The following polarized debate on mom v. dad custody issues, is similar to the dialogue presented at the OSi/Sinai/Gardner/CRC seminar. Since the seminar I have learned that CRC plans on memorializing their most revered advocate, Sonny Burmeister1999 First Annual Child Advocate Memorial, whose long public record of abuse, precedes them both.

CRC will present its first Sonny Burmeister Child Advocacy Award at our 1999 conference in September.  The award is named for Sonny Burmeister, longtime head of the George CRC activist, who died in an accident in February, 1996.  sonny was mentor and inspiration for many people around the country.  Submit your nomination to the chairman of the committee. Ed Gadrix, Esquire, Gadrix and Associates, 770 Old Roswell Place, Suite B200, Roswell, GA 30076, phone 678-461-9525.  Ed was a friend of Sonny's, as were other members of the committee, including Elizabeth Hickey and Mike Oddenino.

Think about it....CRC's 1st Annual Child Advocacy award memorializes Sonny Burmeister the founder of CRC and FAPT in Georgia, a man whose ex-wives all said he physically and verbally abused them, was taken to court for not paying child support, refused to pay for his son's college education and was sexually inappropriate with his daughter and made serve him beer on visitations. Kinda makes ya wonder if he was drunk when he fell to his death off the roof of his house?)   According sources several folks drove by his house to make sure he was dead, and also called up the GA Lobbyist for NOW, Vicki McClennan to see if she had an alibi.  Sonny actually locked one wife, Rebecca Sue Burmeister, and her two children out of his house, took away the keys to the car and fired her from her job at his company BAI Ltd. (he was her boss) leaving them destitute and stranded.

Dad,

           Well, looks like you'll be seeing me after all. My mother is "forcing" me to go. So while I'm there, we might as well try to make the best of it. If you want me to respect you, then you'll have to respect me, and so will Candace.

           I don't expect people to come up to me and say how wonderful of a person your and that I'm being a horrible child, (like BB said about Eirk) because I have already formed my own opinion about you, and it will only be changed when you learn how to become a decent and responsible person, (if that is ever possible).

          I will not go to church with you because if you are an example of what a Christian is like, then I cannot respect any of the Christian religion.

     I will not eat food that I do not want to eat, like pork, heavily fried foods, cheeseburger) etc. and don't force me to, like you have before.

    You have to acknowledge that fact that I'm not 8 years old anymore, so don't run around in your underwear and respect my privacy! (and that includes your lap because it all gives me the creeps.) Also, I am NOT your servant, so do not ask me to get you beer, dispose of empty bottles for you, or fix you a meal or snack while you lay around in your underwear watching T.V. and movies at any given time during the day.

     I will not think of Candace as my mother or as my step-mother. She has no right to yell at me nor do I have to take orders from her, or be punished, with abusive hitting and yelling by you, because of her. You are the one who depends on her for money and a place to live, not me. It may be her house, but that doesn't make me respect her. Nor is she the ruler over me and all my actions.

     Don't think that I'm trying to be flippant or bossy by writing you this letter, but if you start treating me like a intelligent person who can add 2 + 2 and understand the difference between what you want people to think, what the real truth is about you, and let me form my own opinions without accusing me that my mother makes them for me (because you don't like them), then maybe we can resolve some of the differences between us. Like you said, "LIFE IS A TWO WAY STREET." SO ISN'T IT ABOUT TIME THAT YOU BE RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE DOING THE OPPOSITE WAY? I want you to understand that I am sick and tired of being pushed around, abused, and used by you, so that you can feel good about yourself and make yourself look like a big shot to other people. I am ready to out you out of my life and turn my back completely on you if you don't start changing the way you behave towards me.

