Independent police probe urged
16-year-old girl detained on officer's 'misleading' account
Lawyer says investigation should consider perjury charge
The Toronto Star, TRACEY TYLER, LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER, Jan. 6, 2004.
A lawyer has called for an outside police investigation into the case of a 16-year-old girl who was denied bail and jailed for two weeks after a Toronto officer gave a court a misleading account of a fight.
Toronto criminal lawyer Paula Rochman is asking Chief Julian Fantino to have an independent police force investigate whether the officer involved should be charged with perjury or obstructing justice.
In a letter sent to the chief yesterday, Rochman also asked that the Toronto Police Service's professional standards unit look into the matter and that the officer's immediate supervisor be informed of the facts so he can take appropriate action.
Constable Mike Hayles, a Toronto police spokesperson, said yesterday that Fantino had already asked the professional standards unit to look into the case to see how accurately a court assessed the situation in a recent decision.
In a ruling on Dec. 22, Madam Justice Sheila Ray of the Ontario Court of Justice stayed aggravated assault and weapons charges against the teen, finding that her Charter rights were violated when she was detained on the basis of a "misleading" and "embellished" account of the crime provided by the officer in charge of the case.
Detective Constable Marc Beausoleil's "sloppy" investigation and poor record-keeping, Ray said, produced an unfair, unbalanced synopsis of the crime, which led a court to wrongly conclude that the 16-year-old was the ringleader of a brutal, premeditated attack on another girl across the street from Oakwood Collegiate Institute last Feb. 4.
The officer himself conceded that his investigation was "lousy," the judge added, noting the synopsis contained 13 errors or inaccurate suggestions, including:
- The fight was the result of a long-simmering feud, and the 16-year-old led the victim to the crime scene and hit her with a metal pipe.
- The victim was left with a broken nose requiring surgery.
- A mob of 20 to 30 other people was also armed with metal pipes used in the attack.
In an interview, Rochman said as far as she knows, there has been no other case in which a court has been asked to remedy a situation where an accused person was denied bail on the basis of unreasonable or misleading information. But what happened to her client isn't an isolated incident, she added.
In fact, speakers at a recent conference held by Ontario's Criminal Lawyers' Association suggested that misleading police reports could be contributing to the growing number of people held in pretrial custody. There are now more inmates in Ontario jails awaiting trial than serving sentences; 62.7 per cent are charged but not convicted.
Rochman's client, who cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, spent two weeks in custody at the Vanier Centre for Women and was released after a bail review. Three other youths arrested in the incident were released from the police station and a fourth was set free after a bail hearing.
Fathers demand mandatory paternity testing
A men's rights group has called for mandatory paternity testing of all babies after government figures revealed almost 600 instances of men compelled to financially support children they did not father.
Since changes to child support laws four years ago, there had been 586 cases of men successfully using DNA testing to show they were not biologically related to children they had been financially supporting, the federal government has revealed to The Australian.
DNA test confirms fraud, annulment granted: judge
The Visayan Daily Star, Bacolod City, Philippines, BY CARLA GOMEZ, February 28, 2009
Bacolod Regional Trial Court Judge Ray Alan Drilon has annulled the marriage of a Negrense couple after a DNA test showed that the child borne by the wife was not the biological offspring of the husband who works abroad.
The family court judge ruled that the marriage of the couple, whose names are being withheld by the DAILY STAR on the request of the court, was null and void.
Due to fraud committed by the wife in getting her overseas worker husband to marry her, properties acquired during their marriage are awarded in favor of the husband, the judge said in his decision, a copy of which was furnished the DAILY STAR yesterday.
The judge also declared that since the overseas worker is not the biological, much less the legitimate father of the child of the woman, the Civil Registrar is ordered to change the surname of the child to the mother's maiden name and remove the name of the plaintiff as father of the child.
The complainant said he was working as an electronics engineer in the United Arab Emirates and on his return to the Philippines in 2001, his girlfriend of 10 years with whom he had sex, showed him a pregnancy test result showing that she was pregnant.
