The Not So Tender Trap

As Most of us Know, the fortunes of commerce sometimes come into conflict with the pursuit of a man's private amours; and when this happens, the unhappy choice between the two must frequently be made on the basis of practical dollars-and-cents judgment. When the owner of a printing concern in Alabama – Alfred Arnoe – found a partner who was willing to invest in his enterprise if he moved it to Philadelphia, he moved forthwith, abandoning a love affair with a comely lingerie buyer. The parting was tearful, but he soon found northern attachments and forgot his southern past.

Recently, however, his past gave him a rude jolt in the form of a suit by his former ladyfriend, charging him with fathering her illegitimate child. Arnoe's first impulse was to pay the piper, butwhen he found that she had taken up with other bedfellows since their parting, he decided to make a fight of it. He sent an investigator poking through Alabama hospital records and was able to prove at the subsequent paternity trial that the love child had been born a full year after Arnoe's last contact with his erstwhile bedmate. That, of course, should have been the end of it, except that a jury still ruled the printing executive guilty of imprinting this new issue, and condemned him to pay support money till the child reached its majority. There is nothing in law, it seems, that says a baby can't be carried by the mother for as long as a year – and never mind all those fairy tales about storks bringing babies in nine months.

What befell the printing executive is no once-in-a-lifetime, struck-by-lightningkind of happenstance. Paternity swindles have become one of the most widespread scourges ever directed against the American male. The number of illegitimate births in this country now reaches a lofty 350,000 a year. Over 100,000 suits charging paternity are filed annually, with more or less dire results for the male, and countless others are settled out of court by threats that amount to blackmail. Yet judging by results of scientific tests in New York City courts, at least one-third of these paternity suitclaims are out-and-out frauds. Our society is so hagridden on this question of paternity and so easily gulled by the plaints of the "poor, defenseless woman,"that we have cases of men being adjudged fathers when they never even had a sexual introduction to their ac-(continued on page56)Not So Tender Trap (continued from page 47) cusers, when they have never even had a sexual introduction to any woman, when they are actually sterile.

In Columbus, Ohio, a 16-year-old bobby-soxer who left town to visit relatives came back with a new relative – a five-pound offspring. The guilty man, she claimed, was a well-fixed owner of a specialty shop who used to play with her in the back of his store. The man admitted to a little playing, but said it was all hugs and kisses, and none of what the law refers to as "penetrations." The court refused to believe him. A year later, the girl admitted that she had tagged the wrong man, that the real father was another teenager who had disappeared into overseas service and who had proved impossible to trace.

In Jacksonville, Florida, a 30-year-old divorcee accused a 17-year-old boy in a paternity case. The boy had been badly smitten with her and she had teased him along for a year, while she had bona fide affairs with at least five adult males. Apparently, she decided to elect the youngster as the father of her love child because his family had money. After a settlement was made, it turned out the boy had not yet enjoyed intercourse either with her or any other woman.

In Rockland County, New York, a wily female accuser introduced a tape-recording of a phone conversation with the defendant as proof that he had sired her bastard. The recording, in part, went like this:

Woman: "Would you at least let me give the baby your last name?"

Man: "Would I what?"

Woman: "Would you let me give it your last name?"

Man: "I told you I would."

Woman: "Because you know it's your baby?"

Man: "What?"

Woman: "I said, you know it's your baby..."

Man: "Yeah... yeah..."

Woman: "I figured maybe you would marry me ... You wouldn't marry me after you found out I was pregnant. I can give the baby your last name?"

Man: "Yeah."

The defendant's lawyer, far from admitting that the recording proved his client's paternity, insisted his client had been entrapped by a secretly recorded conversation which only proved that the female in the case was a schemer and the male was a bit easy-going. His client could not be responsible for implanting any seeds for the simple reason that he was sterile. This statement was borne out by medical witnesses. The jury swallowed the phone conversation, repelled the unshaken medical testimony and invested the defendant with the dubious legal honor – and the financial responsibilities – of fatherhood.

