Man cleared in '72 can't shake deadbeat label
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KELSO - The past that John Speed says he never had keeps catching up with him.
Speed's name has remained, without his knowledge, as a deadbeat dad in state records, even though a blood test, a birth certificate and a jury said nearly 30 years ago that he wasn't the father of a girl born to a casual acquaintance.
Speed is filing a $10 million lawsuit against the state this week, saying his family was thrown into turmoil last year when he got a phone call "out of the blue" from Karla Sparks, a 29-year-old Castle Rock woman.
The suit alleges that a Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) case worker negligently showed Sparks a computer file linking Speed's name with hers and her mother's and implying that he was her father. It also charges that the state was negligent in maintaining the false record and transferring the information into the DSHS computer system instead of purging it in 1972 after a jury trial found that Speed was not Sparks' biological father.
Speed, a 56-year-old former school custodian, was further dismayed to find that the state had searched for him as recently as 1987 to collect child support and had closed the case when he couldn't be found.
By law, Speed had to file a claim with the state before filing suit. The state dismissed his claim in November, arguing that federal law requires the state to track collection efforts on "absent parents." "It's a matter of protection for us," said Adolfo Capestany, a spokesman for DSHS's Division of Child Support. "The records are strictly confidential and can only be disclosed to the parties."
Speed says he should never have been considered a party in this case. He was arrested in 1971 when a woman he'd "palled around with" in Kelso accused him of fathering her baby. Speed was 27 at the time and raising a son by a previous marriage.
Although blood tests indicated Speed wasn't related to the child, there was a trial. In September 1972, a six-person jury agreed he was not the father. State officials declined to say why they continued to track him as an "absent parent" despite the result of that court case.
Speed thought he had put the incident behind him. He told the story to his current wife, Peggy, who is a DSHS social worker. But he never mentioned it to his children, John Raymond Speed, 31, a parole officer in Longview, and Sarah Speed, 25, a Seattle teacher.
The paternity accusation caught up with Speed again about a year ago, after Sparks went to a DSHS office to apply for medical coupons for her daughter. The child has some ailments Sparks believes may be hereditary. Sparks was shown a computer file with three names at the top - hers, her mother's and Speed's. She asked the case worker, "Is that my father?"
When Sparks phoned Speed's home last January, Sarah Speed answered. "She wanted to talk with my father, and, when I asked who was calling, she told me it was my older sister," Sarah Speed says. "It was a complete and total shock to me. And then to hear my father tell her, `No, I'm not your father ... ' It was very confusing."
After Sparks called the house a second time, Speed sought a restraining order against her. Last April, a judge ordered her not to contact him again.
Sparks says she called Speed because her mother still insists he is her father and because she's looking into her biological family background for clues to her daughter's health problems. Sparks' mother, Patsinell Meithof of Castle Rock, won't talk about the case.
Sparks says Speed's suit against the state may be a good thing for her. She hopes the court will demand another paternity test and that the results will overturn the old blood test.
Speed's attorney, Wayne Torneby, says that's not likely - tests at that time could indicate a false positive, but the negative result of Speed's test left no doubt.
At any rate, Torneby says, the caseworker was negligent in displaying the file so that Sparks could read Speed's name.
Sparks says she deserves to know if Speed is her biological father. "My mom was very young then and didn't have an attorney to help her case, but I believe her," she says. "People that were in the church he went to, that I've talked to, believe I look like his mother. Now I feel like God will work it out and I'll be able to say to him, `You really are my father and I know it.' "
Speed says the emotional pain he has suffered since Sparks called has inflamed his own health problems. He says he has been unable to work and is suffering from constant back pain since 1985, when he slipped on a mat and injured his spine while working as a school custodian.
Now Speed and his wife are considering divorce. He believes their marriage has deteriorated because "this has been so degrading to have to explain over and over." He also believes his children's relationship with him has cooled, although both say they believe their father and hate to see him continue having to defend himself.
Speed's lawsuit is one of the largest ever filed against the state. It comes after three record-breaking settlements last year: $7.5 million to 13 former residents who claimed they were sexually and physically abused at an Olympia group home for troubled boys, $19 million to three developmentally disabled men who said they were molested in a state-licensed facility in Kitsap County, and $8.8 million to an Everett woman who was allegedly held captive on a boat for 10 years and beaten by her husband.
When he gets his day in court, Speed says, he will repeat what he told a judge during his 1972 trial: "You have to have sex to have a baby. I never ever had sex with that woman."