As some of you know, the H. J. Heinz Foundation honored Geraldine Jensen with its Public Policy Award and $250,000 in cash. The story carried by the Columbus Dispatch is below and my personal letter to the Heinz Foundation follows that. I'll post my letter to the Dispatch soon.
I urge others to write to both the Heinz Foundation and to their local newspapers--many of which carried this story--to reveal, as Paul Harvey says, "the REST of the story."
Don
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HEINZ FOUNDATION
REWARDS CHILD-SUPPORT ADVOCATE
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
NEWS 01B
By Catherine Candisky
To many in state government, Geraldine Jensen is a pain in the neck. But to thousands of families improperly denied child support, she's a heroine.
Today, Jensen, founder of the nation's largest child-support enforcement organization, will be recognized for her persistent and undaunted efforts on behalf of countless parents and children with the $250,000 Heinz Award for Public Policy.
In 2001, Jensen persuaded Gov. Bob Taft to return to
They were taken as reimbursement to cover the cost of welfare payments given to those families. So far, about $13 million has been returned to 57,000 families.
"For more than a generation, Geraldine Jensen has been a passionate and determined voice, championing the rights of single parents and their children and transforming -- almost single-handedly -- our country's child-support system,'' said Teresa Heinz, chairwoman of the Heinz Family Foundation.
"Through advocacy and activism, Ms. Jensen has stirred congressional action, not only leading to greater public awareness of the issue, but winning legislation that helped protect divorced parents and their children from becoming victims of poverty.''
Teresa Heinz established the Heinz Awards in 1993 to honor
her late husband, U.S. Sen. John Heinz. The Republican from
Two decades ago, Jensen was a penniless, divorced mother of
two in
First, bureaucrats told Jensen that she would have to locate her husband, then they told her she needed to find out where he worked. Eventually, she was told to quit complaining to the child-support bureau.
With $12 to her name, Jensen took out a newspaper advertisement seeking other parents who had been unable to get help from child-support agencies. Within days she received more than 200 responses and ACES -- the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support -- was born.
ACES now has chapters in 48 states with more than 50,000 members nationwide.
Since 1984, the organization has helped more than 700,000 parents collect more than $3 billion and Jensen has become a regular before Congress and in the media as an advocate for children of divorced parents.
The 1988 Family Support Act included many ACES recommendations, such as allowing child support to be withheld from the paycheck of delinquent parents.
Likewise, the 1992 Child Support Recovery Act included an ACES recommendation to close a loophole that allowed parents to avoid child-support payments by moving from state to state.
More recently, Congress passed the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act, making nonsupport a federal felony in certain cases.
In 1995, Jensen's story was told in the television movie Abandoned and Deceived.
"Parental support is a birthright, an obligation that
endures throughout childhood, no matter where he or she may be living,'' said
Jensen, now of
"This organization has grown through the efforts of committed parents, people with few resources but who share an unwavering resolve to see that their children receive the support they are due.''
ccandisky@dispatch.com
Caption: Geraldine Jensen has built ACES into a nationwide organization to enforce child support.
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MY LETTER TO THE
HEINZ FOUNDATION:
March 21, 2003
Teresa Heinz
The Heinz Family Foundation
3200
Dear Ms. Heinz:
I'm writing to express my extreme dismay at the decision of the Heinz Family Foundation to award Geraldine Jensen the Heinz Award for Public Policy. According to the story published by The Columbus Dispatch (2/11/2003), in presenting this award, you declared that:
For more than a generation, Geraldine Jensen has been a passionate and determined voice, championing the rights of single parents and their children and transforming-almost single-handedly-our country's child support system.
The account posted on the Heinz Award web site contains an expanded account, in much the same vein, of Ms. Jensen's accomplishments.
The research that the Heinz Family Foundation undertook prior to bestowing this honor on Ms. Jensen-an honor that includes a $250,000 cash award-should have extended beyond viewing the made for TV movie Abandoned and Deceived. If the Foundation had done its homework, it would have found quite a different story.
Ms. Jensen's children were not abandoned by their father. According to court records, easily available on-line to anyone who would take a few minutes to search, Ms. Jensen moved the children away from their father and then interfered with their relationship with their father. Here is what an Ohio Appellate Court said:
Upon our review of the record, we find that the trial
court's determination that Mr. Gerharter failed to support his children without
justifiable cause is against the manifest weight of the evidence. The record is
clear that since her divorce from Mr. Gerharter, Mrs. Jensen had severely
limited Mr. Gerharter's opportunities to maintain a relationship with his children.
First, she moved the children 1500 miles away from Mr. Gerharter. Mrs. Jensen
then refused to let Mr. Gerharter see the children when he was in
Ms. Jensen's actions were little more than legally sanctioned parental abduction. She deprived her two boys of a full relationship with their fatherfirst by moving the children away from him and, then, by persistently and intentionally interfering with his continuing efforts to remain in their lives. (In addition to a copy of the court decision quoted above, Ive enclosed a copy of a story from The Paper that reconstructs from court records what can only be described as Ms. Jensen's concerted campaign to deprive her two sons of their father.)
