"Bob Whiteside" wrote in message
nk.net...

"Dusty" wrote in message
...
Kentucky Soldier Gets Less Than Happy Homecoming
March 11, 2005, 07:53 PM EST
http://www.wkyt.com/Global/story.asp?s=3065477

It was a less than happy homecoming for a soldier just back from Iraq.
He
was thrown into jail on his first night home.
It appears some important people didn't know Army Specialist Larry
Casteel
was on the war-front.

In a matter of hours, Casteel changed from a weapon-toting specialist
wearing the camouflaged khaki uniform of the United States Army, to a
surprised resident of the Laurel County lockup, wearing the hardly
camouflaged bright orange inmate jump-suit.

The story unfolds as Casteel traveled with some friends to an area store
where the car in which he was a passenger was stopped by police for a
broken
tail-light.

A check of everyone's ID's turned up a warrant against the Army man for
failure to appear at a court hearing.

Casteel and his wife were in the process of divorce and in Laurel
County,
divorcing couples with kids have to attend parenting classes. When he
didn't
show, Casteel became a marked man.

Only the court didn't know he was in Iraq and he didn't know he was in
any
trouble.

Attorney Katie Gilliam heard through a friend of a friend about the case
and
was appalled the Army man was in jail.

A circuit judge agreed and Casteel was released after spending the night
in
the lockup.

As the paper shuffling continued, it was learned there is a parenting
class
scheduled for next week. Casteel says he'll be there after spending one
of
a
precious few nights behind bars a short distance from his home.

Casteel returns to active duty in Germany in three weeks.

Nice - the soon to be ex-wife got the same notices and didn't tell anybody
he was in Iraq. She's probably not the only vindictive woman to pull that
stunt!

Even taking into account the all-pervasive liberal and feminist
bias in the U.S. media, I am baffled about why there is so little coverage
of these stories about the outrageous way military fathers are treated. A
few weeks ago I posted a story from the New York Times about the way
creditors were going after men who had been called up at short notice to
serve in Iraq, despite the existence of a federal law that was supposed to
protect them. The author of this story, which got considerably play in the
NYT, made no mention of the way men are being imprisoned for non-payment of
"child support" that accumulated during their absence, although she must
have come across this when she was researching the story.

Quite a number of years ago, when I first became involved in
fathers' issues, I listened to a story from a father who had just retired
from the military. His wife then decided that she was going to divorce him,
thus imposing a "child support" burden on him for his minor children. The
judge told him that, since many military retirees find other employment
after they retire, this man's CS was going to be calculated on an imputed
income basis, not on what he was actually receiving in retirement pay. So
he was forced to go back to work, as a result of his wife's decision to
divorce him.