Seattle courthouse shooting strikes chord for activists

Yesterday, as federal court employees returned to work after Monday's shooting in the lobby and U.S. marshals pondered whether courthouse security was adequate, another group was busy planning some action of its own.

Through phone calls and e-mails to the media, noncustodial parents organizations have tried to turn the death of Perry L. Manley into an opportunity to bring their cause to public attention. They have long said that Washington courts routinely treat noncustodial parents unfairly. To them, Manley is now an object lesson.

Manley, 52, who was shot by Seattle police Monday in the lobby of the federal courthouse in Seattle, trying to bypass security while clutching what turned out to be an inert hand grenade, was a leader of one of these groups, The Other Parent. He had fought for 15 years in the courts and staged numerous protests over the treatment of noncustodial parents, all the while trying to get the media to pick up on his story. He was largely unsuccessful.

Message boards for noncustodial-parents groups were buzzing yesterday.

"How many more fathers have to die before light is shed on this problem?" one parent wrote on a message board for the Washington Civil Rights Council, a noncustodial-parents group.

"This could be a good thing," another wrote on the same board. "Too bad Perry had to do what he did to make it happen."

Manley, of course, represents the extreme edge of noncustodial parents.

Joe McGill, a Battle Ground, Clark County, father who belongs to The Other Parent, said the group doesn't want this to "go down as some nutcase at the courthouse. I want everybody to know what he was about, what were the motivations behind his actions."

His wife filed for divorce in 1989; he had fought child-support payments ever since, through state court, federal court, letters to senators and more, even though his three children are now in their 20s. Then he took a grenade into federal court.

But according to Greg Seim, who runs United Fathers, it's not unusual to see frustrated fathers. The organization helps parents navigate the court system in child-support cases.

"We are not a father-friendly state," said Seim. "There are a lot of children who don't have fathers because of this system."

Laws designed to help states collect child support are seen as Draconian by some of the men who mostly make up the rolls of noncustodial parents. If you fail to pay, the state can suspend your driver's license, seize and sell your property, and have you jailed.

In a typical case here, a Superior Court judge or his designated commissioner will set the amount of child support using a schedule that takes into account joint income and divides the obligation proportionally between the parents.

But the laws disadvantage poor men, according to Elaine Sorensen, a nationally recognized expert in the field and a principal research associate at the nonpartisan Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. However, Sorensen said research has shown that upward of half of the men who owe child support to the system probably underreport their income. Indeed, fully 25 percent of those men reported no income for 18 months or more.

"Now, how likely is that?" she asked.

And, of course, when parents do not pay child support, it's children who often suffer.

As of May, the state had 337,239 open child-support cases involving about 270,000 noncustodial parents, said George Smylie, manager of the Division of Child Support's conference boards, which determines when to release an individual from a child-support obligation. The state is collecting payments for about 434,000 children.

The state is owed roughly $2.1 billion in delinquent payments. There are more than 50,000 cases in which payments are three months past due; of those, 39,330 are more than six months in arrears. More than 88,000 cases have back payments due of more than $5,000, he said.

Since October, Smylie said, the state has referred 6,300 cases for charges of contempt of court.

Reading through his court files, it's difficult to understand some of Manley's complaints, but it's clear child support was a big issue.

Initially, a judge gave him a small break on his monthly child-support payments, which started at about $650 on a printer's salary of about $2,000. In July 1999, he stopped making payments and the state filed to garnishee his wages. Over time, he spent 85 days in jail for failing to pay.

After that, he began arguing that since a woman has a right to choose to be a parent, and since his ex-wife filed for divorce, she chose to make herself a single parent. When the state ordered him to pay her a big chunk of his income, he reasoned, that amounted to involuntary servitude.

Along the way, he left his job for another one with a much lower salary, and a judge later found he did so to avoid paying his full share of child support.

Manley's ex-wife, Susan Calhoun, said Monday that for years Manley has played the role of "poor dad" to anyone willing to listen. "He would rather support a cause than a kid," she said.

Calhoun said it had been about eight years since Manley spent time with their three children.

Over the years, he maintained the stance of a victim. "The only common thread running through most child-support orders is this: Males pay!" he wrote in court filings.

Some disgruntled parents like Manley study the law or become a paralegal in an attempt to conquer the system that they believe oppresses them. Indeed, at some point, some turn their anger at their ex-spouse into anger at the courts.

Doing things like quitting a good job for a lower-paying one is then seen as a way to "snub the courts," The Other Parent member McGill explained.

Manley's struggle with the courts ended with what police suspect was "suicide by police."

"I'm glad that it brought up an issue that needed to be brought up," said Seim, of United Fathers. "But people could do less-stupid things to get attention."

Maureen O'Hagan: 206-464-2562 or mohagan@seattletimes.com

Mike Carter: 206-464-3796 or mcarter@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporter Jennifer Sullivan contributed to this report.