Macomb Daily
Man, 14 when he fathered boy, must pay support
Court: Welfare of their child, not older woman's behavior,
the issue.
Macomb Daily, Michigan, U.S.A., By Chad Halcom, Staff Writer, February 21, 2004
A man who claims he was seduced and exploited in his early
teens by an older, married woman must pay child support to the
state for the illegitimate son he gave her, the Michigan Court
of Appeals decided in a precedent-setting Macomb County case
this week.
************, now 29, was allegedly 14 years old when
lured into sexual relations in with Laura Michelle Evelyn,
then 21. Four years ago, she and her husband, David Evelyn,
got divorced in New York. Testing determined that the child
she bore in 1989 wasn't David's.
Now, an appeals court ruling says ********** must pay child
support, even though he was under age and claims he didn't
consent to sex.
"(C)hild support is to provide for the needs of the child; it
is awarded without regard to the fault of either of the
parents," a majority of the three-judge panel on the case
ruled. "The (lower) court therefore erred by refusing to order
child support because (**********) was technically the victim of an
uncharged act of criminal sexual conduct."
********** contended in court, and Macomb County Chief Circuit
Judge Peter J. Maceroni agreed, that if ********** is the father,
then the son was conceived by a criminal act on Evelyn's part
and the mother should not be allowed to profit from it. The
Court of Appeals reversed the lower court ruling, however, and
said child support must be decided by the interests of the
child and not the parents.
"At stake here is not the mother profiting from criminal
wrongdoing; what's at stake here is the child, who is entitled
to an appropriately supported upbringing regardless of how he
was conceived," Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga said.
Marlinga's office brought the action on behalf of the Family
Independence Agency, which is trying to collect child support
from **********. The prosecutor's office and FIA regularly work
together on cases where the state makes welfare payments to a
family with dependent children and then seeks reimbursement
payments from the non-resident parent; or in cases where one
state petitions another to help establish paternity of a
biological parent and then collect support across state lines.
In this case, the Evelyns divorced in Macomb County in 2000
and a blood test arising from the divorce case determined that
David Evelyn, Laura's husband, was not the child's father.
Authorities tracked down ********** in New York, who appeared in
court proceedings there in 2001 and conceded that he is the
boy's father.
Neither ********** nor the Evelyns could be reached for comment
Friday. An assistant prosecutor in Marlinga's office who
handled the case declined to comment about it.
Officials and records indicate the sexual relations between
********** and Mrs. Evelyn, now 36, were not widely known until the Evelyns' divorce case over a decade later, and that
********** was
originally unaware of the child. At the time, the statute of
limitations for sex crimes against minors was six years or
until the child turns 21, whichever comes later, so by the
time of the divorce it was too late to prosecute for the
alleged crime.
********** contends in court records that Mrs. Evelyn "plied
him with alcohol and the promise of sex with an older woman
to induce him" into the illicit act, and that he was not a
willing participant; however, the sex would still have been
a crime regardless of consent since ********** was underage. The
appeals court determined that consent was also irrelevant when
it comes to his child support responsibilities.
A Macomb County judge determined that the child was born out
of wedlock, but that the law doesn't entitle Evelyn to child
support or require the judge to give it to her. The judge
then applied "equitable principles" - basically a sense of
fairness and justice rather than the letter of the law to
determine that ********** shouldn't be held liable for child support.
With the reversal Friday, the case now returns to Maceroni's
court to determine an appropriate amount that Shire must pay
in child support.
The Macomb Daily 2004
The Macomb Daily is based in Macomb County, Michigan, USA, located
immediately north of Detroit.
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