In a Kentucky case, a former minor-league ballplayer who had romanced a baseball-nutty manicurist, insisted he could not have fathered her child because he always took the customary precaution. His lawyer trapped the girl into admitting that as far as she could remember, the accused had indeed insisted on employing contraceptives. The jury went to sleep on this testimony and damned the man anyway.

How can such outlandish verdicts by man's peers be handed down in an era we choose to call enlightened? How can so many other legalized paternity persecutions be countenanced every day in our courts in cases not nearly so unique and unusual? The answer lies in the fact that paternity cases are technically not criminal prosecutions. Therefore, the defendant is not presumed innocent until proven guilty, nor is there any need to prove his guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt. "You can be trumped in a paternity suit simply on the uncorroborated statement of a woman complainant. Such testimony can't convict in crimes such as rape, abortion or abduction; it can't even win a civil suit such as divorce; but when the charge is bastardy, it sticks. Sidney B. Schatkin, assistant corporation counsel of New York City and the country's foremost expert on paternity suits, says flatly that if it's a case of a man's word against a woman's, the court will invariably take the woman's. And New York Special Sessions Justice Louis I. Kaplan points out that in most states, a jury will side with the woman even if the weight of testimony is heavily against her. This includes "carnal knowledge" testimony, in which assorted males testify about the complainant's sleeping around. The same states which require no corroboration of a female's charges demand corroborative proof of statements by the "carnal" boys. What it comes down to is that if you are able to get a buddy to testify in your behalf that he had "carnal knowledge" of the complainant, his testimony probably won't do you any good unless he can actually produce pictures of himself committing the sex act with her.

The credo that generally obtains in paternity cases, at least in English-speaking countries, is one that was laid down in 1938 by an English magistrate named Claude Mullins. Testifying before a Parliamentary committee, Judge Mullins said that his rule of thumb was to "hold as the father of the child any man who had intercourse with the mother around the probable time of conception." The man who may be the father must pay, whether he is in fact the father or not, the judge said.

By setting the standard that inter-course – or for practical purposes, the mere charge of intercourse – was to be the determining factor in these cases, Judge Mullins was issuing an inadvertent, but explicit, all clear for extortionists. In his authoritative legal text, Disputed Paternity Proceedings, Schatkin points out that there have been a great many recent cases in which unmarried women have deliberately brought accusations against the wrong men. And in many other cases, he says, the mother honestly doesn't know which of several men is the father, and so selects the richest, or the one least likely to arouse the sympathy of a judge and jury, or the one most vulnerable to publicity and therefore most likely to settle generously out of court. "The man who denies sex relations [in a paternity case] will probably be disbelieved," says Schatkin. "If he admits intimacies, his legal position is vulnerable. He is defenseless!"

Some of our courtrooms turn out paternity-case verdicts with startling speed and uniformity. On a single afternoon in Jersey City recently, there were three cases in which the defendants introduced platoons of males willing to swear that the plaintiff's bed was the most heavily trafficked in town. It made no difference – the defendants were convicted anyway. One woman admitted that in addition to her present illegitimate child, she had three others, all fathered by different men. One might assume her uncorroborated statements to be suspect, but the court swallowed them nonetheless. One male defendant even brought a female to testify for him. She described herself as his "true love" and insisted he could not possibly have impregnated his accuser at her conception time because "he was with me every day and night during that whole month." "What happened during the few days you had your period?" the judge leaned down to ask her. "Kept him right with me, found other ways to satisfy him," the woman snapped. She made an excellent defense witness, but the result was another cut-and-dried guilty verdict.

