Fathers Rights Denied in Humboldt County

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The beginning!

I am doing this in hopes of finding more fathers in Humboldt County or with children in Humboldt County that are going through the same BS that we are with DCSS and the supposedly Superior Court of Humboldt County.

The story begins in 1995 when my then wife gave birth to our daughter. We were in Mississippi at the time and my little girl was about two when we returned to northern Oregon. My then wife had decided that we were going to live together but not be together by then. She had a fairly serious bout of post natal depression and I was hoping that she would come around in time. I had always been the sole support of our family and continued to be.

When my daughter was about 3 I discovered that my soon to be ex was having an affair. I gave her everything and told her to move. The marriage was over. She took our daughter, my truck and most of our possessions and left. During the course of the next three years all was fine, we did one of those easy divorces and I had my daughter about half of the time. I did not have court ordered child support but continued to support my daughter financially as best I could. (giving my ex approximately 1/3 of my money and traveling over 200 miles a week to facilitate visitation.)

As an independent contractor on the Oregon coast work was scarce……..Needless to say in 1999 my ex-wife brought me a parenting plan to sign (I didn’t realize what it was at the time) stating that it was what she needed to get our daughter on the Oregon Health Plan and since I could not provide my child with health care, I signed. Somehow without my knowledge my ex and the courts turned this into a court order that I was not aware of. My ex wife had lied to them and told them that I had been injured so therefore she was not asking for support.

Oregon started pursuing me to provide health care for my child. Before the ink was dry on that order my ex-wife moved herself and my child to Humboldt County. It was quite awhile before I was allowed to visit them in the cabin they lived in which had no indoor plumbing and big holes in the wall. A person she had met through me (who she made my daughters godmother in spite of the fact that my daughter had godparents who were present at her birth) had “hooked” my ex wife up in good ole’ HC.

They arrived in HC and lived out of their car in early summer or late spring of 2001. It was later that they got the first cabin. My ex has told me for the past 5 years that she was teaching school there. I have since found out different.

It was rough but I still got to see my daughter some and she seemed to be doing well so I let matters ride. MY MISTAKE!

In early 2003 I got a new girlfriend…..my daughter came to visit soon after and all was fine. That spring and summer I got the usual monthly calls from my ex and my daughter…they have a lot of screaming fights but it was not until early October that I was allowed to visit my daughter again. I couldn’t just go up the hill where they lived….I was told it “wasn’t safe for outsiders.”

Needless to say my ex called me in early Oct. of 2003 and told me that I could pick up my daughter for a visit on Oct. 9th. I was there, picked up my child and left the monthly child support check. For the next 7 weeks my ex called me every week to ask me if I could keep my daughter “another week” as she was busy working harvest!

I did and my new girlfriend and daughter started discussing my daughter living with us soon. Meanwhile Oregon is still pursuing me for health care. After much discussion with my new partner we decided that we could not make a living there so we decided to move. My new partner was having a hard time with her health in that climate and it was suggested that we move to a drier one. Las Vegas was booming and as I do construction and my new partner is a stagehand it seemed like a good place to get union work that would provide the required benefits.

When we dropped my daughter off with my ex in early December we told my ex that we could not afford a support payment that month and that since we had my the child ever since she had cashed the last one that she would have to wait. A week later she called and told us that her truck had broken down and that she needed money to fix it. We sent the money, we couldn’t pay our rent and were having to go to my partners parents house in Texas (at her 70 year old mothers expense) but we sent the money. My ex allowed us to stop by on the way to Texas, where she met us on the side of the road so that I could see my daughter for the last time before leaving for Texas (where we planned on staying for a couple of months while we got the money together to move to Las Vegas.) My ex drove up in a new 4 wheel drive truck and spent the whole time while I was saying bye to my daughter bragging about how she paid $7000 cash for the truck….she wasn’t going to be happy until she got a reaction. Yeah…she really needed our last dime!

We ended up being stuck in Texas for almost 7 months, working 6 days a week, 12-14 hours a day….getting the money up for Vegas….we finally got here in late summer of 2004. We were living in a one room rat hole with two German Shepards and a cat!

We started working and working hard. We had told my ex that support would resume when we got more stable. That we would make up the missed payments. I started telling her in August that my insurance would go into effect soon and that I needed my daughters ss# to put her on my insurance. She refused to give it to me. I ended up having to ask for a court order in May of 2006 to get my daughter on my insurance, which my ex and DCSS refuse to acknowledge. In September of 2004 my then 9 year old daughter called my hysterical wanting to come live with us….her mother and her mothers (most recent in a long line of boyfriends) boyfriend were having sex in front of her…they had promised they would quit and didn’t. Our living condition were so bad and we were still so broke that I couldn’t go get her. After that it started getting harder and harder to contact them.

I finally got to go visit my daughter for her 10th birthday in Feb. of 2005. I was supposed to get her for two weeks but after I got there my ex made me wait a week and only let me have her for one week. She lied to me about where the birthday party was and by the time I found them it was over, but I did get to spend a week with my daughter.