     I am very involved in school and extra curricular activities, and you should try to understand that this is a very important time in my life and part of my growing up. I do not want to spend as much time with you because when all that time is forced on me, it takes me away from the things that I consider important to me growing up the way I want to. You may think that you being my father is important, (and under normal circumstances, with a normal father, that would be true) but after the last four years with the things you have said and done, I no longer consider you an important part of my life. If you want that to be changed, then you have to be the one to start changing. Threatening me personally, calling me names, and continuing to run my mom, my brothers, and anyone else that you see as your enemy down, is only going to make me want to push completely out of my life. Also, I want you to know that this is the last time my mom and I are ever going to fight between ourselves about visiting you. Just so you can get your way, because I don't consider you worth fighting about. If things don't get straightened out this time, I have enough money saved up, where I can go hire my own lawyer to fight you in court about ever visiting you again.

     Here's my first attempt to settle some of our differences, when's yours?

     As stage manager, I have to work the curt6ains, let the light or sound people know if there's a problem, come up with suggestions about props or character activity for Mr. Meredith, (which I often do). I notify the cast of what scene is coming up and who's on (which I don't have to do very often), and report to Mr. M. on how things are going.

    I get to make my "Alfred Hitchcock appearance" as Mr. M calls it, in the florist as a customer, but I don't have any lines.

    I quit the Youth Choir because I wanted to stay on top of my school work, do a good job on Little Shop, and the music we were singing was either boring or too religious oriented. Plus, something always seemed to come up right before a practice so I couldn't go.

[Sonny's daughter]

P.S. I wondered how you were able to pay for the airline tickets, considering you're a year behind in child support for the "children you love so much." But it wasn't any surprise to see that they were charged to Candace's credit car account. Still into using people, aren't you?

     I read the letter you wrote to my mother, and your stupidity made me laugh. Still trying to put all the blame on other people, and exaggerating to try to make the look "bad," when it is you who doesn't live up to the court agreement. Who do you think you're fooling? I know what you are supposed to do according the the agreements because I have pulled my mother's "legal" file out of my Pop's file cabinet and read all the orders since the divorce. You have not "complied" in hardly any areas of these agreements.

cc: Katharina E. Greenberg, Mother
     Bissel Robert, Mother's attorney
     Clerk of Court of the Superior Court of Cobb County for inclusion in the official record of this case.    

"The Plaintiff [Horace William "Sonny" Burmeister] struck me in the face with his fist, then threw me and my three minor children out of the house with no place to got and without any money. The defendant has willfully failed and refused to give me my part of the furniture and household furnishings purchased during the marriage. Also, I was employed by A A I, LTD, which is the Plaintiff's business. The Plaintiff has exclusive dominion and control over the business and is the sole stockholder in this company. The Plaintiff has willfully failed and refused to pay me the three weeks pay that I am entitled to."

                                                                                                                             -- Rebecca Sue Burmeister
 

Clearly, Sonny's substantial domestic abuse record does not exemplify the best in warm/fuzzy nurturing. Sonny dragged one ex back to court, in a viscous attack, because his teenage daughter was so repulsed by him, she refused to go on visitations, and don't give me that lame PAS explanation. Sonny did plenty both privately and publicly to deserve his randy reputation. Does this justify giving equal parenting access no matter what?

Here's some fun stuff from the AJC:

Gov. Zell Miller appointed Sonny to the Gender Bias Committee and the Governor's Commission on Children and Youth. He also published the monthly newsletter "Voices for Children."

The commission heard a different story from two men who testified Horace Burmeister, a non-custodial father from Cobb County whose ex-wife moved their children to Kentucky, said any national review of child support should look at the rights of fathers and the gender bias of the courts in custody awards.

"You have a compliance problem because of a fairness problem," said Mr. Burmeister, president of the newly formed Georgia Council for Children's Rights.

The treatment of fathers also was questioned by physician Jean Bonhomme of the Atlanta-based National Black Men's Health Network.

"If we look at why men don't pay support, they may not be the ogres they are made out to be," Dr. Bonhomme said. "They may have employment problems or health problems. We feel willful non-payment of child support should be a crime, but a lack of job skills should not be."

graphs: Women without child support

Some of the reasons women gave for why they did not get child support.

