Background: A few weeks ago the Daily Times in Maryville, Tennessee published an article about the alleged injustices in divorce faced by self-described “victim” Kathy Wright. The article accuses the husband, James C. Wright, of being a violent, de facto deadbeat dad. It tells a very feminist story of an abused, beaten down wife’s struggle to reclaim her dignity and independence from an abusive husband and a family law system stacked against her.
Things are a little different from how Kathy Wright describes them, and the newspaper was forced to print a retraction from the publisher and remove the original story from their website. I discussed the case in my recent blog post here.
Kathy Wright’s attorney Thomas Mabry wrote five blog comments disputing my account, and Andy Martin, who is sympathetic to Kathy Wright and is involved in the case in an unspecified manner, wrote three others.
Thomas Mabry and Andy Martin have been given complete freedom to post their criticisms against me on my blog, and, given the length and number of their comments, I assume they have adequately presented their perspective. While both are unhappy with me, there is little in their posts which contradicts what I wrote.
Based on the newspaper’s retraction, I made two claims. I wrote:
“The original article trashes James C. Wright as a de facto ‘deadbeat dad.’ Kathy Wright expounds at great length over the alleged financial hardships she faced after the divorce, which she said left her dead broke and desperate.
“Now we find out that James pays Kathy’s mortgage payment, utilities, taxes and insurance on the marital residence, in addition to paying her $1,000 per month in child support. In fact, the mortgage payment alone exceeds the amount of child support James would pay under the child support guideline, meaning he is paying well over the guideline. Some deadbeat.”
Thomas Mabry, Kathy Wright’s attorney, contests this, but in doing so he more confirms my account than refutes it. Mabry writes:
“Mr. Wright’s ‘child support’ includes payments on a residence wherein he is a joint owner and in which he stands to gain a significant benefit when the house is sold: he receives one-half of the equity in the residence. Thus his ‘child support’ on the residence in large part is an investment.”
Yes, in paying the mortgage and the other expenses related to the upkeep of the house, James Wright does gain something, but if the house were merely an “investment” he’d be renting it out for a hefty sum or would have sold it. Mabry’s interpretation is a bit of a stretch–how could providing a mother and her children a luxurious house, rent and expense free, not be considered considerable “support”? The fact that neither the newspaper reporter nor Kathy Wright felt it worthy to mention this enormous benefit James provides Kathy is telling.
I also quoted from the newspaper’s retraction, writing:
“According to court records, Kathy Wright signed a pleading indicating there was no domestic violence. Moreover, ‘The issue of physical abuse was not an issue raised by either party before Judge W. Dale Young. Furthermore, no judge has held a contested hearing or made any finding as would relate to domestic abuse. All orders of protection were entered by agreement of Mr. and Mrs. Wright without finding of fact, without hearing, without testimony, and without admission.’”
Thomas Mabry criticizes the details in the newspaper account, but provides no substantive evidence that James Wright committed domestic violence against Kathy Wright. He says Kathy got a restraining order against James, and we all know this is meaningless–any woman can get a restraining order whenever she wants. (To learn more, see my co-authored column Letterman Case Shows Problems with Restraining Orders, Albuquerque Tribune, 1/17/06.)
Mabry says James Wright was indicted for domestic assault but, as the saying goes, you can indict a ham sandwich. Moreover, prosecutors often follow “no-drop” policies in domestic violence cases and prosecute cases where the evidence is light. (To learn more, see my co-authored column “Texas bill to create domestic violence offender registry will harm innocent men”, Austin American-Statesman, 4/11/07.)
Did James commit DV against Kathy? I don’t know and don’t claim to, and Thomas Mabry doesn’t know either. But, as Mabry’s letter backhandedly acknowledges, there has been no court finding of domestic violence.
Mabry also implies that my claim that “the article accuses the husband, James C. Wright, of being a de facto deadbeat dad” is misleading because “no one in the article referred to Mr. Wright as a ‘deadbeat’ dad.” Mabry is entitled to his opinion, but I think anybody reading the article (see original blog post) would agree with my “de facto deadbeat dad” characterization.
Part of what I objected to about the original story is that it “tells a very feminist story of an abused, beaten down wife’s struggle to reclaim her dignity and independence from an abusive husband and a family law system stacked against her.” Mabry also seems to buy in to this view, writing:
“At the time of the divorce, Kathy (a homemaker for the 19 years of the marriage) was attending the University of Tennessee to complete the education she gave up when she married Mr. Wright and took care of him and his home for almost 20 years.â€Â
Celia, a blog poster, aptly replied:
“So she ‘took care of him and his home’ for almost 20 years but got nothing in return? I’ll bet she lived in a shack out back and only came into the big house to mop and clean and feed the children – right?”
James provided a luxurious lifestyle for Kathy and allowed her to be home with their children and not have to take on the burden of supporting the family–I hardly see this as a mark against him.
Mabry claims that the newspaper’s retraction is not valid because it came from the publisher under threat of a lawsuit, and because the reporter himself does not agree with the retraction. Being a journalist, this is pretty much what I had thought had happened, and it is not nearly as meaningful as Mabry asserts. A few points:
1) I figured that James Wright had threatened to sue, but the best defense in libel cases is the truth. If the publisher thought the story was solid, he could have defended the paper on that basis, and also sued James Wright for malicious prosecution. Given that James Wright is apparently a deep pocket, the paper could have collected damages. The fact that they instead chose to retract is pretty good evidence that the piece was faulty.
2) The fact that the reporter did not agree with the retraction means something, but not a lot. Often reporters continue to defend their pieces even though editors and publishers retract them. It may mean the reporter is right, it may mean that the reporter is stubborn, or it may be a combination of both.
3) Mabry backhandedly admits that the child support/financial support issue was misrepresented in the original piece.
Mabry and Martin take issue with my headline “Hell Hath No Fury–Vindictive Ex-Wife Colludes with Reporter to Do Hatchet Job on Ex-Husband; Paper Forced to Print Retraction.” I sometimes complain to my wife about some of the asinine headlines that half-asleep copy editors put on my newspaper columns. In this case, I wrote the headline, so I can’t complain. The headline is admittedly a bit sensationalistic but is also a reasonable interpretation of the facts based on the newspaper retraction. It is quite possible that there are other facts which contradict it–I suppose once Wright’s case has been fully litigated, we’ll know better.
Wright’s defenders urge me to read through the case’s extensive court documents, etc., but I’ll have to pass. Such work is enormously time-consuming, as I’m sure Mabry would agree. Mabry sees his client as a victim, and maybe he’s right. But Mabry and Martin made a combined eight posts and my central assertions, based on the newspaper’s retraction, have not been meaningfully contradicted.