On receiving the news he was overjoyed and offered to marry her. Shortly after he went to Saudi Arabia to work, and his wife gave birth to a baby girl in the same year.
The birth of the child only five months after their marriage puzzled him but his wife told him that the baby was born prematurely, so he believed her, the husband said. Read More ..
Courier-Mail Newspaper
Australia
Unfaithful mother fined $120,170
From correspondents in Rio de Janeiro
Agence France-Presse
September 18, 2007
A BRAZILIAN woman has been ordered by the country's Supreme Court to pay a hefty fine to her husband for failing to mention that he was not the father of two of their children.
The Rio de Janeiro woman, whose identity was not disclosed, was ordered to pay her husband over $US100,000 ($120,170 Australian Dollars) for having hidden from him for almost two decades that the children in question were fathered by a lover, the court's offices said yesterday.
The husband also had sought damages from his wife's lover, the court said.
Man Can Sue Woman For Sperm Theft Distress
Associated Press, U.S.A.
Feb. 24, 2005
CHICAGO (AP) A woman accused of using her lover's sperm to impregnate herself without his knowledge can be held liable for the unwitting father's emotional pain, the Illinois Appellate Court has ruled.
In the ruling released Wednesday, a three-judge panel reinstated part of a lawsuit against Sharon Irons, a doctor from Olympia Fields. The ruling sends the case back to Cook County Circuit Court.
Irons was sued by her former lover, Chicago family physician Richard O. Phillips, who accused her of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal" of him after a brief affair they had six years ago.
Australian Father Wins Paternity Fraud Case
Woman failed to tell man he was not father
West Australian News
21st December 2005
A pregnant woman has a duty of care not to tell a sexual partner he is the father of her unborn child if it is possible another man is the real father a District Court judge has ruled.
And mother-of-three, Kellie Gray, of Pinjarra, was negligent in not having a paternity test done as soon as her son was born, Judge John Wisbey said in his judgement in a damages action by a father who turned out not to be the father.
Rodney Macdonald, of Kewdale, claimed damages of about $70,000AUD from Ms Gray on the grounds that he was tricked into believing he was the father of her son. He gave up a well paid mining job to move to Perth to be nearer the child.
Fathering Magazine
A Woman's Right to be Criminal
December 5, 2002
I read a USA Today article on child support by Martin Kasindorf entitled, Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'. Paternity fraud is when a woman names the wrong man as a father for the purpose of forcing him to pay child support. The words 'paternity fraud' were in quotes as if they referred to someone's questionable characterization rather than a straightforward fact. This might have moved me to let out a long sigh except that I knew it would not have been worth the trouble. I know from experience that 'paternity fraud' would not have been in quotes unless we were being prepared for some unadulterated bullshit.
South Korean Husband Wins Paternity Fraud Lawsuit
Associated Press, USA
June 1, 2004
South Korean husband successfully sues wife for Paternity Fraud and gets marriage annulled. Wins $42,380 in compensation
Adulterous woman ordered to pay husband £177,000 in 'moral damages'
The Daily Mail, UK
18th February 2009
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: Is it or should it be a criminal offence under the Criminal Code of Canada?
You be the judge.
Man jailed for not supporting kid who isn't his
Mistaken-identity victim forced to pay $12,000 to someone else's daughter
Associated Press, USA, December 6, 2008
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A Philadelphia man was forced to pay more than $12,000 in child support for another man's daughter and spent two years in jail for falling behind on payments.
Dauphin County prosecutor Edward M. Marsico Jr. told The Patriot-News of Harrisburg that he is examining the case of Walter Andre Sharpe Jr., who has been unable to recover the money even after establishing that he isn't the girl's father. Read More ..
Former U.S. Army Paratrooper Faces Paternity Fraud
Former Army paratrooper, Walter "Buddy" Everhart, of Powder Springs, Ga., was married for fourteen years in a union that produced five children, or so he thought. After his divorce, his world was turned upside down when he learned that three, and possibly four, of the children he thought were his biologically, are not. DNA testing has conclusively proved it, according to the National Family Justice Association.