http://www.canadiancrc.com/Paternity_Fraud.htm

The children's rights movement calls it "child identity fraud". The father's rights movement calls it "paternity fraud". It's the same thing by a different name. There are 3 victims: the child, the biological father and the male falsely identified by the mother to be the child's father.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for the right of children to be raised by their biological parents from birth. Articles 7, 8 and 9 of the Convention address the issue of that right. 

Human identity is an important part of a person's birthright. Some victims pf paternity fraud search a lifetime for information about their biological parents even in situations where they love their adoptive parents that chose them as their social children.

Women are the gatekeepers of human identity and the only parent which can commit paternity fraud.  The Canadian Children's Rights Council gets many emails daily explaining case histories which involve a pregnant women or a new mother that have a great variety of circumstances which make identifying the father difficult.

These cases include women that have had multiple sex partners in or out of a committed lifetime relationship. Research shows that 40% of women and 60% of men in a committed relationship will be unfaithful at some point.

Technology has changed and so must the laws. A child's parents can be identified 12 weeks into a pregnancy by non-invasive means ( a simple blood test by a simple blood sample taken from the pregnant woman's arm) compared with dna ( a simple mouth swab ) from her sex partner(s).

Many provincial/territorial governments have penalties of $100,000 and 6 month in jail for the mother providing false information on the "Statement of Live Birth", the document used to register the baby's birth with the appropriate provincial/territorial Vital Statistics Registry.

The Director of the Ontario Vital Statistics Registry, Judi Hartman, stated to the Canadian Children's Rights Council  that less than 100 potential violations of vital statistics cases in total are investigated each year. A portion of these investigations are investigations of paternity fraud. She could not give one example of the prosecution of a woman who committed a paternity fraud violation.

The Director advised us that there are approximately 12,800 births in the province of Ontario each year. Considering a paternity fraud rate of a bare minimum of 10% according The Hospital for Sick Children ( see the Globe and Mail's article Mommy's Little Secret), a Toronto, Ontario world class hospital, there are at least 1,280 new cases of paternity fraud in that province alone each year.

Based on numerous studies elsewhere the figure of 16% of the Canadian population being victims of paternity fraud is more realistic.

We were advised by the Ontario Director of Vital Statistics that police services can and should investigate paternity fraud under the provisions of the Vital Statistics Act.   The Toronto Police Services and the Peel Region Police Services, 2 of the largest police services in Canada, have refused to do so.

Mothers must tell the truth

The Australian, 23Mar05

IT has been called sex, lies and DNA. That complex web snared Tony Abbott when, on Monday, he revealed that the son he was reunited with just a few months ago was not his son. Abbott's anguish, his shock and disappointment, as he faced cameras was only too real. Recall the beaming Abbott when just a month ago he talked about "my boy" Daniel O'Connor. It is impossible to imagine the even greater torment that O'Connor is now confronting.

While the Abbott saga has mesmerised the nation, other cases slide under the radar. This is a web that entraps more men and children than we may care to believe. And when the tangled skein involves deliberate deceit, the devastation is often worse.

Consider the case of Liam Magill. When his wife Meredith gave birth to two babies, each born with blue eyes and blond hair, Liam assumed they were his. He had no reason to think otherwise. He signed the birth certificates as any new father does. He cared for the children, loved them, cherished them as most fathers do. But Liam's world fell apart when he discovered neither child was his. [full story]

The Government of Australia
Attorney-General's Department

Media Release 042/2005

17 March 2005

GOVERNMENT ACTS ON CHILD MAINTENANCE RECOVERY IN CASES OF PATERNITY FRAUD

The Government has acted this week to enable people who, through the use of DNA testing, have found they are not the parent of a child to recover child maintenance payments.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said legislation introduced in the Parliament yesterday would address the issue of people who had wrongly believed they were the parent of a child. [full story]

Fraud in Canada is covered by section 380 of the Criminal Code of Canada

Read the interesting Scottish article " Donor names: ill-conceived idea or every child's right? "  "Who is my father?" is about to be answered.

