Response from: M. JK    (04/21/07 7:47am)

I do not care how Alec Baldwin trys to "explain away" the message that he left on his daughters answering machine, it is totally, completely inapproiate. I raised 2 childern, and no matter how mad I got I would have never left a message that degraded my child. I wonder how he would feel if another adult left the same message on her answering machiine

Response from: diane    (04/21/07 9:15am)

As a parent and one who worked in the family court system for many years. I feel toooo much ado is being made about Alec Baldwins voice mail to his daughter. There are many other worse things said and done to children by their parents. This is only made a big deal because he is a celebrity. What kind of mother is Kim Bassinger to make this public for her court purposes? While I am not condoning what Mr Baldwin said I feel it was said out of frustration and was really meant to be directed to Kim.

Response from: Douglas Richardson    (04/30/07 11:30am)

Doug Richardson Speech
March 1, 2007

My name is Doug Richardson, and the State of Michigan has made me a slave. The word “slave” might seem extreme, perhaps even unbelievable, but it could not be more accurate. Let me tell you my story.
I started dating a woman and after some time she told me she was pregnant with my child. I did the honorable thing and married her. She gave birth to a son, Doug Jr., and later we had another child. One day Doug Jr. told me that his mother had said I was not really his father, that a man named Abraham Flores was his real dad. Obviously this came as a great shock to me as I had never suspected my wife had lied to me.
Doug Jr.’s mother and I decided to get a divorce. At the hearing, I said that I wanted to contest Doug Jr.’s paternity and have a DNA test done. My ex-wife, despite having previously told Doug Jr. that I was not his father, flatly lied in court, stating that I was certainly the father. The judge refused my request for blood testing. He also denied my request for a lawyer. The judge just steamrolled right over me and ordered me to pay child support on both children. To make matters even more cruel, the court also denied me any visitation rights to both boys.
As you might imagine, I felt extremely frustrated, helpless, and trapped. Unfortunately, these were feelings I would have to get used to.
After an appeal, I was finally able to get genetic testing done. The tests proved that Doug Jr. indeed was not my biological son. To the courts, however, this did not matter one bit. I was still legally obligated to pay child support for Doug Jr., and I was still not given any visitation rights to him or to my biological child. This was even more unbelievable in light of the fact that by this time my ex-wife and the children were living with Abraham Flores, Doug Jr.’s biological father.
For nearly ten years I was forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a child who lived with both of his biological parents, and who, due to the court’s refusal to allow me any visitation rights, had become a total stranger to me. The courts also robbed me of a relationship with my biological child. To Michigan, I was and am nothing more than a walking checkbook, regardless of the financial and emotional harm it does to me or the children.
My indentured servitude reached its unfathomable peak when, in 2001, my ex-wife abandoned the children and left them with Mr. Flores. Once she left, the court ordered me to redirect my child support payments to Mr. Flores. Just to clarify, the court ordered me, the nonfather, to pay child support to the biological father to raise his own child. There is simply no excuse or justification for what the Michigan courts have forced me to do.
And they have forced me. I am truly a slave to the Michigan courts. They take the money directly from my paycheck. In fact, garnishing my wages left me with 42 paychecks for $0. The Michigan courts literally bankrupted me. Meanwhile, Abraham Flores got paid to raise his own child. I became a slave forced to pay for a child that was not mine, while he won the lottery. I’m sure many parents would love to receive thousands of dollars to help them raise their children. But let me assure you, being on the flip side of that coin—when you are the one forced to sacrifice your own life and family to pay for someone else’s child—is a pain I would not wish on anyone.
I am a slave, pure and simple. The Michigan courts have shown no sympathy for my plight, and no respect for common decency or fairness. I have fought in futility for 15 years to try to free myself from my shackles, but the courts refuse to recognize my right to freedom. My obligation to pay child support for Doug Jr. should have ended the moment he was proven not to be my son, but to the Michigan courts that fact did not matter at all. All they cared about was that I continue to pay.
I am a citizen of this State, I pay taxes, I vote for my elected officials, yet the State owns me. It takes the money out of my paycheck before I even see it; it has forced me into bankruptcy; it denies me the right to see the children it forces me to support; and it holds the power to throw me into jail if I try to break free of my shackles and keep the money I have worked so hard to earn for myself and my family.
I am a slave. And I am not alone. There are estimated to be at least tens of thousands of paternity fraud victims in this country, and thousands in Michigan alone. These are men who are presumed to be the father because of marriage; and men whose names are listed by mothers on welfare forms who end up with default judgments that bind them to pay as fathers without any sort of genetic testing or other verification; and men who are forever bound as legal fathers based upon voluntary acknowledgements they sign, which they are typically presented with in the highly emotional moments right after the birth of babies they believe to be their own. The State has no sympathy if these men were lied to. If they are dupes it is their own fault. They still have to pay. The mothers who lied do not suffer. The courts have no consequences. The only one who feels this burden is the man enslaved to pay because he had the foolishness to trust that a child was his own.
Those who argue against paternity disestablishment in the face of DNA tests (and those who would even oppose the ordering of such tests at all) argue that maintaining payments is necessary for the best interests of the child. The fears are that the detrimental effect on the relationship with the nonfather would be harmful to the child and that the loss of support is not in the best interests of the child. Both of these arguments are simply wrong.
