 issue of American Journal of Public Health and reports on findings from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health with a sample of more than 11,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 28. Among those findings: (1) 70.7% of nonreciprocal physical violence was perpetrated by females, and (2) in reciprocally-violent relationships, men incurred the majority of the physical injuries. Overall, women incurred more physical injuries, but the difference was quite small. You can find an abstract and a review of this paper at www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941.

“The other paper is perhaps even more significant. It is titled, ‘The Control Motive and Marital Violence,’ written by Richard Felson and Maureen Outlaw, and published in Volume 22, Issue No. 4, 2007 of Violence and Victims. (pp. 387-407)

“The study involved an analysis of data originally obtained through the National Violence Against Women Survey in the mid-90’s. Felson and Outlaw looked at the 10,000 respondents (out of the total sample of 16,000) who were currently married, and found that adult women are just as controlling and jealous towards their male partners as the other way around. They also found that the relationship between use of control and jealousy and physical violence existed equally for both male and female respondents, and that “intimate terrorists” can be either male or female. Controlling and jealous behaviors were defined as follows:

Below are some recent articles and items of interest from Fathers & Families’ latest News Digest.

Domestic violence court a solid recommendation (Jackson Sun, 11-13-07)

Michael Jordan divorce breaks records with $168 million agreement (TransWorldNews, 11-13-07)

Man wants to be banned from pubs (North-West Evening Mail, 11-14-07)

Florida man sentenced to 2 years in prison for not paying child support (Zanesville Recorder, 11-14-07)

N.H. deadbeat dad runs out of luck (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 11-14-07)

Couple stays close through stage work (Huntsville Times, 11-15-07)

Pastor’s wife: Church is a divorce asset (Associated Press, 11-16-07)

Judge rules Broward major does not have to pay child support (Broward Times, 11-16-07)

Man jailed on child support charges (Dubuque Telegraph Herald, 11-18-07)

Dan F. Craft, a 55-year-old truck driver, has been sentenced to four years of CCS/ISP (Community controlled sanctions/ intensive supervised probation)–the strictest kind of probation–for being behind on his child support. He says it happened because he fell behind when he was out of work, and then the Child Support Enforcement Agency revoked his driver’s license, preventing him from obtaining work.

I don’t know if Craft’s account is factually correct, but I do know this happens in many cases, and is one of the many ways the child support system manufactures “deadbeat dads.”

Reporter Teresa Moore of The Ironton Tribune in Ohio wrote:

“Dan F. Craft, 55, of Huntington, W.Va., pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of criminal non-support. Bowling sentenced Craft to four years CCS/ISP and ordered him to pay $270 a month to clear his $13,000 arrearage in addition to his regular child support payments.

“Craft said the only reason he got so far behind is that he got out of work and got behind on his child support payments, which prompted the Child Support Enforcement Agency to revoke his driver”s license. Craft said he is a truck driver and could not work without his license.”

The full story can be seen here.