One US study found that 12% of fathers not paying child support did so because they claimed they were not the father. See US DHHS Child Support Report - January 1997. The study also found that unemployment and lack of visitation were major reasons for failure to pay child support.

"A fair percentage of us, it turns out, are not genetically related to the men we grew up with as fathers anyway. Some physicians doing tissue typing for organ donations estimate that maybe 20 percent of people are not genetically related to the men who claim fatherhood; others say it is less, perhaps as low as 5 percent."

Barbara Katz Rothman (1989) Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal Society, Norton: New York, p.225

"In the courts where paternity cases are heard, only a minority of the accused men deny paternity. This group, therefore, are the only ones who are privileged to request blood tests to sustain their denial. It has been shown that 30 to 40% of these men who deny paternity are falsely accused. In the majority of cases heard in the courts, however, the accused man admits paternity and accepts the burden of support imposed by the court." p.249

"Blood-grouping tests [A-B-O, M-N and Rh-Hr] in 67 cases of uncontested paternity indicate that in 6 cases, or 9%, the men admitting paternity were not the fathers of the children they accepted. Since only 50% of wrongfully accused men can be excluded by present methods of blood testing, it follows that not 6 but actually 12 men in this small series who admitted paternity were probably not the fathers of the children in question." p.250

From: Sussman L N and Schatkin S B (1957) "Blood-grouping Tests in Undisputed Paternity Proceedings", Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol.164(3), May, pp.249-250

3rd worldwide case of ex-husband successfully suing ex-wife for paternity fraud

Husband makes cheating wife pay for time spent raising lover's child

The London Times, London, U.K., from Adam Sage in Paris, May 3, 2005

A FRENCHMAN has won a ground-breaking ruling against his former wife and her lover, ordering them to pay back the money that he had spent on bringing up a child he had mistakenly assumed to be his own.

The man, named as G in the ruling, was awarded €23,000 (�15,600) after a DNA test revealed that he was not the father of the 13-year-old child, Astrid.

He had raised her as his own daughter, paying for her food, clothing, toys, schoolbooks and holidays, the Caen Appeal Court in Normandy said. It added that his former wife, B, from Cherbourg, had always had doubts about the identity of Astrid's father: she was unsure whether it was her husband or her lover.

The judges said that she had committed a "fault" by failing to tell her husband that she had been having an affair at the time of the conception and that she did not know whose daughter Astrid was. [full story]

Legislature of Saskatchewan passes 2 laws violating a child's rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms while disobeying the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada and violating the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child

Two new laws were passed in June of 2004 in Saskatchewan in response to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Trocuik v. British Columbia (Attorney General).

Saskatchewan is the first province to formulate change to their laws resulting from this Supreme court decision.

[full story]

Media package available on this issue in pdf format  (soon, end of Sept 2004 latest)  size

Includes various relevant provincial and federal laws with areas highlighted, Supreme Court of Canada Decision, newspaper articles relating to this issue from around the world, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, info on relevant government officials ie Ministers, Registrar Generals, Deputy Registrar Generals

Jeanette Papp of the University of California at Los Angeles, feels that 15 per cent is rate of paternity fraud for the Western world, even if there is no hard evidence. "It's hard to do studies on these things for ethical reasons," says Dr. Papp, director of genotyping and sequencing in UCLA's department of human genetics. "I mean, how do you tell people what you're really looking for?"

A British survey conducted between 1988 and 1996 by Robin Baker, a former professor at the University of Manchester, confirmed the 10-per-cent figure. That seems high to skeptics such as Dalhousie University geneticist Paul Neumann, although even he admitted that "my colleague, who's a woman, tells me women have no trouble believing it. . . . It's the men who can't."

Bernard Dickens, a specialist in health law and policy at the University of Toronto, said that in another British example, the non-paternity rate was three times that.

