Another Man Down in the War Against Fathers

FatherMag.com ^ | August 22, 2002 | Roger F. Gay

[RogerFGay]

Another Man Down in the War Against Fathers

August 22, 2002
By Roger F. Gay

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America's Most Wanted put it like this:

Catalino Morales is wanted for the attempted homicide of five deputy sheriff’s in Allentown, Pennsylvania and for failure to pay back child support.

On Saturday, morning, December 9, 2000, eight deputies in Lehigh county Pennsylvania broke into Catalino Morales' home to serve an arrest warrant charging him with failure to make child support payments. According to the deputies, Morales barricaded himself in a second-floor bedroom and fired two shots through a closed door. He then shot out a back window, jumped onto a flat roof, and onto the ground where it is alleged that he shot at a deputy. The deputy returned fire but no one was injured. Morales escaped the immediate area.

Police say Morales then entered a house in the neighborhood and held a family of four hostage for several hours. The standoff ended when one of the residents managed to wrestle the gun out of Morales’ hands and Morales fled the scene. A massive hunt ensued, including search dogs, helicopters, and Allentown police; to no avail.

On the night of June 20, 2001 a SWAT team in Hartford, Connecticut surrounded Morales in a housing complex and shots were fired. No policepersons were injured in the encounters. Morales was hit by three of 25 police bullets, permanently damaging his hand and his leg and endangering the lives of the nearby residents.

He is a father. He is a man. He is allegedly behind in making "child support" payments.

It is unlikely that the child support system will be put on trial in defense of Catalino Morales, but it should be. Under heavy influence from a profit-driven collection industry the process of determining the amount of child support ordered and enforcement practices have changed dramatically within the past fifteen years. Political corruption is rampant and obvious not only to those who have studied the system closely but to many fathers who have been forced into subjugation by it.

Millions of men are treated arbitrarily and unfairly to a degree that compromises or destroys their chance to maintain themselves, let alone get on with a normal life. Many cannot do what the system requires them to do. Add to that years of harassment and threats from a long list of strangers, including half-witted pimple-faced high school drop-outs trying to collect to make a commission and female bureaucrats, possibly former welfare mothers, who revel in the opportunity to emasculate men. There is no escape, no reason. Every politician says so. Men and women with more power than moral character constantly remind them that this is what fatherhood is all about.

Then other strangers arrive with guns and invade their homes with the intent of taking them prisoner. They are experiencing the horror of a dictatorial police state.

Catalino Morales is one of many canaries in the child support coal mines. Year after year we watch the canaries die yet the workers are not allowed to leave. Those among us who have the opportunity to communicate are morally obligated to pass the word. This system must be abandoned as quickly as possible whether the masters wish it or not.

In the early 1990s, millions of fathers first experienced the suspension of constitutional law in domestic relations courts and the transition to enforcement of arbitrary en masse central political decisions. The new system seems designed to ruin men's lives. Decisions are arbitrarily based on statistical projections that have no basis in reality. State governments are encouraged to take as much from fathers as possible in order to increase the amount of federal funds they receive. "Public-private partnerships" formed with private collection agencies that benefit from higher child support awards and greater debt. Industry representatives control much of the policy making process, including the design of most formulae used in setting child support amounts.

With so many people involved, there has been a predictable variation in reaction to the change. The early 1990s saw the rise of the fathers rights movement, class-action lawsuits, a surge in the number of appeals filed against child support orders, and new national conferences on fathers issues. State and federal politicians were lobbied constantly to fix or abandon the new laws. Members of the Washington State Legislature received thousands of pairs of baby shoes from fathers trying to make a point.

There were also reports of increases in suicide and violence. The early 1990s saw news reports of the first of the early morning raids on communities to round-up hundreds of dads to cart them off to jail. It saw shootings in courtrooms, lawyers and judges taken bloody to ambulances, and fathers barricaded in their homes surrounded by police.

In Dallas, a lawyer representing himself in a divorce case pulled a semi-automatic weapon from his briefcase and opened fire. While one father was barricaded in his home threatening suicide if police came too close, he was telephoned by a reporter who wanted to turn the conversation over to a police negotiator. Feminist groups protested, saying the government must not negotiate with terrorists. News coverage on such incidents ended. Billions of dollars were spent increasing security in courthouses.

Despite the best efforts of ordinary citizens, the system got worse. Fathers rights advocates were largely cut off from making their appeals through traditional media that continued an enormous propaganda effort against the so-called "deadbeat dads." By the mid-1990s politicians were confident that the public couldn't get enough. Child support was on the political agenda in every election year. Politicians in both parties continually promised to make life tougher for fathers and passed law after law to do so.

