DEADBEAT DAD OR WRONGED MAN?
Ross has had to pay thousands in child support for a girl he didn’t even know existed until she was 13 — and who he insists isn’t his. He won’t take a DNA test on principle. The result? A stand-off that will divide Britain
STANDING alone in the hallway of his home, Ross Mclaughlan read and re-read the official looking letter. He could scarcely breathe. It was telling him he was a father, that a child existed who was biologically his. And not a baby either, a 13-year-old girl, for whom he was financially responsible.
Thousands of pounds were owed for raising this child: 13 years of food, housing, shoes, clothes, toys and school equipment for a human being he didn’t even know existed. A child who’d been growing up only 15 miles away in the North-East, who could have walked past him on the street countless times. His eyes could not believe what they were seeing.
A committed bachelor, who’d spent most of his life in the macho, self-contained world of off-shore oil rigs, Ross had neither married nor cohabited with a woman.
Yes, there had been a few flings in his younger years — as a good-looking, comfortably-off single man on shore leave, there were bound to have been — but none of them had ever resulted in a pregnancy. Besides, if they had, he reasoned, surely he would have been told.
Also, ungentlemanly though it may be, Ross is adamant he has no memory of the woman who claimed to be the mother of his child. ‘I was so confused and didn’t recognise either the girl’s name or her mother’s, but told myself they’d either got the wrong Ross Mclaughlan, or that someone had targeted me as part of some scam. Either way I thought it would be easily cleared up,’ he says.
‘But I was very wrong. It’s eight years since that letter arrived and, despite me never having seen or even spoken to the girl named in it, nor having any contact with her mother, I’ve had £10,000 deducted from my wages and been told I owe a further £10,000.’
It is 25 years since the controversial Child Support Agency was set up with the intention of making absent parents, usually fathers, pay towards the cost of raising their children, and Ross is far from the only man left angry and embittered by its practices. It was said to have driven men to suicide and fractured family relationships beyond repair.
So widespread were complaints about the CSA that an independent body was set up to deal with them in 1997 and by 2012, perhaps in an effort to create distance from its tainted reputation, the agency was replaced by the Child Maintenance Service.
However, while the majority of those who have had money deducted from their earnings for a child’s upkeep have the pleasure, or at least the opportunity, to actually know their offspring, Ross had no idea the child he was being forced to support had even been born.
When he called the number on the letter to explain that he had never heard of the girl they were alleging was his daughter — and had no memory of her mother, who was also named — the CSA said he would need to take a DNA test to disprove his parentage, otherwise they would work on the assumption that he was the biological father. Ross refused to take the test.
Why should he, he thought. He’d never been given the chance to be a father to this girl, to build a relationship with her, so why should he be forced to ‘face up to his responsibilities’ now?
Surely it was an infringement of his human rights. But true to its word, the CSA got a Deductions of Earnings order and in 2010 began taking money directly from his wages.
‘Someone obviously decided that because I’d refused a DNA test I was liable and they had a right to my money,’ says Ross. ‘I didn’t provide them with my National Insurance number or my place of work but they were able to access that information and take what they wanted.
At first Ross, now 55, admits he stuck his head in the sand. ‘It was only £100 a month and, while some of my friends told me I was mad to let this happen, I was worried that kicking up a fuss might potentially risk losing my job, so I tried to ignore it.’
Besides, the girl was 13 and presumably the minute she left school and started working, he’d no longer be liable, so all he had to do was keep his head down for a few years.
Many would reasonably question why Ross wasn’t curious about this girl who claimed to be his flesh and blood, to at least seek out with his own eyes a familiar curve of nose or colour of hair, if he wasn’t prepared to do the DNA test.
But, he says, without children of his own, paternal instincts just hadn’t been kindled. His reasons, while difficult to understand, are clearly borne of a great deal of anger and hurt with, perhaps, a generous side-helping of stubbornness.
He finds it hard to explain but it would appear that the thought of having a daughter who had reached adolescence, and now adulthood, achieving all the usual milestones along the way without him being given the chance to be part of her life is just too painful to contemplate. Gaining a daughter aged 13, he reasoned, would be too painful, as he would always be acutely aware of how much he had missed.
