The Telegraph, U.K. by Celia Hall, Medical Editor, August 11, 2005
It was a whirlwind romance. Within four months Michael and his girlfriend were hopelessly in love and
discussing a life together and the prospect of children, not immediately, but in the future.
They moved in together then bought a house. Life was very good, said Michael, who asked for his identity
not to be disclosed. "I was infatuated."
But his career in banking took him away from home all the time. He was effectively commuting to France and,
before long, he said, he had reason to believe his girlfriend had not been faithful. "But I was in love and
I put the thoughts to one side.
"Then she became pregnant," Michael said. "It was sooner than we had planned but we had wanted children
together and I was still in love."
Their son was born. The relationship was breaking up, however, and the suspicions about infidelity began to
return. "I had to find out," he said. "By now I had moved out.
"Three years ago it was not as easy as it is now to get a test done. I went on the websites but many of the
companies which looked as if they were English turned out to be American. I was not confident.
"I decided to ask my GP. He was rather surprised but said he would look into it. In the end he came up with
much the same information I had found for myself."
Finally Michael chose a company and took a swab from his son's mouth without the mother's knowledge. This
made matters even worse. "It was difficult and I was in two minds. If he was mine I wanted to support him.
He would be a little part of me in the world. But if he was not, I did not know how I would feel."
The test proved that he was the biological father. Michael then had to fight for access through the courts
and he supports his son, who is nearly four. Being able to prove his paternity made his case stronger, he
said.
His case is typical of a growing group of men who feel the need to establish the paternity of children born
to their wives and girlfriends.
Once, it was women who sought confirmation of the paternity of their children to obtain maintenance from
absent husbands. Now, the Child Protection Agency says that men are seeking DNA proof in equal numbers.
In new research published today, Prof Mark Bellis, of Liverpool John Moores University, says that about four
per cent of fathers unknowingly are raising children who are not biologically theirs.
He has based his estimate on good quality research papers that examined paternity in communities as well as
genetic testing for medical disorders since paternity population statistics are not collected in Britain.
David Hartshorne, a biologist and the commercial director of Cellmark, the largest paternity testing
organisation in Britain, said there was an industry estimate of about 10,000 tests a year nationally.
"In our own company we have seen this work rising by about 10 per cent year on year. It is an extremely
serious area and it is a very interesting question as to what rights a child has to know his own identity."
With his pre-selected clientele about 30 per cent of the tests find that the man is not the biological
father of the child.
"There is no doubt that demand is growing," Mr Hartshorne said. "Public awareness of the -testing is growing
but people need support when they receive this information. These are difficult issues."
Avi Lasarow, the managing director of DNA Bioscience, said that an analysis of about 1,500 mothers and
fathers who had used its service in the past six months had found that 20 per cent of men were not the
child's biological father.
"People seek testing for a wide range of reasons," he said. "Siblings want to know about the paternity of
their brothers and sisters and women as well as men want to find out.
"Sometimes if there have been two possible fathers, women will pick the most solvent one. But they still
want to know who the father of their child really is."
From next April, a clause in the Human Tissue Act will make it an offence to take material such as hair to
be used for DNA testing without full consent.
An indepth look at paternity fraud, men's and children's rights. 10 minutes.
This segment of CBC News: Sunday was on a paternity fraud case in which the husband was ordered to pay child
support for 2 children which weren't his biological children.
The article contains info about children's identity fraud at The Hospital
for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
December 14, 2002.
Includes interview with employees of Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada who admit they deny children's identity information to husbands/male
partners of mothers who want to hide the real identity of their child because
they had an affair. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of The Child specifically
supports a child's human right to have a relationship with both his/her
biological parents. In addition, this article is proof that The Hospital
for Sick Children ("Sick Kids") supports paternity fraud.
Further "Sick Kids" supports a mother's rights only, which they view,
supersedes 3 other people's rights, namely, the rights of the biological
father, the rights of the mother's male partner/husband and the child's
identity rights.
Up to one in 25 dads could unknowingly
be raising another man's child, UK health researchers estimate.
Increasing use of genetic testing for medical and legal reasons means
Read More ..uples are discovering the biological proof of who fathered the child.
The Liverpool John Moores University team reached its estimate based on
research findings published between 1950 and 2004.
The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Biological father
Professor Mark Bellis and his team said that the implications of so-called
paternal discrepancy were huge and largely ignored, even though the
incidence was increasing.
In the US, the number of paternity tests increased from 142,000 in 1991 to
310,490 in 2001.
An adulterous Spanish woman who conceived three children with her
lover has been ordered to pay £177,000 in 'moral damages' to her
husband.
The cuckolded man had believed that the three children were his until
a DNA test eventually proved they were fathered by another man.
The husband, who along with the other man cannot be named for legal
reasons to protect the children's identities, suspected his second wife
may have been unfaithful in 2001.
Paternity Fraud & the Criminal Code of Canada
Paternity fraud: Is it or should it be a criminal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada?
Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW)
has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity
judgments against men who arent, in fact, the father.
Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support
payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be
held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who
seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who
never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe,
well then, that's fine.
