Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 20, 1995 TAG: 9502200078
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
It took a call from a neighbor to tip off the sheriff that the she was a he - a he who dressed as a woman to avoid paying more than $40,000 in child support.
Credit the state's most-wanted posters, with the names and pictures of Virginia's 10 most elusive child-support dodgers. Eight different posters have been printed since 1989, and authorities have caught up with 45 of the 66 men whose mugs have been printed on the placards.
Put in perspective, however, 45 people captured is only 0.013 percent of a caseload of 352,000. But that's not the point, said Mike Henry, director of the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement. ``The point is to try to focus public attention on the problem,'' he said.
The problem, Henry estimates, amounts to about $622 million a year that does not reach Virginia children who are entitled to it.
Doris Combs got sick of calling only to be told that Roger Darnell, the father of her son Joseph, could not be found. So she decided to turn sleuth, enlisting relatives as detectives. ``I had a conversation with my aunt one day. She was talking to a woman she worked with, who said she was getting child support because she had a little boy with him, too!''
She took that information to child support officials; within four months, Darnell had been found and was making his payments.
Combs said Stephen Farren, the father of her son Jarrett, owes her $15,000. His photo has been on the poster for three years, and Jarrett has never met his dad.
``I'm kind of mad that I've never seen him. I'd like to see him for once in my life,'' Jarrett said.
In 1976, Donal Roberts left Linda Wheatley and their 6-year-old daughter, Donna, who is now married with a child of her own. Roberts made five monthly payments of $125 before he took a powder, Wheatley said.
She appealed directly to the White House for help in finding Roberts. ``It's pretty hard to get hold of a man who hops, skips and jumps all over the country,'' she wrote in a 1985 letter to President Reagan.
Roberts appeared on the poster in 1993. Spurred by Wheatley's persistence, officials caught up with him a few months later. After 17 years, Roberts resumed paying Wheatley the $20,000 he owed for their daughter's upbringing.
Only one of every seven of Virginia's delinquent fathers regularly pays, Henry said. Mothers left to fend for themselves and their children often feel abandoned - by the child's father and by state agencies. ``These women feel deserted,'' acknowledged Reta Mills, manager of customer service for the division. ``They are so fed up with us.''
When deadbeat dads are found, they are notified by registered mail that legal action is about to be taken to force them to pay up, Mills said.
``When they do receive notification, they'll quit their job or close their bank account,'' she said.
Some go to extremes to elude the law. The man who disguised himself as a woman had also lived in a sailboat and crossed the seas to avoid capture, Mills said.
Enter the state's most-wanted posters.
Evaders must owe at least $8,000 to appear on the posters, and most have outstanding warrants against them.
About 150,000 cases involve children born out of wedlock. In those cases, the department must establish paternity before it forces men to pay. Less than 3 percent of deadbeat parents are women, Henry said.
Taxpayers fund more than $250 million worth of child support-related items each year in the form of welfare and food stamps. Eighty percent of the recipients of federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children are households deserted by parents who had paid child support.
People who recognize friends or co-workers on the posters tattle out of a sense of civic duty or personal vengeance, Mills said. ``Lots of the time, they're happy to be telling on the other person for personal reasons.''
In one recent case, an ex-girlfriend called hot line operators in Virginia to inform them of a child-support evader on Florida's most-wanted list. ``She knew his birthday, his address, even his Social Security number,'' Mills said. ``She must have been pretty ticked off to give us all that information.''
by CNB