Randy Orville Brouse, 33, of Illinois, when jailed for felony
failure to pay child support, hung himself on July 21,
2003. Prior to his death, he was one of 50 Hillsdale County's "Most Wanted". All are alleged to be dangerous and wanted
"for serious and often violent crimes". In fact, more
than 60% are wanted only for failure to pay child support.
The Hillsdale's dangerous, "Most Wanted" list of those unable
to pay the court ordered amount of child support consists of
32 people of the 51 Most Wanted. Randy is still on
the list. How many of these dangerous felons will take
Randy's place on the Hillsdale mortuary slab before these atrocities
end? According to the unConstitutional family
court's rulings, that made the "Most Wanted" financially
responsible for amounts they are unable to pay and visitors
to their children, the public is to believe these 32 parents
would rather, have their driver's license revoked, lose their
voting rights, lose access to firearms for defense of home and
self-protection, lose their job and ability to find a job, be
incarcerated and even to be forced to the point of
taking their own lives, than pay money to support their children.
The problem is, even after their children have been stolen from
them, most have paid all they can and are NOT
ABLE to pay anymore.
Trevor Goddard, 37, of North Hollywood, California, committed
suicide on June 8, 2003. Goddard was at the height of
his career. His credits include, Mortal Kombat, Men of
War, JAG, Deep Rising, Gone in 60 Seconds, and the recently
released, Pirates of the Caribbean. Few know that Trevor
was in the middle of a divorce and finding out just what that
means to a loving father. There were many articles on
his death, but, only one mentioned his pending divorce.
Unknown man, unknown age, of Kendallville, Indiana, committed
possible suicide in the only article released on his death.
There was no response, the typical media response, to
the email sent by his close friend to the 22 email addresses at kpc news. When this article is
pubished, the author will send them the address of this article, the name of the unknown
man, the link to their story, the link to the email to them,
ask them their secrets to sound sleep and ask them, again, to
do a follow-up story on James Betzner. They must have
some great remedies to sleep after ignoring the email sent to
them and still not publishing another story. Will those
remedies work for the next unknown man article?
Robert R Steadman, 33, of Sewickley Township, Pennsylvania, hung
himself in April, 2003 during his second imprisonment
for failure to pay child support. Since Robert was only
one sentence of the story dealing with suicide watch policy changing for that prison, it is unknown if
this second jailing was a 90 day recycle. The recycle is a jail term of 90 days.
After 90 days, the prisoner is released, only to be greeted
by another incarceration for failure to pay child support for
90 days and the cycle is continued.
Reinaldo Rivera, 25, of New Jersey was jailed for failure
to pay child support. He hung himself with a
sheet after one week in jail in April, 2003.
Mark
Edward Dexel, 42, of Canada hung himself on January, 23,
2003 in a Kamloops motel after he was banned from seeing his son by the Canadian family courts.
Derrick K. Miller, 43, of San Diego, California, walked up the
steps courthouse steps to the San Diego family court's
security guard on January 7, 2002. Miller had recently
been judged to pay support he obviously did not have.
While holding his divorce papers in one hand and pulling a pistol
in the other, he told the guard, "You did this to me!".
Derrick quickly pulled the trigger, on the only option left
to him and many other fathers, that sent a bullet through his
head and died.
Carl Tarzwell, Jr., 37, was arrested on June 20, 2001, for failing
to pay child support. Carl hung himself within a few hours
of being jailed. Carl's death was revealed in a November, 2001,
article dealing with excessive suicides in prison.
James Gunter, 45, an emergency services police officer, described
as "one of those steely, go-to guys, a natural in a crisis",
took his life on the third try while incarcerated for the third
time. James was arrested for failing to pay child
support and failing to stay away from his ex-wife. Gunter's
daughter stated, "He couldn't stand to be away from his kids,".
James Gunter found peace on September 15, 2000. It was
not until March 24, 2002 that Jame's story became noted by the
press in a story about jails being at fault for lack of care
in suicides.
Randy Johnson, 34, of Sommerset, Kentucky hung himself on
the second day of his incarceration for felony failure to pay
child support in January, 2001. He could have been sentenced
to 5 years. Johnson worked for the Sugar Shack making
donuts. His employer said he was trying to lead a new
life. Johnson's story is revealed in an article about suicides
in Boyle County prison.
Darren
Bruce White, 34, of B.C., Canada, killed himself sometime
between March 12, 2000 and March 17, 2000, when his body
was found. Darren's suicide came shortly after a court
ruling he was capable, something US
family courts are also known to do as attested by the author
in his personal experience, of paying $2,071 a month in support.
The court had no concern that he was paying $439 a month support
in his first marriage and was only making $950 a month salary.
White's daughter, Ashlee, expresses her grief
regarding the current system.
Dimitrius Underwood, 22, the defensive end for the Miami
Dolphins, slashed his throat with a kitchen knife when
the Lansing police tried to arrest him for failing to pay child
support. Dimitrius's story, due to his notoriety, was
published quickly on September 28, 1999. But, as usual,
the article only dealt with the effect and not the cause.
David Guinn, 38, incarcerated for probation violations and
was behind on his child support, hung himself on November, 1998.
James A. Poore, 33, of Bristol, Tennessee, arrested for failing
to appear at a child custody hearing, found a shotgun while
on a work release program and promptly blew a hole in his chest
in March, 1999. Sheriff Eddie Barnes stated it would not
stop the work release program.
Kenneth Taylor, 40, of Nebraska, hung himself while jailed for
felony child support in November, 1999.
Every year 24,000 men commit suicide. Every 22 minutes one
male commits suicide. Based on the fact that a divorced
male is 2.5 to 3 times more likely to commit suicide than the
average male, the estimate for divorced men, most likely fathers
since there is tremendously more trauma placed on them, committing
suicide every year would be 15,000 to 18,000 men.
When will it stop? How will it stop? Where is
the men's backlash? Many splintered equal parenting groups
are asking the same questions.
One small group of 13 fathers, Hunger Strike for Justice, has pledged to start a hunger strike
on September 25, 2003 in an effort to break the media blockade
and the lack of government address of family, children and individual
rights. Their determination, resolve and effectiveness
is yet to be tested, but, they have had enough of injustice.
Felons can't vote. The dead can't demonstrate.
Men running from incarceration can't take legal remedies.
Jail severely limits protesting and information dissemination.
Those that are stretched to their limit have neither the effort,
nor the time to do very much, except to be with their children
when they can, if they can. Many that would fight this
deadly system see no hope and have been crushed, emotionally,
financially and spiritually. Many are afraid they will
lose the little access they have to their children if they make
waves. Media ignores the problems being caused and promotes
the deadbeat bandwagon. The government does the same,
while spending billions more than they collect in the child
support scam and even more billions for those incarcerated. That
just does not leave many left to be activists.
It is estimated that the total national number of incarcerated
fathers for failure to pay child support is 250,000. Some
believe the number is closer to 400,000. According to
the Missouri legislative report, in 1998 there were 1,770 misdemeanor
failure jailings and 900 felony jailings. Every year,
there has been more and more hysteria to lock up "deadbeats"
by the states. The author has seen similarly populated
states in the 4,000 range in years 2000 and 2001. It's
not hard to see those numbers could very well be true.