What about the theory long popular in gentle society that no woman would stoop to the embarrassment of a paternity suit unless she had been, in' fact, cruelly victimized by the ogre haled into court? This is a ridiculous belief, according to Dr. Nah Brind, Los Angeles psychologist and expert on the habits of litigious females. "Most women who give birth to illegitimate children are not unsophisticated and naive maidens, but rather those who have had a great deal of sexual experience. They are apt to be exhilarated rather than embarrassed by the notoriety of a paternity case, because it gives them a sense of importance. If they're good-looking, it may even make them important enough to get a booking

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Not So Tender Trap

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in Las Vegas or Miami Beach."

The threat of headlines that can torpedo a man's career and at the same time glamorize a frilly, conscienceless accuser, automatically makes prominent businessmen and celebrities prize whipping boys. Usually, when tagged with a paternity summons, they elect to pay up and duck out. In the infrequent cases in which they have chosen to make a public fight, they have taken a bad beating.

There was, for example, Hugh Casey, the big-league pitcher. A model charged him with paternity, he insisted he was innocent and would not submit to any shakedowns. She sued, won her case, and destroyed Casey's reputation in a blaze of newspaper headlines. Casey lapsed into a fit of depression. A few months later, he called his wife, swore again that he was an innocent man, then blew his brains out.

It is interesting to note that Casey's accuser had been engaged to another man at the time she filed her suit, and that this man escorted her to court every day the trial took place. The two were married immediately after Casey was adjudged her child's father.

Millionaire sportsman Alexis Thompson was another victim of a model's paternity suit. He died while his suit was in progress and his attorney bitterly accused the girl of contributing to his death by her campaign of blackmail against him. Later, the model sued another man as the father of a second illegitimate child.

The Charlie Chaplin case deserves special attention because it spotlights the question of blood tests, which have become an increasingly important factor in the tricky business of determining paternity. A discussion of the Chaplin case requires a digression on blood tests, which provide the physically able male with scientific armor – rather than mere evidentiary armor – to contest phony claims of paternity. It was the tests made in recent disputed New York cases which led to the discovery that at least one-third of all paternity suits are frauds. Despite sporadic attempts to challenge blood tests as unclear or imperfect, they are recognized by the American Medical Association as being foolproof as fingerprints and matters of fact beyond dispute. We know, for instance, that whatever the blood group of the mother, the laws of blood-group heredity preclude a male with group O blood from ever fathering a child with group AB blood. Similarly, a male with an N factor in his blood can't father an N factor child; nor can a male with an Rhnegative factor sire an Hr negative child. (The vice versas in these cases all apply too – an AB male can't father an O child, an N male can't father an M child,an Hr negative male can't father an Rhnegative child.)

Now since fingerprints, ballistics tests, X rays and other scientific aids are accepted as incontrovertible items of evidence in even the most horse-and-buggy American courtroom, it would be logical to expect that technical tests of the blood would be accorded the same status. Unfortunately, logic and common sense seem to have little bearing on bastardy proceedings. Only 12 states – Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Wisconsin – require that blood tests be taken in disputed cases. Only two of these states – New York and Maine – insist that these tests be accepted as binding by a paternity court.

This brings us back to the currently self-exiled Charlie. Although Charlie may be open to criticism on some levels, in the one important lawsuit in which he was involved in this country, he was unmistakably victimized. Chaplin's courtroom nemesis was Joan Berry, former actress of sorts, former protegee, former bedmate. The two did their romping in California, which was a mistake for Charlie and a boon to Berry. California allows blood tests to be taken into consideration in a paternity case, but it doesn't clothe them with any special recognition that would set them apart from other less-scientific evidence or even mere testimony. Furthermore, by virtue of a ruling of its Supreme Court, California specifically permits jurors to ignore the tests. Some lawyers feel that this actually encourages juries to exclude the consideration of blood tests from their verdicts.

Shortly after the birth of Miss Berry's illegitimate progeny, blood tests showed that Chaplin was group O, and the baby AB. Hence, scientifically, there was no doubt that Chaplin could not be the father. Miss Berry said she'd been robbed and another test was arranged. Three impartial pathologists peered into their microscopes and came up with the same result. Charlie not only had science going for him, he also had the asset of Miss Berry's dubious testimony.

