THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607280087
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson
LENGTH: 60 lines
Someday soon, you may see a different kind of criminal under the word ``Wanted'' at your local post office.
The person won't be wanted for bank robbery or grand theft or murder, but for depriving a child of financial support.
President Clinton's vow last week to put up ``Wanted'' posters of the nation's deadbeat parents in post offices and to plaster their mugs on the Internet is only the latest attempt to flush out mothers and fathers who refuse to support their children.
Shame is a good tactic in rousting deadbeat parents.
In Virginia, a similar technique is the ``Ten Most Wanted'' deadbeat parent lists, the first of which appeared in 1989. Another one is due out next month. The lists don't necessarily include parents who owe the most, but rather parents the state is having the most trouble locating.
Cindy Clayton of the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement says that of 87 parents listed on Top 10 lists in the past seven years, only 18 have failed to surface.
In some cases, the parents turn themselves in. In other instances, relatives or friends or acquaintances blow the whistle on them. There's no way of knowing how effective the lists are in getting people to pay up, but Clayton thinks they shame a lot of people out of hiding.
If humiliation won't get you, maybe some of the other tactics the state uses will: Yanking licenses to practice medicine or nursing or cosmetology. Pulling driver's licenses. Seizing cars and boats to pay for back child support.
Intercepting lottery winnings, garnishing paychecks, withholding income tax returns.
Some states have gone even further. Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina get people where they live: They take away fishing licenses.
Fishing licenses are one thing, but is posting photos of parents next to wanted criminals a little extreme? Is it overkill to rank someone who evades paying child support payments up there with murderers and bank robbers and kidnappers?
I don't think so.
These people are robbing their own children, after all, and in my book that's as low as you can get. They also are a major reason children land on welfare rolls. Nationwide, nine of 10 children in families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children are due child support.
But neither do I believe that people who fall behind on child support payments have a corner on the bad-parent market.
Many parents on the receiving end of child support payments deserve to have their faces on ``Wanted'' posters, too.
Parents who squander child support payments on themselves instead of their children. Those who won't let their sons and daughters visit a parent who has every right to see their children.
And probably the single worst thing someone can do: Poison a relationship between a child and ``the other parent'' by bad-mouthing the mother or father when they're not around.
Emotional warfare is tougher to tally than dollar-and-cent support payments.
But the crime deserves the same dose of humiliation. by CNB