Greegor
2009-07-21 17:05:07 UTC
http://townhall.com/columnists/PhyllisSchlafly/2009/07/21/family_cour...
http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=85a9d9d0-8ee6-4d85-9c59-026074b7f79e&t=cFamily Court Injustices to Men
Phyllis Schlafly Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Did you know that a family court can order a man to reimburse the
government for the welfare money, falsely labeled "child support,"
that was paid to the mother of a child to whom he is not related? Did
you know that, if he doesn't pay, a judge can sentence him to debtor's
prison without ever letting him have a jury trial?
Did you know that debtor's prisons (putting men in prison because they
can't pay a debt) were abolished in the United States before we
abolished slavery, but that they exist today to punish men who are too
poor to pay what is falsely called "child support"?
Did you know that when corporations can't pay their debts, they can
take bankruptcy, which means they pay off their debts for pennies on
the dollar, but a man can never get an alleged "child support" debt
forgiven or reduced, even if he is out of a job, penniless and
homeless, medically incapacitated, incarcerated (justly or unjustly)
or serving in our Armed Forces overseas, can't afford a lawyer, or
never owed the money in the first place?
Did you know that when a woman applying for welfare handouts lies
about who the father of her child is, she is never prosecuted for
perjury? Did you know that judges can refuse to accept DNA evidence
showing that the man she accuses is not the father?
Did you know that alleged "child support" has nothing to do with
supporting a child because the mother has no obligation to spend even
one dollar of it on a child, and in many cases none of the "support"
money ever gets to a child because it goes to fatten the payroll of
the child-support bureaucracy?
These are among the injustices that the feminists, and their docile
liberal male allies, have inflicted on men. The sponsor was former
Democratic Senator from New Jersey and presidential candidate Bill
Bradley.
His name is affixed to the Bradley Amendment, a 1986 federal law that
prohibits retroactive reduction of alleged "child support" even in any
of the circumstances listed above. The Bradley law denies bankruptcy
protections, overrides all statutes of limitation and forbids judicial
consideration of obvious inability to pay.
Most Bradley-law victims never come to national attention because, as
"Bias" author Bernard Goldberg said, mainstream media toe the feminist
propaganda line, among which is the epithet "deadbeat dads." But one
egregious case did make the news this summer.
Frank Hatley was in a Georgia jail for more than a year for failure to
pay alleged "child support" even though a DNA test nine years ago plus
a second one this year proved that he is not the father. The Aug. 21,
2001, court order, signed by Judge Dane Perkins, acknowledged that
Hatley is not the father but nevertheless ordered him to continue
paying and never told him he could have a court-appointed lawyer if he
could not afford one.
Hatley subsequently paid the government (not the mom or child)
thousands of dollars in "child support," and after he was laid off
from his job unloading charcoal grills from shipping containers and
reduced to living in his car, he continued making payments out of his
unemployment benefits.
But he didn't pay enough to satisfy the avaricious child-support
bureaucrats, so Perkins ruled Hatley in contempt and sent him to jail
without any jury trial. With the help of a Legal Services lawyer, he
has now been relieved from future assessments and released from jail,
but (because of the Bradley Amendment) the government is demanding
that Hatley continue paying at the rate of $250 a month until he pays
off the $16,398 debt the government claims he accumulated earlier
(even though the court then knew he was not the father).
This system is morally and constitutionally wrong, yet all the
authorities say the court orders were lawful.
Another type of feminist indignity is the use in divorce cases of
false allegations of child sexual abuse in order to gain child custody
and the financial windfall that goes with it. Former Vancouver, Wa.,
police officer Ray Spencer has spent nearly 20 years in prison after
being convicted of molesting his two children who are now adults and
say it never happened.
The son, who was 9 years old at the time, was questioned, alone, for
months until he said he had been abused in order to get the detective
to leave him alone. The daughter, who was then age 5, said she talked
to the detective after he gave her ice cream.
There were many other violations of due process in Spencer's trial,
such as prosecutors withholding medical exams that showed no evidence
of abuse and his court-appointed lawyer failing to prepare a defense,
but the judge nevertheless sentenced Spencer to two life terms in
prison plus 14 years. Spencer was five times denied parole because he
refused to admit guilt, a customary parole practice that is
maliciously designed to save face for prosecutors who prosecute
innocent men.