22.1%.....Did not want award
17%.......Father unable to pay
16.9%.....Unable to locate father
15.3%.....Did not pursue award
14.7%.....Other reasons
13.9%.....Pending/other settlements >> 1991

Sonny's Dysfunctional Extended Family

DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson walked across the courtroom today, pointed his finger at the Rev. Rance Wellborn, and told a jury, "That man - and I look him in the eye - is a murderer. He murdered Larry Burmeister."

Wilson's statement came at the end of his closing arguments in the case about 1 p.m. today. The jury was expected to begin deliberating later this afternoon.

Wilson told the jury that Wellborn, charged with murder in the death of Lawrence Burmeister, exhibited "the conduct of a guilty man from start to finish."

But David Wolfe, Wellborn's defense attorney, argued to the jury of seven women and five men that the case against Wellborn was "based exclusively on circumstantial evidence."

Wellborn, 53, is charged with the May 13 stabbing death of Burmeister, 46, a crime prosecutors contend resulted from a homosexual relationship between the two.

Wilson told the jury that Wellborn's description of his own conduct in a police statement - finding an injured friend, leaving him, carrying on a normal routine for three days until police traced a car seen leaving Burmeister's house to him - "defies any kind of logic you could apply."

"You can go in that jury room and stay there forever and cannot come up with but two scenarios," Wilson told the jurors. Either Wellborn "is the victim of the greatest set of circumstances and one of the greatest injustices ever to be done, or he's guilty as charged."

Wolfe attempted to show during the trial that police failed to look for an intruder Wellborn claims to have encountered at the Burmeister home on the afternoon of Burmeister's death or the car the intruder may have been driving.

Wolfe also argued today that Wellborn probably did not have the physical capacity to have killed Burmeister, who was well over 6 feet tall and weighed 298 pounds.

"At the time of his death, Larry Burmeister was 300 pounds of don't- kill-me," Wolfe said.

Holding up photographs of Burmeister, Wolfe asked the jury to "look at how this man was butchered" in considering whether Wellborn could have committed the murder. Wellborn is "the kind of guy Charles Atlas used to kick sand in his face," Wolfe said.

But Wilson said size doesn't matter when an attacker has a weapon. Otherwise, he said, prosecutors would not see "so many cases of little old women killing big old husbands with knives, with scissors, with guns."

Wolfe said expert testimony first placed Burmeister's death at between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on May 13, while Wellborn left the Burmeister home early in the afternoon.

"Is that information consistent with somebody coming back?" Wolfe asked the jury.

He also cited two different kinds of cuts suffered by Burmeister - arbitrary stab wounds probably inflicted during a struggle and " deliberate, methodical, passionate, sadistic cuts" inflicted when Burmeister was "either dead or unconscious."

"There's got to be some doubt about when this man died," Wolfe said.

But Wilson argued that it would be illogical to presume that a killer, who was so intent on slaying Burmeister that he returned, would have given both Wellborn and Burmeister an opportunity to call police.

Wolfe requested Monday that the jury be given the option of finding Wellborn guilty of voluntary manslaughter and, over the objections of the prosecutors, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger agreed.

Wolfe rested his case Monday after calling only three witnesses, and without Wellborn taking the stand.

As the first witness for the defense, Joseph Salome, an attorney who represented Wellborn at the time of his arrest, testified that the minister told police he saw a gray "Chevrolet or something of that nature" parked at the curb of Burmeister's house when he arrived there the afternoon Burmeister died.

Salome, who represented Wellborn from May 15, the day before his arrest, until after a bond hearing the next week, also told the jury that he advised Wellborn to leave home the day before his arrest.

Wellborn, in a taped statement to police played for jurors during the trial, said that the intruder he encountered at Burmeister's home cut him on the hand and threatened him by saying, "I know who you are. If you ever say anything about this, well, I'm coming to get you and your family."

A second defense witness, Angela Roberts, a neighbor of Wellborn' s, told the jury that a "strange gray car" had pulled into her driveway the day after Burme ister's death. The driver asked Ms. Roberts' daughter her first and last names, the woman testified.

Asked under cross-examination whether there was "even any hint" that the car or the questions by its driver had anything to do with the Wellborn family or the Burmeister murder, Ms. Roberts replied, "No."