Chaplin contended that his intimate relations with the actress had stopped four months before her child was conceived. Miss Berry admitted this breakup with her lover, but insisted she'd gotten back into his bed again at the time of conception. She testified that she broke Chaplin's house nine months before her baby's birth, raced into the master's bedroom, and threatened him with a loaded gun. They had a bitter argument about money, she said, during which she kept the gun pointed at him. For a brief interlude, they stopped hurling insults and began making love. When that was out of the way, she again confronted Charlie with the gun.

The defense introduced evidence to show that Miss Berry was involved with three other men in addition to Chaplin. She insisted she had no sex relations with them, however. One of these men, J. Paul Getty – recently headlined as one of the richest men in the world – was disclosed to have been nightclubbing with her a number of times and to have taken her back to her hotel at a late hour. She admitted receiving money from Getty's attorney before she became pregnant. A letter from Miss Berry to Chaplin was introduced into the record. It read: "Charlie, I'm so sick of it. Why am I here having to go through with a cheap intrigue for a few stinking dollars ... Why do we have to grow up into cheap little gold-digging bitches?"

It was impossible, of course, that any jury could size up the results of blood tests, the raft of damaging admissions by Miss Berry, plus the incidental testimony, and bring in a verdict against Chaplin. It was impossible – but it happened.

One of the reasons why it might have happened – in Chaplin's case and others – is offered by psychologists, many of whom maintain that men serving on juries may feel self-righteous about the acts the defendant has allegedly committed, or they may feel outright jealousy at the fact that they did not share the lady's bed. Female jury members may harbor unconscious envy – especially if the defendant is wealthy and good-looking. Together, jury members have a tendency to damn the defendant, whether he is guilty or not, for being a fun-loving fornicator.

What also happens in some of these paternity cases is that the man not only has to pay, but has to pay and pay again on subsequent go-rounds. Many men who either admit, or are forced to admit, to the conception of bastards, prefer to make lump-sum settlements in the belief that they are permanently crossing these obligations off the books. But if the female who gets the settlement chooses to dissipate it on the horses, on dice games, or on plastic surgery to get herself a new face, the court will come after the legally adjudged papa again. When a wealthy banker named Joseph C. Bancroft was haled before a New York court to support his "destitute" child, he cried out, "But I made a complete settlement to the mother long ago." The court tsk-tsked in sympathy, but said it didn't matter what the mother had done with the settlement money. All that mattered was that the child had to be supported and the city relief agency wasn't about to do it as long as the man listed as the child's father had a decent income.

To the late Samuel H. Hahn, a prominent California trial attorney, this concept that the male is never rid of responsibility is a "rotten kind of medieval torture that invites the mother of the child to throw her settlement money away, instead of forcing her to use it for the specific purpose for which it was intended."

What can be done by the men of this country to protect themselves and their fellows from the kind of paternity racketeering which the present laws and their interpretations seem to condone? A minimum program would encompass the following four points. (1) State legislatures everywhere must authorize blood tests, pay for them if the defendant can't, and accept their results as binding on all contested cases. (2) All paternity cases should be tried before judges – they're not as easily vamped as juries – and should be tried in secret, so the inherent threats of blackmail-by-headlines won't work. (3) Legislation is necessary that would force complainants in false paternity suits to pay damage money; this would scare off designing women who deliberately accuse innocent men on the theory that they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. (4) Some kind of arrangement should be made whereby money paid for child support would go into a trust or controlled fund so it can be used solely for child support.

Failing these things, there is one way out of the paternity trap – but it is not widely available. In a Virginia case, one Paul Hufford was charged with seduction and paternity and was about to be adjudged guilty in both particulars when he asked for an examination by a court-appointed physician. The physician thereupon announced that Hufford had the ultimate defense – "he" was a female.