The last thing my ex said to me when she picked my daughter up was that she would never be allowed to visit me in my home again (no good reason) and that if I wanted to see her I had to come there. I told her that under those circumstances I would have to use the child support money to pay for the trips. I continued to try and call my daughter but my ex only had a satellite phone and only returned a couple of my calls…she screamed at me every call and I never got to speak to my child.

Contact was totally cut of at the end of April….it wasn’t until I heard from DCSS almost a year later that I found out that they moved and changed their phone number. I just knew the old one had changed…….ENTER THE HUMBOLDT COUNTY INJUSTICE SYSTEM!

My ex had apparently gone down and signed up for the gamut of state aid…she receives food stamps, health care and a welfare to work check! The first letter I got from The Department of Child Support Services was sent to the wrong address and addressed me by the wrong name.

I had them on the phone withing 5 minutes of opening that letter asking them to please tell me the whereabouts of my daughter. I have cooperated with them fully. My ex wife has not…she even contested California’s jurisdiction in the matter.

At the first hearing (I was still unaware of the Oregon court order at this time) I had them change my name to my legal name and the matter was continued. In the paper work sent to my from DCSS they claimed that my ex had an income of 0! Prior to court I told the DCSS attorney at that hearing that she had a much greater income that that, his response was “we know, don’t mention it in court.” We thought she might be under investigation….boy were we wrong.

DCSS was ordered to serve my ex with my motion for custody and visitation as they refused to give me her address as ordered by the court. It took them almost two months to serve her…and they even lied to the court about it when she failed to appear after they served her. The DCSS attorneys were clearly representing her in violation of their own mission statement.

She finally showed up about 6 hearings later with a private attorney…..and a new income and expense declaration that showed her average income to be $670 a month. The reason it took them so long to serve her was because she was traveling…for two months.

This attorneys minimum retainer is $2500…he charges $200 per hour…except court is $400 an hour. Needless to say I work for a living and cannot afford an attorney. The court then proceeded to break every law in the book and allowed DCSS to do the same. When I finally found out about the Oregon order (which is when I found out that she had given them the wrong name as well) and brought up that she was in violation of it…they didn’t care. They do not care that she is clearly committing welfare fraud….that she has violated every single court order that has been written…instead they reward her by limiting my time and contact with my child. There has never been even the slightest hint of abuse on my part….no accusations what so ever but still the court decided that my daughter was better off without a father. (The reasoning was that since she had kidnapped my child and hid her from me that my child no longer knew me so she was better off staying with her mother.)

When she violated the first California court order I called the sheriffs department…the deputy that went to her house recommended that she be arrested…this recommendation was ignored by the DA’s office. A little over a year later that deputy now refuses to do welfare checks when my daughter does not call when she is court ordered to do so, he refuses to do welfare checks when my ex and my daughter have those huge fights and I hear them over the phone..he called my ex and asked her if the child was ok. He threatened me and my girlfriend with harassment charges and asked angrily which one of his deputies filed the reports that allowed us to get proof of my wifes violations of all the court orders that the court ignored…(she didn’t mean to bold face lie to that judge (and get caught) She didn’t mean to not send the school, medical and financial records that the court ordered her to send. (that she still hasn’t sent) It was all a big mistake and according to the judge probably my fault anyway.

Even when we proved that my daughter wanted to come live with us…the courts ignored that too. DCSS, The Court and the DA’s office are all bending over backwards to make sure that my ex gets away with what ever she wants. The welfare fraud investigator even said that he wasn’t going to “waste his time over a few thousand dollars a month.”

My ex’s income is still over two years later supposedly only and average $670 a month. Yet she travels extensively, my child has a $300 iPod, a $250 cell phone and a $500 iPod touch….that she had downloaded over 1300 songs on at about $1 a song since Feb of this year. My ex has spent well in excess of $10,000 on attorneys (shes on her second), has bought a new washer and dryer, a stove and refrigerator and put a $2500 transmission in her truck. My ex maintains two residences……but shes not committing welfare fraud…she’s just a master budgeter! (Did I mention her second attorney who’s minimum retainer is $3500….)

My ex always told me that she was home schooling my child…According to the limited school records I have my child is doing wonderfully well in school…….of course those school records do not reflect that she was held back a year or that for her first 4 years in school she only attended a total of 30 days.(oh, did I mention the 5 or 6 week long field trips that my daughter takes with these schools every year) who pays for those? I can now prove that my ex and her buddies that lie for her about her employment as a school teacher (she only has one year of community college and has testified to having no teaching credentials what so ever) have falsified my daughter school records. NO ONE IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY CARES…they just want me to continue repaying them for my ex’s welfare fraud….so what if my 13 year old daughter is dating an 18 year old, so what if she started drinking and smoking pot at the age of 11, so what if her mother leaves her alone for days or passes her around the community for others to watch, so what if my 13 year old daughter is having sleep overs with boys 13-18 years old with no parental supervision………So what if her mother is still to this day engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior in front of my daughter with her boyfriend du jour! Hey just keep sending that money and if you keep bitching we’ll just charge you more………and make sure you see her less………Yes, thats what I’ve been told…