Transcript of ACFC President Stephen Baskerville's Debate with Cynthia Brown
April 12th, 2007 by Glenn Sacks, MA for Fathers & Families
Background: Recently Ohio’s Butler County Child Support Enforcement Agency launched a highly-publicized new campaign which puts mug shots of the County’s “Most Wanted Deadbeat Parents” on pizza boxes. The idea was the brainchild of Agency Executive Director Cynthia Brown. To learn more about the story, click here.
Three representatives of the fathers' movement have debated Cynthia Brown over the past few weeks:
Brown debated family law attorney Maury Beaulier (top right) on Fox & Friends. To watch, click here.
Dr. Stephen Baskerville (right), president of the American Coalition or Fathers and Children, debated Brown on CNN. Video is not yet available, but the transcript of the debate is below.
I debated Brown on FOX News’ nationally-syndicated Morning Show with Mike and Juliet on Tuesday (below right)–to watch, click here.
Transcript of ACFC President Stephen Baskerville debating Cynthia Brown on CNN, 4/1/07
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: A wanted poster delivered with your pizza, of all things, is happening in a suburb of Cincinnati. Mugshots of parents accused of not paying child support appearing on pizza delivery boxes. A child enforcement worker came up with this idea and pitched it to pizza places in Ohio's Butler County.
While this may sound like a good idea, to many, it does have its critics. One of those critics being Steven Baskerville of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. There he is. And he joins us from Washington. And from Cincinnati, Ohio, this morning, the woman who came up with this idea, Cynthia Brown. Good morning to you both.
CYNTHIA BROWN, CHILD ENFORCEMENT WORKER: Good morning.
STEVEN BASKERVILLE, ADVOCATE FOR FATHERS: Good morning.
NGUYEN: Cynthia, let me start with you. Why did you come up with this idea and how did you come with it?
BROWN: Well, first of all we placed two wanted posters a year and they're large poster-size posters, and I came up with the idea in late 2005 to downsize the posters for law enforcement cruisers. One evening, my husband and my stepdaughters and I ordered a pizza, and they always have the coupons on top of the pizza box and they were the same size as the downsized posters, and I thought, hey, why don't we approach pizza parlors and see if they'll put these on top of pizza boxes. My husband said I needed a vacation. Instead of taking a vacation, I decided to run with the idea and so here we are.
NGUYEN: Well, did you get any pizza companies saying, wait, wait, wait, this is too controversial, not for us. We're not interested.
BROWN: Some of the larger chains. I think they felt it might be a negative. A lot of mom and pop chains did join in and we were pleased with that I think the larger chains thought it was negative, because it's a lack of education in child support and in what we do and how we go about doing our business.
NGUYEN: And how effective has it been?
BROWN: Excuse me?
NGUYEN: How effective has it been so far?
BROWN: We have -- we started the poster owns pizza boxes in August of last year and there were 10 individuals put on that poster, men and women, we put a new poster out, downsized it to the pizza boxes, the end of January and this happened to be just all men and we did get somebody -- I think it was the day after.
NGUYEN: Wow, that's pretty quick. Steven, now you have a problem with this. What is the harm in putting these pictures on pizza boxes?
BASKERVILLE: This is an outrageous use of government power. The entire child support system in this country has been hijacked by special interests in ways that dangerously increase government power. Child support was intended for parents who willfully abandon their children and leave them on public welfare. It's has been perverted into a system of forces parents to pay for stealing their own children.
NGUYEN: But if deadbeat parents won't pay, shouldn't something be done?
BASKERVILLE: Parents do pay for their children -- fathers do voluntarily pay for their own children.
NGUYEN: But there are those who don't.
BASKERVILLE: There are always those who don't and they can be taken care of. What this is a system of taking children away from their fathers and using the children as an excuse to plunder the fathers. There's a massive system of child exploitation that cynically uses children to loot their families, to loot their fathers to destroy their homes. We have a massive problem in this country of fatherless children.
NGUYEN: Let's not paint with a broad brush. And Cynthia, I want to get you rreaction of what he's saying, the criticism of this plan.
BROWN: Right, first of all, we don't have -- our agency has no rights to custody, visitation, we don't deal with those issues. We deal with child support issues alone. In other words when a court orders child support, we follow those orders, and I'd like to comment on the willingfully abandoning a child. That's exactly who is on the posters, those individuals who have run from their moral, ethical, and financial responsibility. These aren't individuals -- excuse me -- who have fallen on hard times. These are individual who have run and run for years. This isn't a matter of "I haven't paid for six months," if somebody works with us, we'll work with them. These individuals on the posters are those people who do not want a relationship with their children, do not want to pay their child support and I personally will go after each and every one of those
individuals and hold their collective feet to the fire.
NGUYEN: Steven, let me ask you this. Is there a fear in your mind that this will have a negative impact on children?
BASKERVILLE: It certainly does have a negative impact on children. It's the flagrant exploitation of children to increase the power of government officials. Throughout this country, millions of children, literally, are forcedly separated from their parents by family courts, by social service agencies and this child support chicanery is nothing but a subsidy on stealing children from their fathers, it's a subsidy on involuntary divorce. Ms. Brown may says that she's not part of this, but this is, of course, the bureaucrats plea, we didn't take away your children, the office down the hall took away your children. Then the
next office takes your bank account, the next office takes your savings, and then the next office along, they take you...
NGUYEN: Cindy, is he going to far with this or what do you think about it?
BROWN: Here's what I've got to say and that is, I was really hoping today to get somebody from fathers' rights who would sit down and actually listen and stop with the anger, because anger won't get children money, it won't help us...
BASKERVILLE: Excuse me. No parent is going...
BROWN: And I keep getting -- I keep getting these individuals coming to me from fathers' rights quoting me statistics from 1992, putting my family's home address on the Internet, putting us in danger, when all's I'm doing is doing my job and doing it well, and if that irritates the father' rights group, I don't know what to say.
BASKERVILLE: There is not a shred of evidence ever presented by a government agency or an academic study that there was a problem of fathers not supporting their children and paying child support. There is solid evidence of large numbers of children being forcedly separated from their fathers without the fathers having done nothing wrong. There is also -- there is also numerous scholars who have shown there is nonpayment problem of child support. This is entirely whipped up hysteria by government officials to whip up animus against innocent people.
NGUYEN: All right, we're going to have to leave it there. We appreciate both sides of this argument. It's definitely a debate and not everyone is in support of this plan. But we appreciate you both coming on the show today and talking about both sides. We thank you. Cynthia Brown and Stephen Baskerville, we appreciate it.
BROWN: Thank you, have a good day.
BASKERVILLE: Thank you.
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