"In the early 1970s, a schoolteacher in southern England assigned a class science project in which his students were to find out the blood types of their parents. The students were then to use this information to deduce their own blood types (because a gene from each parent determines your blood type, in most instances only a certain number of combinations are possible). Instead, 30 per cent of the students discovered their dads were not their biologically fathers. "

South Korean husband successfully sues wife for Paternity Fraud and gets marriage annulled.  Wins $42,380 in compensation [full story]

Australian man wins lawsuit against ex-wife for Paternity Fraud [full story]

1 out of every 6 children in Canada is a victim of Child Identity Fraud / Paternity Fraud. That's 5 million Canadian's [full story]

Charter Challenge- Statement of Live Birth (Birth Registration) Info - Dads and Children Win

Supreme Court of Canada Decision- June 6, 2003,

The British Columbia Vital Statistics Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, c. 479, on their own or in their effect, discriminates against biological fathers on the basis of sex, by providing biological mothers with sole discretion to include or exclude information relating to biological fathers when registering the birth of a child, contrary to s. 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Read the whole story, the Supreme Court of Canada decision, newspapers articles and our comments about how this not only affects fathers but supports children's identity rights.
[full story]

Doctor at fertility clinic statement about naturally born children:
"These children do not have the right to find out who their genetic father is. The name on their birth registration certificate is their social father. If a child conceived through donor insemination is to have the right to know who their genetic parents are, we should have a discussion about these children too."
- Dr Stewart Irvine, Edinburgh’s fertility clinic, Scotland, U.K.  [full story]

About Child Identity Fraud / Paternity Fraud

Child Identity Fraud / Paternity Fraud is the fraud perpetrated when a woman who knows, or who should know, or who has reasonable grounds to know who impregnated her, identifies the wrong man as the biological father of her child.

Child Identity Fraud is the violation of a child's right to know their own identity and the identity of his/her father.  The child has a right to have a relationship with his/her biological father. Identity is an important factor to every person.

Mommy's little secret
The Globe and Mail, one of Canada's 2 national newspapers, The article contains info about children's identity fraud at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, 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.

About The Hospital for Sick Children. Affectionately called "Sick Kids", is one of the largest paediatric academic health science centres in the world, with an international reputation for excellence in health care, research, and teaching.

Duped 'dad' to fight court ruling

The Age, By Peter Gregory, Chief court reporter, April 16, 2005

A Melbourne man who found he was paying maintenance for another man's children is challenging a court decision that removed a $70,000 damages payout earlier awarded to him.

Liam Neal Magill, 54, has lodged an application for special leave to appeal to the High Court against a ruling made last month in favour of his ex-wife, Meredith Jane Magill, 38.

Mr Magill took legal action in January 2001 after DNA tests proved he had not fathered two of the couple's three children. [full story]

Fathers want to know if they're the biological parent of their child
DW-World, Germany, December 12, 2004
Father's rights groups in Germany are fighting to retain their right to have secret paternity tests without a mother's permission. They say it is the only way to combat "paternity fraud."

In a debate over paternity tests in Germany -- father's rights groups are lobbying to block proposed legislation banning secret tests without the mother's permission -- advocates are employing increasingly alarmist arguments. One group, the Network for Paternity Tests, claims on its Web site that making the tests illegal would lead to an increase in incest between half brothers and sisters who don't know they're related. [full story]

Calls for Investigation into Why Man Was Ordered to Pay Child Support for A Non-Existent Child
U.S. Newswire, December 9, 2004
DALLAS, Dec. 9 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Steve Barreras paid child support for a 5-year-old daughter who his ex-wife claimed was his. Despite never being able to actually see the child, Barreras did pay $20,000 in child support as required by the court. The problem is -- the child has been declared nonexistent by an Albuquerque judge. "There is no child ...," she said. [full story]

"Supreme Court rules in favour of dads"
The Toronto Star, from CANADIAN PRESS, June 6, 2003
OTTAWA — Mothers who arbitrarily refuse to acknowledge the fathers of their children shouldn't be allowed sole power to name their children, Canada's highest court says.

Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'
USA TODAY, by Martin Kasindorf, December 12, 2002
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."

In almost a dozen states, men have won the right to use conclusive genetic tests to end their financial obligations to children they didn't father. But women's groups and many public officials responsible for enforcing child support are battling the movement, which they say imperils children. [full story]

Paternity: Innocence Is Now a Defense
U.S.A., July 14, 2004, by Wendy McElroy, www.ifeminists.net

Partner child support at issue
Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) to rule on 2 women who split before a birth
Lesbians sue sperm donor for child support
Boston Globe, U.S.A., By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff, March 1, 2004

Torrance Man Vows To Change Child Support Laws
Man Ordered To Support Child He Says Isn't His
NBC News, Los Angeles, U.S.A., March 2, 2004

DNA testing upsets parentage laws
The Grand Rapids Press, MI, U,S.A., By Doug Guthrie, February 29, 2004

Sperm and the quest for identity
BBC News Online (British Broadcasting Corporation), U.K., by Clare Murphy, January 20, 2004

What are the implications of banning anonymous sperm donations, as speculation mounts that the UK may give children conceived through donor insemination the right to trace their biological parents?

Donor names: ill-conceived idea or every child's right?
The Edinburgh Evening News, Scotland, U.K., January 20, 2004

Former Army Paratrooper Faces Paternity Fraud
ATLANTA, GA, U.S.A., Nov. 12, 2003, U.S. Newswire

States Consider Laws Against Paternity Fraud
Child Advocates Worry About Effects
By Robert E. Pierre, Staff Writer, Washington Post, U.S.A.,  October 14, 2002, Page A03

The sperm that got away

Sunday Life Magazine (Australia), By Amy Cooper, 18 August 2002

Men say they need protection from a new predator � the women who target
them exclusively for their sperm. Amy Cooper reports

Around the world, the battle of the sexes is taking a new turn. American
millionaire Steve Bing acknowledges he's the father of English model and
actress Elizabeth Hurley's son only after DNA tests. In Sweden, a court
orders Igor Lehnberg to pay child support to the lesbian couple who used
his donated sperm to have three children. Tennis star Boris Becker accuses
a Russian model of stealing his sperm during an encounter in a broom cupboard.

Mick Jagger is ordered to pay child support after tests prove he is the dad
of model Luciana Morad's son. And in the US, there's the world's first
"paternity fraud" lawsuit: Peter Wallis accuses his long-term partner,
Kellie Smith, of "intentionally acquiring and misusing" his sperm after she
became pregnant when she was supposed to be on the pill.

The ingredient these stories share is becoming as influential as drugs,
dollars or oil. It stirs up conflict, divides loyalties and drives men and
women to desperate acts. For a slightly absurd-looking microscopic organism
with a wriggly tail, sperm has a lot to answer for. [full story]

Paternity Fraud Legislation Sweeps the Nation
Group Plans Town Hall Meeting in NJ Showing Plight of Victimized Families
MND Newswire, New Jersey, U.S.A., April 30, 2003

Heir pushes for DNA use in his paternity suit
A scion of the Johnson & Johnson fortune wants a new law so he can limit a daughter's inheritance.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, U.S.A.,Trenton Bureau, Dec. 28, 2003

Shouldn't Men Have a Choice, Too?
The Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal, U.S.A, by Glenn Sacks, February 18, 2002

MPs consider rules for reproductive technologies
TORONTO - The House of Commons debated a bill Friday that could make it more complicated for infertile couples to have a baby.
Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) October 28, 2003  Who's my dad?

Infidelity 'is natural'
BBC, U.K., September 25, 1998

Preserving Paternity Fraud
The Orange County Register, by Dianna Thompson and Glenn Sacks, California, U.S.A., October 3, 2002

Sign of the times: Firm offers paternity testing on billboard
National Post, Susan Heinrich, March 30, 2002

Men wage battle on 'paternity fraud'
USA TODAY, by Martin Kasindorf, December 12, 2002

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