By the late 1990s life had become so desperate for a few divorced men (in more than one country) suffering psychologically from the loss of their children and constant harassment that they took guns into day-care centers and held children hostage. Do you now understand how it feels, they asked before being gunned down by police snipers.

Due to the enormous weight of one-sided reporting on the child support issue, many people are still quite unfamiliar with the problem. It is easy to find people who believe that errors can be corrected and orders adjusted to circumstances by a quick visit with a family court judge or through some simple administrative process. They have been brainwashed into believing that men generally avoid what are presumed to be fair and reasonable obligations to their children. It is difficult for them to understand that millions of ordinary citizens are fighting for their survival in the midst of a constitutional crisis.

The Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the states define a system of checks and balances. Unreasonable orders are to be corrected on appeal. Unconstitutional laws are to be overturned by the judiciary. These are necessary safeguards against harmful, intrusive, and corrupt government behavior. But during the past twelve years the system has not functioned as designed. Everyone in government connected with child support, including judges, receive financial rewards for maintaining the centrally planned system and courts and prosecutors have cooperated to an amazing degree. This has created a situation in which no legal remedy for arbitrary and oppressive orders and overly zealous enforcement measures exists.

Some orders are so high as to be life threatening. They do not leave the person who is ordered to pay with sufficient income to support himself. Lives have been lost. But to create the order is not enough. Once bound, the system constantly threatens and harasses fathers who are unable to meet their arbitrarily assigned "obligations." Just give the situation more than two seconds thought. If you do not think that the system caused Catalino Morales to fire a gun and run for his life you do not pass elementary applied probability. You do not understand humans.

Unless the corruption in the system is dealt with and those abusing power and influence arrested and jailed, there will be more gunfights and more men brought down in the war against fathers. Some will no longer have the compassion for life that Catalino Morales displayed. Their instinct to fight when threatened will win out over flight. They will aim at police before firing and not relinquish their weapons to hostages. We will all be guilty if we do not hold those responsible for the child support system as we know it today guilty of conspiracy.

Copyright © 2002 Roger F. Gay

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Roger F. Gay is a professional analyst and director of Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology. He has also been an intensive political observer for many years culminating in a well-developed sense of honest cynicism. Other articles by Roger F. Gay can be found at Fathering Magazine and Men's News Daily.

[RogerFGay]

It costs either way...with CS or without. I'd much rather propose solutions than inane one-sided ventures that gain nothing.

It costs more with federal child suport enforcement. That's the whole story. There isn't two sides to it.

What you're saying sounds like you don't think there was child support before the fed got involved. We've had child support laws in the US since before it was the US. The colonies had child support laws, and the states have had them for more than 200 years. Nothing has happened since the fed got involved with its big $4 billion a year program that does anything to reduce poverty and welfare dependency.

[RogerFGay]

By not advocating for fathers or mothers. I focus on what's wrong with the family court system.

You've been advocating for run-away government corruption and spending.

[Brytani]

"Partly wrong and partly correct but with reasoning. Partly wrong in that any parent with a child in their care who fails to provide "needs" is guilty of neglect and there are laws...criminal laws...against neglect. Correct in that they aren't specified an amount. That reasoning being that since they are the custodial parent, the child being in their direct care, absent neglect, it is assumed that they are spending something on the child. With a non-custodial parent you cannot make such an assumption and they can't simply say pay something...so they set an amount."

The fact that there are neglect laws does nothing to diminish my original point. The fact still remains, a custodial parent can provide nothing financially to their child and it is perfect legal and in fact can and does cause an increase in the amount the non-custodial parent is order, upon penalty of jail, to pay. The various legal remedies available for prosecutors to go after non-custodial parents who do not pay do not apply to custodial parents. Last I checked, our constitution and law were supposed to apply to everyone, not just to 50% of the equation.

[Brytani]

You do realize that non-custodial parents are designated as visitors in their childs life, given visitation time without any proof or any findings of guilt that they have abused their child. It's standard custody agreements in all states.

How would you like to be told by a judge you are no longer a parent but a visitor?

[right2parent]

And what would be the Constitutional approach to custody determinations?

The constitution was created to protect natural rights. Natural rights don't change. Guardianship by nature is God's law. Government interference with this right, without an extremely persuasive justification is unconstitutional. This had been the standard by which a father's right was judged until the courts and legislatures found a way to ignore, and unlawfully infringe on this right.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

What you're saying sounds like you don't think there was child support before the fed got involved.

And what you're saying is that it existed so that all those single parents who weren't getting it were figments of ppl's imagination.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

You've been advocating for run-away government corruption and spending.