Last year, more than 3,000 DNA paternity tests were commissioned by
Australian men, and in almost a quarter of those cases, the test revealed that not only had their partners been
unfaithful, but the children they thought were theirs had been sired by someone else.Read More ..
Feminist organizations including the National Organization of Women (NOW)
has objected to legislation that requires the courts to vacate paternity
judgments against men who aren't, in fact, the father.
Think about that. NOW wants some man, any man, to make child support
payments. The woman who doesnt even know who the father is, should not be
held responsible for her actions, is a sweet, loving, blameless mother who
seeks only to care for her child and if naming some schmuck as father who
never saw her before in his life helps her provide for the innocent babe,
well then, that's fine.
Proposed new laws will make it easier for fathers to recover child maintenance
payments if DNA testing reveals that they are not the child's father.
The Family Law Amendment Bill 2005 allows people who wrongly believed they
were the parent of a child to recover any child maintenance paid or property
transferred under an order of a court under the Family Law Act 1975 .
"The bill is intended to make it easier for people who find themselves in
this position to take recovery action without the need to initiate separate
proceedings for an order from a court of civil jurisdiction, such as a State,
Local or Magistrates court," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said.
The fairytale that saw Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott reunited with the son he thought he had given up for
adoption 27 years ago, ABC sound-recordist Daniel O'Connor, ended this week when DNA tests confirmed another man had
fathered Mr O'Connor.
The revelations were devastating for all involved, not least Mr O'Connor.
Still reeling from the emotional reunion with his mother, Kathy Donnelly, and Mr Abbott a few months ago, a simple
test of truth has thrown the trio into disarray a situation familiar to thousands of other Australians.
Paternity testing in Australia is a burgeoning industry.
The simplicity of the test cells are collected from a mouth swab grossly underestimates the seriousness of the
situation.
An acid sense of betrayal has been gnawing at Damon Adams since a DNA test showed that he is not the father of a
10-year-old girl born during his former marriage.
"Something changes in your heart," says Adams, 51, a dentist in Traverse City, Mich. "When she walks through the
door, you're seeing the product of an affair."
But Michigan courts have spurned the DNA results Adams offered in his motions to stop paying $23,000 a year in child
support. Now, Adams is lobbying the state Legislature for relief and joining other men in a national movement
against what they call "paternity fraud." Read More ..
Up to three million Britons may be wrong
about who their real father is , experts claim. But using DNA paternity
tests to discover the truth can cause its own problems.
BBC, U.K., May 16, 2003
Dad's got blue eyes, Baby brown...
When Tessa found out she was pregnant after fertility treatment, she felt
a mix of delight and doubt.
This wasn't simply pre-baby nerves - she suspected that her husband might
not be the father. For Tessa had started sleeping with a colleague when the
stress of the ongoing treatment became too much.
Keen to build a family with her husband, she let him believe the baby was
his. But her lover threatened to reveal all if she ended the affair, and Tessa
soon fell pregnant again. This time, her lover started to make nuisance calls
to her home.
Tessa had no choice but to tell her husband. "I said to him, 'I've had an
affair and you may not be the father of my children.' So with that, he went
up the stairs, got dressed and left. And that was it," Tessa says in Women Who
Live a Lie, a programme for the BBC's Five Live Report.
THERE IS A story I used to find hilarious in my high school years about
a not too bright man. He was light skinned, his wife was of similar hue,
but their first child was born with very dark complexion (darker dan Bello,
blacker dan Blakka).
When the man wondered aloud about the baby's complexion his wife assured
him that the child was born dark because the child was conceived in darkness
(they had sex with the lights off). The man accepted the explanation. Because
he loved his wife dearly, he also ignored the fact that the child had other
obvious signs of resemblance to the young dark skinned man who did their
gardening. To fix the problem, the husband put flood lights, strobe lights,
spotlights and forty other lights in the bed room so there would be no more
darkness to create dark babies.
"Supporters of paternity
identification bills point to a 1999 study by the American Association of
Blood Banks that found that in 30 percent of 280,000 blood tests performed
to determine paternity, the man tested was not the biological father."
Read More ..
Michael Lautar was devastated when he
learned his first wife was cheating on him,
and then crushed to discover the then
5-year-old girl who called him "Daddy"
wasn't really his daughter.
Next came the sucker punch.
Lautar is under court order to pay nearly $800 a month in
child support and other expenses, despite the fact his
ex-wife has admitted in Allegheny County court papers that
Lautar is not the girl's father. The child was born during
their marriage. After the couple divorced, the mother
married the girl's biological father. The mother, the father
and the daughter live together in Moon, according to papers
filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.
"I'm stuck in this rip-off, this fraud," said Lautar, 40,
of North Strabane. "It's paternity fraud, is what it is. ...
And the state is enforcing this fraud."
Lack of free Family Court Ordered DNA Paternity testing abuses Dads and Kids.
"The Labour Government is abusing fathers and children by failing to legislate for free DNA testing
to establish paternity", is how Jim Nicolle, spokesperson for the New Zealand Child Support Reform
Network, responds to United Futures call for Family Court Ordered DNA paternity tests.
