iB::Topic::Are judges still biased against fathers?

It has been three years, four months and four days since I last saw my four beautiful children. In our April 2008 divorce settlement my former wife and I agreed that we would share “joint legal custody” of our four children and that all four kids and myself would participate in “reunification therapy.” That’s because at that point I had not been allowed to see my children for over a year and a half because she accused me of domestic abuse in November 2006. I denied her accusations but my attorney at the time convinced me to voluntarily agree to abide by an order for protection with “no findings of abuse.”

Over the past three years I have been before Freeborn County District Court Judge John Chesterman numerous times and have paid attorneys over $30,000 but have yet to have even one supervised visit with all of my four children! I have swallowed my pride and jumped through every imaginable hoop in an effort to reconnect with the four kids who are so precious to me but have seen no positive results.

I feel as though I am trapped in a legal system that seems to care little about the role a father plays in a child’s life. To say that I am frustrated with the way things have turned out would be an enormous understatement. Especially since early on I was told by numerous professionals that things had really changed in the family court system as to the way fathers are treated. It appears to me that men still get the short end of the stick when it comes to divorce and parental rights in the Freeborn County District Court system.

I have been systematically alienated from my children. On a daily basis I wonder if this pain will ever end. Some days I feel like a parent who has lost a child to a terrible accident or disease. It’s been so long that it’s as if my children are dead to me. The true agony is that I know that they are still alive and going about their day-to-day lives (without me). I have had zero communication with them. I call their home nearly every day, but they never answer. I never receive or see pictures of them, and I don’t even know what schools they attend. All I know is that they are still living with their mother in Eagan. I pay my child support on time every month but have not spent one birthday or holiday with them in over three agonizing years.

My children have said that they don’t want to see me. They have had their impressionable young minds poisoned against me. I have never even been given a chance to talk to them about the divorce that ripped our family apart. What has happened simply is not right. Even an ax murderer would have been allowed to have contact with his children by now!

I have another hearing scheduled next week before Freeborn County District Court Judge John Chesterman. It is my sincere hope that the judge will do something to make it possible for me to be a dad to my kids again. I am a good dad. I am trapped in the endless cycle that is the Freeborn County legal system. I implore the court to enforce the divorce decree settlement that my former spouse and I both agreed to. When I divorced my wife, I did not divorce my children.

I am hoping that by going public with my story things will be different for other fathers going through divorce in Freeborn County. I also hope that things will soon change and I will be reunited with my four wonderful children.

Brant Hemingway

Ellendale