Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 10, 1995 TAG: 9506120048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Each time she and authorities got close - in Texas, in Florida, in New York - he would vanish.
"There have been times when I wanted to give up," said Murphy, of Roanoke. "Then I'd look at [her daughter], and I'd realize I couldn't give up."
Friday, Murphy found out that persistence pays - literally.
The state Division of Child Support Enforcement presented Murphy and her daughter Erin, 14, a check for $12,486.49, about five years' support owed to them by ex-husband and father James D. Murphy Jr.
He'd paid up. But it wasn't easy.
Last August, James Murphy was deemed one of Virginia's "Ten Most Wanted" child support evaders. The top 10 - who owed a total of $211,785 - were not necessarily those in deepest arrears but those identified as among the hardest cases to enforce.
In October, once Murphy discovered he was among the most wanted, he contacted the enforcement division, promising to resume the $240-a-month payments he'd been ordered to pay.
But after arranging a repayment schedule, he disappeared.
In January, FBI agents arrested Murphy in Bradenton, Fla. He was charged with willfully failing to pay child support.
Murphy's case is the first prosecution in Western Virginia under a federal child support statute that provides federal criminal penalties for willful failure to pay court-ordered child support.
The Child Support Recovery Act of 1992 was passed by Congress to take the incentive out of moving across state lines to avoid child support payment.
"By the time they'd catch up with him, he'd moved," Lynda Murphy said. "So they had absolutely no muscle until the federal law went into effect."
Gov. George Allen, on a trade mission in Europe, linked Murphy's case to the state's welfare reform efforts.
With welfare reform scheduled to become law July 1, "we want to send a message to delinquent dads across the commonwealth: Virginians have lost patience with deadbeat dads and their failure to accept their responsibility," Allen said in a news release.
State laws strengthening the enforcement of child support orders passed in the 1994 and 1995 General Assembly sessions. The most recent requires delinquent parents to pay up or risk losing their professional, occupational or driver's licenses and privileges.
None of the remaining nine "most wanted" has been located, though the enforcement division has leads on four of them, said Julie Cooper, the division's assistant director for program operations.
Two of those nine owe support to children in the Roanoke area, according to the Division of Child Support Enforcement: William Robert VanDyke owes $33,268 to one child; David Thomas Williams owes $15,043 to two children.
Last month, James Murphy - who works as a veterinary assistant for the state of Florida - was found guilty of failing to pay child support. But federal Magistrate Glen Conrad delayed entering a judgment after Murphy's lawyer challenged the constitutionality of the law that allowed authorities to bring him to Roanoke to face charges.
by CNB