Christian Feminists an oxymoron
The Criminalization of Fatherhood
By Stephen Baskerville
Fatherhood is now the rage: presidential initiatives, federal staff conferences,
congressional task forces and resolutions, federal
grants, new nonprofit organizations, and media reports now "promote"fatherhood.
Yet the nation's discovery of fatherhood also has a darker side: law enforcement
initiatives targeting "deadbeat dads," federal registers
monitoring millions of parents, databases and information gathering on American
citizens accused of nothing, new cadres of armed,
plainclothes police, and endless "crackdowns" on allegedly dissolute parents.
Campaigning for president, Al Gore calls for incarceratingmore fathers.
What we are seeing today in fact is nothing less than the criminalization of
fatherhood: criminal penalties imposed on citizens who have committed no act but
are made outlaws through the actions of
others. This phenomenon proceeds largely from involuntary divorce and is
effected by family courts.
Family courts are the arm of the state that routinely reaches farthest into the
private lives of individuals and families. "The family court
is the most powerful branch of the judiciary," writes Robert W. Page, Presiding
Judge of the New Jersey Family Court. By their own assessment, "the power of
family court judges is almost unlimited."
One father was told by a New Jersey judicial investigator: "The provisions of
the US Constitution do not apply in domestic relationscases." A father brought
before these courts – in the absence of any civil or
criminal wrongdoing – will immediately have his movements, finances, personal
habits, conversations, purchases, and contact with his
children all subject to inquiry and control by the court. He must submit to
questioning about his private life that author Jed Abraham has termed an
"interrogation." He must surrender personal papers, diaries, correspondence, and
financial records. His home can be entered at any time. His visits with his
children can be monitored by court officials and restricted to a "supervised
visitation center," for which he must pay an hourly fee and where he and his
children will be observed and overheard throughout their time together. Anything
he says to his spouse or children, as well as family counselors and
personal therapists, can be used against him in court, and his children can be
used to inform on him. Fathers are questioned about how they "feel" about their
children, what they do with them, where they take them, how they kiss them, how
they feed and bathe them, what they buy for them, and what they discuss with
them. He will forced, on pain of incarceration, to pay for lawyers and
psychotherapists he has not hired. His name will be entered on a federal
registry, his wages will be garnished, and the federal government will have
access to all his financial records.
If he refuses to cooperate he can be
summarily incarcerated or ordered into a psychiatric examination. Henceforth
that parent has no say in where the children reside, attend
school or daycare, worship, or visit the doctor and dentist. He has no right to
see their school or medical records nor any control over what medications or
drugs are administered to them. He can be enjoined from taking his children to a
physician when ill.
He can be told what religious services he may (or must) attend, what he may do
with them, and what subjects he may discuss with them in private. And he can be
forced to pay two-thirds or more of his income as "childsupport." If for any
reason the father falls more than $5,000 behind he becomes a felon.
If he moves to another state while he is in arrears, perhaps to find work, he
becomes a felon. It is possible he can even become
an instant felon from the time his children are taken. If his ordered child
support is high enough, and if it is backdated far enough, he
will be and instant felon and subject to immediate arrest.
A presumption of guilt pervades child support enforcement where "the burden of
proof may be shifted to the defendant" according to one ruling. In clear
violation of the Constitution it has been held that "not all child support
contempt proceedings classified as criminal are entitled to a jury trial," and
"even indigent obligors are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer."
Setting child support is a political process conducted by interest groups
involved in collection but from which parents who pay the
support are excluded. Such legislating by courts and enforcement agencies raises
serious questions about the separation of powers and the constitutionality of
the process. Where officials in all branches and at all levels of government
develop a financial interest in
hunting "delinquents," it is predictable that they will create delinquents to
hunt. Obviously the more onerous the child support levels, and the more defaults
and arrearages created, the more demand for coercive enforcement and for the
personnel and powers required.
Private collection firms also set the levels of what they collect. Not only does
an obvious conflict-of-interest arise in terms of the
amount to be collected, but the firms can create precisely the "delinquents" and
"deadbeats" they are hired to pursue and on which their business depends.
In Los Angeles former Deputy District Attorney Jackie Myers told the Los Angeles
Times she left office in 1996 because "we were being told
to do unethical, very unethical things." Myers is not alone. "I got a call from
a homeless shelter and was told that I had put a man and
... his four children out on the street because I had put an enforcement order
... for 50% of his income," ex-Deputy District
Attorney Elisa Baker recalled. "That was the first time I was in touch with the
ramifications of what I was doing." Men are now forced to support children who
are acknowledged not to be
theirs biologically. Stepfathers are ordered to pay support for stepchildren.
Grandparents and second wives are pursued by child support prosecutors.
Minor boys statutorily and forcibly raped by
adult women must pay child support to the criminals who raped them. A
presumption of guilt also pervades allegations of domestic violence
made during custody proceedings, where a father's contact with his children is
criminalized through restraining orders that are routinely issued with no
evidence of wrongdoing whatever – orders that cannot protect anyone because they
criminalize not violence (which of course is already criminal) but a father's
contact with his own children. Family law is now criminalizing rights as basic
as free speech. In many jurisdictions it is now a crime to publicly criticize
family
court judges, and fathers have been jailed for doing so. In a paper funded by
the Justice Department, the National Council of Juvenile and
Family Court Judges, an association of ostensibly impartial judges who sit on
actual cases, attacks fathers' groups for their political opinions and
activities.
No figures are available on how many fathers are incarcerated for "family
crimes." Informal estimates put as much as one-third of the
nation's jail population consisting of fathers on contempt-of-court charges.
Some jurisdictions now propose creating forced labor camps
specifically for fathers to relieve overcrowded jails. Not since the fall of the
Weimar republic has a democracy treated millions of its own citizens in this
fashion.---
Stephen Baskerville teaches political science at Howard University.
***************************************Stephen Baskerville
Department of Political ScienceHoward UniversityWashington, DC 20059
703-560-5138202-806-7267202-265-3527 (fax)
"A single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of
truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life,
ready to pay a high price, has, surprisingly, greater power, though
formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters." --Vaclav Have
This article will appear in the July-August issue of the Newsletter of
the Women's Freedom Network, probably without further editing. Please
credit them in any reprints.
Forwarded by Lindsay Jackel in Australia jackel@melbpc.org.au
(jackel@melbpc.org.au)
