Dear Editor,

Several years ago —due to my daughter’s mother keeping me away from her for no good reason and still does to this day, she’s now fourteen years old— I made the decision to take her to court in order to enforce my rights as a father. I thought that the courts would be on my side seeing that I was a father trying to do right by his child but I was sadly mistaken…I was treated like a criminal by the legal system (i.e. lawyers, judges, and their accomplices the Department Of Human Resources).

Outside of being careful with whom you have children with I want to urge fathers, who find themselves in situations like mine, to educate yourselves about your rights. Join father’s rights organizations like the Alabama Family Rights Association, www.alfra.org, and above all vote for judges and district attorneys that are fair, sensitive to our right’s as well as the mother’s and don’t dismiss us as a nothing more than a child support check…there’s a lot more to being a father than that. The sooner the system realizes this the better it will be for us—and most importantly—our children.

Terry Lewis

Selma