November 7th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
As all the world – and probably some distant planets – now know, teen heartthrob Justin Bieber has been accused of fathering a child with a fan of his. Here’s one article of many (NineMSN, 11/7/11).
The woman making the allegation is one Mariah Yeater. She claims she went backstage after a Bieber concert and had sex with the pop star. She now has a four-month-old son on whose behalf she’s filed suit claiming $262,000 in child support from Bieber. That’s over $65,000 a month. Hey, it takes money to raise a child.
Bieber of course denies her allegations outright. He’s said he’s never met Yeater and is clear that he’s never had sex with her. He said, “To set the record straight — none of this is true.”
Now, given all that, let me say that one of the two is just stupid. Surely they both know about genetic testing. That means that, soon enough, we’ll know to an absolute certainty who’s telling the truth. My money’s on Bieber. The reason is that, young as he is, he seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders, and I’m not talking about his looks. The young man seems pretty well grounded.
Exhibit ‘A’ for what I’m saying is a statement Bieber made about Yeater’s claim that he fathered her son.
“I know I’m gonna be a target, but I’m never gonna be a victim.”
That strikes me as one of the sanest things I’ve ever read about men and fatherhood. Since young men are given to covering their bodies with tattoos, let me suggest they ink that message somewhere they can refer to it easily and often. Maybe the inside of one of their wrists so they can look at it like a watch. “I may be a target, but I’ll never be a victim,” are words to live by.
That means, among other things, taking responsibility for your own fertility. Men’s contraceptive choices are shockingly limited. For men, it’s a condom, a vasectomy or abstinence. As a practical matter, that means a condom. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, an astonishing number of young men and women say that (a) they’re sexually active, (b) they’re not ready to be parents and (c) they’re not using any form of contraception.
To those young men, I say, listen to Justin Bieber. Not using a condom means you’re setting yourself up. You’re handing to your partner the power to decide whether you become a father or not. And if she decides you will become a dad, know that the courts give her the power to also decide whether you get to know and raise your child, and if so, how much. Of course all the while you’ll be paying child support and if you don’t, you’ll lose your license to drive and go to jail. Paying for a child you didn’t want to a woman you’re not with, who doesn’t let you see your child: that’s a good definition of “victim,” the kind Justin Bieber said he’d never be. Wise words.
Meanwhile, Mariah Yeater looks more and more like a loose cannon. Her latest “proof” of Bieber’s paternity is a photo of the child.
Yeater was photographed playing with her son in a park in Los Angeles at the weekend.
“Just look at his mouth,” she told the Daily Star Sunday.
“Look familiar? I pray that Justin sees these photos, looks at Tristyn and knows in his heart that this is his child.”
My guess is that it’ll take a lot more than prayer to tag Bieber with paternity. But whatever the case, Yeater would seem to have more problems than her latest gambit. For one thing, Bieber turns out to be the third man Yeater’s claimed to be the father of her son Tristyn.
Yeater’s credibility has been challenged by a number of reports she thought two other men were the father of her child before she announced it was Bieber’s.
She first said the child’s father was ex-boyfriend John Terranova before saying Tristyn actually belonged to a secret lover named Steve.
“She just wants money,” Mr Terranova said.
So the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. No surprise there. But I guess you have to give Yeater credit for chutzpah. After all, she’s bid up the price of her son considerably, from John to Steve to Justin. That likely constitutes a vast improvement to her hopes of making bank.
Still, the question arises, “why’s she doing this?” She’ll never get paid by Bieber and she’ll be revealed to be a serial liar. That, combined with some other discomfiting allegations, might even get the attention of child protective services. Attention. I guess that’s the answer. Still,
Yeater has also been accused of domestic violence, destroying another’s property and making threatening telephone calls.
Of course she hasn’t been convicted of any of that, but at the rate she’s going, at some point, someone is likely to get a snootful of Mariah Yeater and start demanding court action. And that person might be the actual father of her child, i.e. not John, not Steve and not Justin. Someone out there fathered little Tristyn and obviously, he doesn’t know it yet because Mariah Yeater has chosen to make up nonsense about Justin Bieber. That means she hasn’t told the real dad about his son.
If I were the man who’s unfortunate enough to be tied to Mariah Yeater for the next 18 years, I’d go into court and point out that she’s been intentionally separating me from my son while lying to courts and various men about his paternity. I’d acquaint the judge with the fact that that constitutes parental alienation that should give me custody of the little boy, since it likely violates at least one of the factors on which custody is based. That, plus a few witnesses testifying to the above-mentioned domestic violence might just turn the trick.
We’ll see what happens.
Finally, one encouraging thing about the media coverage of all this was that the very first articles noticed that Yeater is legally an adult (she’s reported to have been 19, but in her photo, she could pass for 32) while Bieber, who was 16 at the time Tristyn was conceived, was still a minor. So, if the two had sex, she’d have been guilty of statutory rape, sexual abuse of a child or whatever the law calls it in the applicable jurisdiction. I was glad to see that not being swept under the rug.
To date, the police haven’t done anything because they haven’t gotten a complaint from anyone. My guess is that’s because Bieber’s telling the truth – there was no sex between the two. And where there’s no sex, there’s no sexual abuse.
Stay tuned.