That state alone proves you don't have a clue what I stand for Rog. But then you were never too keen on listening to anyone who wasn't wholeheartedly agreeing with your every word.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

The fact that there are neglect laws does nothing to diminish my original point. The fact still remains, a custodial parent can provide nothing financially to their child and it is perfect legal and in fact can and does cause an increase in the amount the non-custodial parent is order, upon penalty of jail, to pay.

You didn't read my entire post. How can we have this discussion if you only pick and choose certain parts? I even added a piece so you would know that I don't hold with CPs who don't put anything toward their children, but you seem to have totally ignored it.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

You do realize that non-custodial parents are designated as visitors in their childs life...

Nope, don't realize any such thing. I realize that some NCPs are designated as visitors, etc. etc. etc. To state it any other way shows only one narrow-sided view of life.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

That state alone = That statement alone

[RogerFGay]

That state alone proves you don't have a clue what I stand for Rog. But then you were never too keen on listening to anyone who wasn't wholeheartedly agreeing with your every word.

You might have jumped into taking a position on a subject that you don't understand well enough to know what you're supporting. If you're not in favor of Big Brother government controlling all aspects of society and individual behavior, you've been doing a good job of fooling us into believing that you are.

[RogerFGay]

And what you're saying is that it existed so that all those single parents who weren't getting it were figments of ppl's imagination.

I never said anything even remotely close to that.

[Tired of Taxes]

So would you disrupt the continuity of care pattern that a child was used to if it meant primary-time custody to the father, in conflict with your presumption of maternal superiority?

If the mother were "criminally unfit" (including physically abusive) or adulterous, then my answer is: Absolutely! Just because a child was used to a particular pattern of care does not mean that it was the best.

As a side note: Even when parents remain married, patterns of care often change when circumstances change.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

You might have jumped into taking a position on a subject that you don't understand well enough to know what you're supporting.

Nope. I understand exactly what I support. I neither support the way the government handles it, nor the way you'd like to see it not handled at all. Does that tell you anything?

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

I never said anything even remotely close to that.

Beg to differ, but by stating that child support was around when no one was getting it means you either don't believe they didn't get it or you're lying about it having been around. So which one would it be?

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

I think we need to discuss this here RTL, rather than in the email box. Because I think it's very relevant to part of the point I've been addressing about father's rights advocates.

Do you recall this comment?

So you post to a group, MAFIA, which contends that fathers should have the same rights as Black slaves in 1802.

You referred to a site for mother's seeking child support from fathers who don't pay child support as a site which contends something it's never contended, and something that was meant as an insult.

Now tell me the double standard of why you emailed me this:

From Right To Life | 2002-09-02 09:14:26 new

" Do you perchance post to one of those mother hating FRGs?"...not only inaccurate, and a mischaracterization of most Father's Rights groups, but below the belt.

I note that it's only below the belt when it's from the opposition. Point made. I trust you have received it.

[Brytani]

At least my one-sided view is based on facts. The fact being that standard custody agreements in all states designate "visitation" time for NCP's. Another fact that shouldn't need to be made is that a person who visits is indeed a visitor.

[Brytani]

You and I look at this from two different positions. Mine is quite simple, any custodial parent who does not contribute financially to the care of their child is as much of a deadbeat parent as a ncp who pays nothing in child support AND they should face the exact same criminal and civil penalties that NCP's face. The only exception I can find to this is a person who through sickness or injury is unable to work and provide financially for their child, and then we would need to discuss if living with that parent full time is in the best interest of the child. Anything else IMO is an attempt to excuse non-responsibility for children.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

The fact that you're missing however is that not every visitor is such because of the state.

[almostheaven aka MrsDrumbo]

You and I look at this from two different positions. Mine is quite simple, any custodial parent who does not contribute financially to the care of their child is as much of a deadbeat parent as a ncp who pays nothing in child support AND they should face the exact same criminal and civil penalties that NCP's face.

Partly we do and partly no. I don't think that NCPs or CPs should be penalized just because they don't contribute. But that the circumstances should be addressed. If their non-contribution is just temporary and with very good reason, I'd rather help them get past the situation keeping them from being able to support than punish. If their non-support is because they simply don't try, don't care, or don't want to, I have no qualms about punishment.

That still does not make Roger's victimization of Morales ok, nor does it make child support itself an total evil in every circumstance it is applied...much like so many try to come across with. Lauding a guy who holds hostages and shoots at cops as your role model for a father's rights cause is not a hot idea. Never was, never will be. And it's why we're even posting to this thread.