First, as my case demonstrates, these laws have nothing whatsoever to do with the relationship between a father and a child. While making me pay support, the court refused to give me any visitation rights to the children. I was not abusive, I was not unfit, I did not do drugs or abuse alcohol, and I would have liked to maintain a relationship with both children. Michigan did not care. The court looked at me as a walking checkbook and happily enslaved me while taking away any rights I had to the children. This arrangement did more harm to my relationship with Doug Jr. than anything that could have happened absent the court’s intervention.
Furthermore, forcing a man to pay child support for a child who is not his in no way increases the likelihood that this will help continue a loving relationship. If anything, it is more likely to make a man feel oppressed—which he is—and resent the child for being part of his enslavement. You cannot make a man want to foster a relationship with a child, it must be his choice. The courts and legislatures cannot regulate this. Requiring support to continue does not have anything to do with developing or sustaining a relationship.
Another reason why the best interests of the child argument fails is that by the time these paternity issues come to light, it is no secret (at least to the man) that the child might not be his. Thus, it is impossible to imagine that the relationship would go on unchanged. Again, here the situation will vary between men who want to pursue relationships with the children and those who do not. Nothing in the law will be able to affect this, and in my case the courts forced me to pay tens of thousands of dollars to a child that was not mine while simultaneously preventing me from having a relationship with that child or my own child.
Finally, this notion of protecting the best interests of the child denies that child the truth of his origins. Associated with that is potentially denying the child information about his genetic history, his heritage, and his family, as well as depriving him of a relationship with his actual father. Lying to a child about who he is and where he comes from does him no good, and any arguments that it could are clearly outweighed by the unjust enslavement of their nonfathers.
That leads me into the second argument that is frequently offered in support of the oppressive laws that have shackled and bankrupted me for the past 15 years: that it is not in the child’s best interest to lose support payments. Before getting to the discussion of how patently and ridiculously unfair this position is, please allow me to educate you on the economic reality of this situation. If nonfathers are no longer forced to pay child support, the money is likely not being taken out of the hands of the mother and child, it is being taken out of the State’s welfare funds. A large majority of these paternity fraud cases, including my own, involve mothers who are reliant upon the welfare systems to support them. It is the State that is interested in finding fathers so that they can recoup the money spent and continue to get high levels of federal funding. However, there is no requirement that the man they have listed actually be the father, and no penalty if they get the wrong guy and keep him on the hook. The design of this system actually encourages paternity fraud—as long as some man is forced to pay, whether he turns out to be the biological father or not, everyone is happy. Except, of course, for the poor man, who is forced to pay regardless of whether the child is his. This is blatantly unjust and unfair, and it must stop.
Aside from the deeply flawed welfare laws, the notion that men who are proven to not be the fathers of children must still pay support because it would not be in the best interests of the child for the payments to stop goes against every ideal of justice and fairness upon which this country is founded. That argument essentially champions slavery, as long as someone benefits from the slavery. “Sure, he’s not the father, but the kid needs support, so he should still pay.” How can that be right? The 13th Amendment does not have an exception allowing slavery when it is not in the best interests of the beneficiary to free the slave. Indeed, the Michigan Legislature would not advocate suspending Abolition for slaves who took care of children just because it would not be in the best interests of those children to lose their caretakers. This situation is no different.
The Michigan Legislature and courts are supposed to protect all of its citizens, not just children and single mothers. There is no rationale in existence that can justify or legitimize what has been done to me and what is done to other men like me every day. Forcing men who are proven to not be the biological fathers of children to pay for them is nothing short of slavery, and the Michigan Legislature and courts should be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating these horrific policies. Men in these circumstances are victims of women they trusted, but instead of having compassion for these men, or even offering basic decency and fairness, the State chooses to further victimize them. This is criminal and inexcusable.
I implore the State of Michigan to recognize this great injustice and change the laws to allow for the disestablishment of paternity and the removal of support obligations on fathers when children are proven to not be biologically theirs. The legislature must allow for DNA testing when requested and follow-through when those results prove a lack of paternity. In addition, the Michigan legislature should mandate DNA testing at birth along with other standard tests that newborns are given. For less than $100 per child—pennies compared to the tens of thousands of dollars the State has stolen from me and other innocent men—these issues could be resolved from the start, removing any concerns about harm to the child’s relationship with the purported father and making sure that everyone knows the truth from the beginning.
The story of my enslavement sounds unbelievable, and indeed it is incredible. The financial and emotional toll it has taken on me is indescribable, and I know I will never be compensated for what has been taken from me. All I can do is champion freedom and lobby for change so that no other man is ever enslaved in such a despicable and torturously unfair way. I am a slave of the State of Michigan, and I beg the Legislature to grant me, and others like me, freedom. Thank you.

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