Defense attorney Wolfe also recalled a prosecution witness, William Owens, who lives across the street from Burmeister's house. Owens reconfirmed that the driver of a red car he saw leaving the Burmeister house on the day of the murder was "clean-shaven" and "neat."

Copyright 1986, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, All rights reserved.

Fathers Suffer Bias In Divorce, Group Says

When families in Georgia break up, the children usually go with the mother. But a group of divorced fathers are trying to change that. They would like to see a legal system that severs marital bonds without severing the bonds between children and their parents.

An organization called Fathers Are Parents Too (FAPT) - most of the members are divorced fathers - will open a chapter in Riverdale next month. Its goal is to serve as a support group for men without custody of their children and to lobby for the removal of gender bias in Georgia divorce and child custody cases.

The group favors equal treatment for spouses in domestic relations confrontations. It also advocates: a greater use of court-required mediation in divorce and custody cases, joint custody of children, more visitation rights for non-custodial parents, equitable child support guidelines and less discretionary power for judges in family law matters.

"The Georgia legal system isn't equipped to handle family breakdowns, " said Kent Earnhardt, a College Park lawyer who is helping to get the Southside chapter started.

Rather than tie up the courts with divorce cases, the organization supports mediation.

"I am a firm believer in mediation," said Fulton Superior Court Judge Leah Sears-Collins. "It's efficient and less bloody. We need to take the blood out of the process, because the kids end up as casualties."

In 1988, Fulton County Superior Court handled 8,397 domestic cases, the bulk of which included divorce and child custody cases, according to Estelle Roberts, chief deputy of the court. Clayton County Superior Court handled 2,895 last year, said Jere Weber, chief deputy clerk.

"There is generally a loser in our adversarial process, but there may not be any winners," said Judge Sears-Collins, whose law clerk is a trained mediator of domestic cases. "One side is usually using the child custody issue with the children as pawns. It's brutal to say the least."

The fathers' group said children will benefit from equal access to both parents and that recent studies show kids raised by one divorced parent, with little or no contact with the other, have many more problems than their peers adjusting psychologically, socially and academically.

"Children need access to both parents," said Judge Sears-Collins.

See Deconstructing the Myth of Fatherhood

But in Georgia no true joint custody exists. Even if both parties agree at the time of the divorce, either party can file for a modification of support or visitation once every two years.  [Doesn't exist? Then why are just about all contested custody cases joint custody?]

"We're going through a social revolution right now as men and women redefine their roles," said FAPT member Corky Willis of Riverdale.

He cited the increase of women in the work force and the rise of single-parent families.

Current state law and decisions by superior court judges do not reflect the reality of families today, according to members of the fathers' group.

The superior court judges, who have discretion in awarding custody of children, child support payments and alimony, often decide divorce and custody cases based on their own biases and not the best interests of the child, according to several FAPT members.

Mr. Earnhardt said there is a direct link between a non-custodial parent's access to the children and willingness to pay child support on time and in full.

Nonetheless, "the absent parent is liable under law," according to Jerry Town send, director of the Georgia Office of Child Support and Recovery. His agency goes after parents who willfully abandon their children - physically, emotionally or financially.

"The welfare problem is a problem of non-support of payment," Mr. Townsend said. In Georgia, more than 200,000 children from 86, 000 families receive welfare, he said.

In 1981, the Office of Child Support and Recovery recovered $8 million in welfare payments from delinquent parents. In 1988, it collected $69 million with a goal of $100 million set for this year. "We've made one heck of a dent," said Mr. Townsend.

FAPT members said they are unduly criticized for their stand on equitable child support payments.

"We're not a group of deadbeat dads," said H.W. "Sonny" Burmeister, a board member of FAPT. He said divorced parents must be in good standing to even join their group.

Mr. Townsend said the "ultimate solution" may rest with wide usage of mediation and a separate family court system that would handle family disputes. Then the superior court would act as an appeal system for those dissatisfied with the results.

For more information on Fathers Are Parents Too, call 449-8642.

Copyright 1989, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, All rights reserved.

United States Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)