I'm shocked that a foundation established to honor the
memory of the late Senator John Heinz - a man who is characterized as in
involved, loving father of Henry John IV, André and Christopher - would choose to
go about this by bestowing this award on Ms. Jensen. John Heinz's parents were
divorced when he was only five years old. Fortunately, he was able to spend
many summers in
One might think that, despite Ms. Jensen's personal conduct in the past, she and her organization ACES, have done much good by promoting effective collection of child support payments. This is a rosy story to tell: by making parents financially responsible, we are alleviating child poverty and reducing the burden on the public. But it is more fantasy than fact.
The rigid and draconian child support system that has been put into place as a result of Ms. Jensen's - almost single-handed - efforts has done great harm. It encourages divorced parents to fight for sole custody of their children rather than working out a sharing of parental rights and responsibilities that the overwhelming body of social science research shows is best for children. The child support system as it currently exists in almost all states, actively contributes to the problem of 'parentectomy.' It does this by encouraging and rewarding sole custody decisions and refusing to recognize the direct expenses of noncustodial parents on their children (so that a noncustodial parent who tries to remain a parent to his children must support his children twice - once through his direct support to the children and once through the child support system). Ms. Jensen, personally, and ACES have strongly opposed revisions in child support laws that would promote shared parenting.
Ms. Jensen's movement has benefited greatly from the myth of the deadbeat dad. I call this a myth not because there aren't real-life cases; of course there are. But it functions as a convenient social myth - one that allows us to pretend to solve difficult social problems by 'getting tough' with an imagined boogieman. The vast majority of unpaid child support - especially in the cases of children most at risk - is unpaid because the noncustodial parent is living well below the poverty level. The problems of child poverty will not be solved by withholding passports and revoking professional and driving licenses.
The greatest adverse impact of the current child support system - a system that is designed to 'slash and burn' its way to higher child support awards and compliance - is on low-income families. These families are, as you know, disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities. Despite the research showing that low-income African American children are harmed more by the absence of a father than by the poverty they suffer, our current child support system unintentionally encourages the break-up of the African American family that was begun under the system of slavery and continued under the misguided welfare policies of the 1960s. Two Franklin County Child Support workers related the following 'fairly typical' story at a Head Start meeting I attended:
Often mom and dad are living together with their children, though they are not married. Mom loses her job and applies for public assistance. She is forced to name the father of her children. The state then issues a child support order and his wages are garnished - even though he has been supporting his children directly. He is angry that his wages are garnished and the relationship falls apart - often with acrimony and sometimes with domestic violence. He moves out and stops paying part of the rent and utilities; he stops paying for part of the groceries, the children's clothing and so forth. Even more importantly, he doesn't see and interact with the children as much as he did.
Now, the children have no father in their lives, less money available to support them. It looks like an emotional and financial disaster for the children. But not in the records of the child support enforcement system! In our current child support system - the one Ms. Jensen has almost single-handedly created - this is an unmitigated success: paternity was established; a child support order was created; wages were garnished and the children are now officially better off. "Our work here is done and we can move on to save other children."
People like to think that the clumsy, overbearing child support system only comes into play in cases where one parent is being irresponsible and refusing to directly support his or her children. Nothing is further from the truth. Loving parents who have been deeply involved in their children's lives and have always supported them generously and voluntarily find that, at the whim of the other parent, they are, first, largely excluded from their childrens lives and, second, presented with the bill for all of the choices of the other parent with respect to the children. And the enforcement mechanisms for not paying this bill are severe.
What is the Heinz Family Foundation doing to promote the involvement of both parents in the lives of their children? What is it doing to prevent irresponsible parents from moving their children thousands of miles away from the other, loving parent and then interfering with that parent's limited abilities to remain a parent to the children? Oh that's right the Heinz Family Foundation is rewarding - almost canonizing - parents like that.
Until the Heinz Family Foundation shows a real commitment to promote the rights of children to a full loving relationship with both parents - instead of supporting the idea that what children need is only one parent and a check - my wife and I will no longer buy Heinz products, including: Bagel Bites, Boston Market, Catelli, Classico, Farley's, Funky Fries, Greenseas, Guloso, Jack Daniel's Grilling Sauce, John West , Linda McCartney Meals, Mr. Yoshida's Fine Sauces, Ne-nerina, Olivine, Ore-Ida, Orlando, Plasmon, Polly Mi Chicha, Polly Rice Flour, Rosetto, Smart Ones, tinytums, Watties, Weight Watchers Foods, and Wyler's. We are, of course, just one of the households that previously purchased your products. But we will do what we can to encourage others in the local and national organizations we work with to follow suit.
I will be happy to resume purchasing Heinz products when I read the story about the Heinz Family Foundation acknowledging and rewarding the work of organizations that promote equal shared parenting of children. The absence of one parent from the children's lives is the real child support problem.
Sincerely,
Donald C. Hubin, Ph.D.
16. S. It might be worth mentioning in passing that the membership figure of 50,000 ACES proudly proclaims is likely to be inflated a bit. ACES tax returns for 2000 show $19,180 in 'Membership Dues and Assessments.' If every member of ACES joined at the lowest level of $10 per year, that would entail a total national membership of 1,918 - respectable for a grassroots organization, to be sure, but a far cry from the 50,000 claimed.
Encls: 'In the Matter of the Adoption of Matthew Stephen Jensen
and Paul Jensen,' (1981
"Gerri Stacks the Deck," by D.C. Burch, The Paper:
"Child Support Advocate Widely Assailed for Tactics," by Ann
Fisher and Dave Murray. The
ACES 2000 Federal Tax Return, Form 990, page 1.
