3. Custody Fight.
In the Spring of 1996, I was
informed by the mother of my almost-3-year-old daughter Martha that we
were splitting up, that I was merely a "sperm donor," and
that she planned to
live off my child support (and that from her ex-husband for her two young sons from her
former marriage).
This was completely unacceptable.
So for over 2½ years,
we had a very vicious custody fight, which included a death threat
painted on my boat and an actual severed brake line, which ended up in
the Northfield Police Evidence Room.
(The police never
specifically identified who tried to kill Martha and me by cutting the brake line,
but I knew who it was. I did some investigating of my own, kept
my eyes open for opportunities, wrote some letters and made some phone
calls, and was eventually assured by the state DMV that, due to the
information I had provided, they had pulled the little scumbag's
driver's license, and had no plans to issue him another one, ever.)
Here's a hint.
Every time something like this happened — to try to intimidate me
into giving up — it immediately strengthened my resolve to escalate
the situation and ultimately prevail.
The key to the custody
case was something new to me — the Internet. Shortly after
Martha's mother had left with the three kids, I got my first Windows
computer, with browser, and I shortly thereafter, got a dial-up
account. Soon after that, I started creating my first website.
(Martha's mother at
first tried to get me tossed out of the house we had been living in. Unbeknownst to her, I had
already gone to the landlady and had my signature added to the lease
on the house. Since we weren't married, I could assert that I
had just as much right to live there as she did, so she ended up
having to put herself through the hassle of moving out.)
Sidebar - the
Internet has given us perseverers one of the most powerful weapons
possible.
Just think about it
for a moment. Workplace hassles, domestic problems, injustice
in general — there has been a long tradition that one wants to keep
these things quiet and private, out of embarrassment if nothing else. That has been the hassler's
strength — he can dump on someone and it "won't get out."
The brain power user
sees that, and does just the opposite. Take this unacceptable
stuff out of the shadows, and expose it to the harsh light of day —
on the Internet. The results are spectacular, because the
bully isn't expecting it, and ends up staring at an ever-widening
chasm of glaring publicity and impending doom.
Imagine, if you will,
Martha's mother's unbelieving consternation (and that of her family,
and friends, and attorney) when I got myself a free site on GeoCities and
started putting the whole custody case up there.
The entire thing.
All the motions I
filed. All the motions she filed. All the court rulings.
Every time I updated
the website, I notified the search engines to do a refresh.
And then I started
putting up background information.
She had moved Martha
and her two half-brothers to a sleazy trailer park in Northfield.
So I started a separate section detailing every instance of
criminal wrong-doing in that dump as reported bi-weekly by the Northfield
News Police Report column.
Her drunken thug
boyfriend (the one who cut the brake line) had distinguished himself by
threatening to kill his brother with a shotgun, loading the shotgun,
and firing it off in his trailer. Up went all the news
stories about that, on the Internet.
(The little creep
actually took me to court to get a Restraining Order against my
putting up "Wanted" posters, with his police mug shot on it,
all over Northfield, which included an
offered cash reward to anyone turning him in for drinking and/or
driving. When he was denied the Order on First Amendment
grounds, he accosted me outside the courtroom, which violated the
Restraining Order I had against him, so the cops hauled him off
to jail.)
As planned, people
were getting increasingly rattled. One afternoon, I was served
with papers. Her father was seeking a court order to enjoin me
from putting family stuff on the website (among other creative
things).
That evening, the
entire text of his petition was up there. I even included a scan of
the area where he had hand-written some specifics, so I could make
snide comments about his poor handwriting.
(A Dakota County judge
tossed the whole thing out — First Amendment, lack of jurisdiction
over the Internet, that sort of thing.)
Then it was time to
get creative. Up went the (negative) psychological evaluations
from when she was a teenager. Her lawyer screamed bloody murder
over publishing records clearly protected by confidentiality laws — until I
pointed out that these shrink records had been introduced as evidence
in her parents' divorce case, and thus had become public
documents.
And the attorney — her
name was Ellen Weinberg. In addition to publishing all the
motions she'd submitted, I started annotating all the spelling and
grammar errors in them. (I was doing my own lawyering — there
were no errors like that in my filings.)
I also started
referring to her on the website as Ms. Whineberg. She had a
really nasal voice. So that I couldn't be accused of being
defamatory, I turned a couple of her messages on my answering machine into
wave and RealAudio files — so people could listen to her voice and see
how naturally whiney it was.
As I had intended,
"Whineberg" started to get rattled herself, and started to make
substantive mistakes in her filings and court appearances, all of
which I cheerfully took advantage of.
I had documented
evidence by then that my little girl was being maltreated, so I also added to the
website publicly available maps and satellite photos of that wretched
trailer park, identifying exactly where my daughter was being held,
and encouraging people to drive through to keep an eye on things.
Finally, the payoffs
started.
Someone, no doubt
thinking it would get me in trouble, printed out all the pages on the
website and sent them, anonymously, to my mother. This was on my
list of things I hoped would happen. My mother had been strictly
"on the sidelines" with the custody case, but once she read through
the documented evidence of what had been happening to her only son and
granddaughter, out came her checkbook, and I finally had funding to
concentrate on getting Martha home.
The judge in the case
had ruled that some of my allegations were inadmissible.
However, Whineberg also printed out all of my website pages, and
introduced them as evidence. The judge ruled them
admissible, so now my allegations were part of the court
record.
Ultimately, the
intended outcome started to evolve. Martha's mother was very
ignorant about computers and the Internet. She gradually became
a nervous wreck contemplating how every aspect of her private life was being
viewed on the Internet by tens of thousands of friends, relatives, and
strangers.
It didn't help that
she couldn't go hardly anywhere in Northfield without seeing the
posters I'd put up saying, "Have you seen this child?" with Martha's
picture and urging anyone to call the police if they noticed Martha
being abused or abandoned.
Martha's mother also
had a bit of a drinking problem, so you can see where I was headed
with this. She started regularly pounding down the brewskies,
and then, along came leaving Martha unattended in the trailer park,
participation in vandalism attacks on my van and apartment, and the
DWI arrests.
The latter led to
CHIPS petitions — CHild In need of Protection and Services. The
first one was not enough to reverse custody, but the second one was.
Upshot: The woman who
said that I would never have custody of Martha:
Spent 30 days in
jail (the rest of the two-year sentence was suspended).
Lost her driver's
license for a few years.
Lost custody of
Martha, who was returned home to me.
Lost custody of her
other two boys, who were taken by Rice County Social Services and
given to their father. (And therefore the child support she'd
been getting from that source came to an abrupt halt.)
Ended up paying me
child support for a couple of years.
That's how one deals
with people who try to do something that's unacceptable.
Footnote: in the
almost eight years since I went to the Northfield Safety Center to get
my daughter and bring her home for good, my relationship with her
mother has been 100% cordial, cooperative, and mellow. She
dumped the booze and dope, went to school and got a nursing license, and married a
decent enough guy.
Martha has a new younger half-brother. One of her other older
half-brothers returned to Northfield to live with his mother, and the
other one visits regularly.
So not only did I
prevail despite overwhelming odds, I maneuvered it in such a way that
things turned out well for everybody else in the family, too.