But four years ago the problem grew too big to ignore. Ross received a letter from the Child Maintenance Service informing him that the amount he had to pay was increasing to £320 a month, leaving him with an income of £900, after tax.
Ross turned detective and decided he needed to find out more about these people who apparently had a right to his money and requested a copy of the girl’s birth certificate from her local register office.
The section headed ‘father’ didn’t have his name on it but a man with the same surname as the girl and the woman who had made the claim against him.
Ross was incensed. How could they demand money for a child who already had a father stated on her birth certificate?
‘I posted a copy of the birth certificate, recorded delivery, to the CMS and waited for the whole thing to be sorted,’ recalls Ross.
‘At this point all my anger was directed at this family for taking so much of my money and I felt certain the authorities would see the error of their ways and make sure I was compensated.’
However, the CMS wrote back informing Ross that the birth certificate was not proof that this man, and not he, was the child’s biological father and continued to take money from his monthly income.
By now the problem started taking its toll. With safety paramount on an offshore rig, supervisors noticed a change in Ross. He was becoming distracted and clumsy, and it was agreed, ‘heading for an accident’.
So, by mutual agreement with his employers, Ross resigned from his job at the beginning of 2017.
Despite living with his elderly father, with no source of income, the CMS still circled. When his ‘daughter’ turned 21, the organisation
‘I have so much anger about what they’ve done’ ‘Birth certificate didn’t have my name on it’
claimed he owed a further £10,000 in ‘retrospective’ payments. Given his advanced years, Ross decided not to burden his 88-year-old father with what he was going through.
Aside from him worrying about the predicament he found himself in, Ross was aware that telling his father that he might have a granddaughter he never had the chance to see grow up, would be painful for a man in his ninth decade.
‘I think my dad would feel, like me, that he wants nothing to do with a family who can behave in this way. Either they deprived us of an opportunity to know our own flesh and blood or they are stealing money from me, without a thought for the consequences — including having to give up my job and being £10,000 worse off — which are very serious indeed.
‘What’s happened to me feels like extortion, something that would happen in a fascist state. They’ve robbed me of my life and I want it back.
‘ If this girl is genuinely my daughter, why is another man’s name on her birth certificate? And why wasn’t I told about her until she was 13? How am I supposed to feel about the fact that her mother couldn’t care less about me knowing her, or seeing her grow up, and is only interested in taking my money?
‘Neither made any attempt to contact me, even while they were taking my money, and I’ve ruled out finding them because I have so much anger about what they’ve done to me, I fear it would be like lighting the blue touch paper.
‘If she is my daughter and I’d been given the chance to get to know her, of course I would have happily supported her financially and in every other way,’ says Ross. ‘But that didn’t happen and, other than taking my money, the family gave me no reason to believe that she is anything to do with me.’
A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions, which oversees the CMS, said he could not discuss individual cases but added: ‘We notify people before making deductions, to ensure they have a chance to contest parentage. When parentage is disputed we look for conclusive proof such as a DNA test or a court declaration.
‘A birth certificate can be used as evidence, but would be discounted if there’s a suggestion that it’s unreliable.’
The Mail tracked down the other players in this sad story, and discovered yet more misery, betrayal and injustice, being pecked over, carrion like, by the CMS.
We agreed with their request not to identify them.
The woman is insistent she became pregnant during ‘a brief affair’ with Ross and gave birth to their daughter in June 1997.
She was married at the time and says she believed her husband was the father. The couple split when their daughter was a toddler. Some years later, however — there is confusion between mother, daughter and the ex-husband as to exactly when this was — her ex, suspecting the girl was not his, requested a DNA test, which confirmed his suspicions.
‘I knew then that her father had to be Ross, there had been no other men,’ said the woman.
And what of Ross’s ‘daughter’, the wholly innocent party at the centre of this tawdry tale?
She is understandably hurt and confused by the position she finds herself in. ‘If I’d asked Mum to help me meet him (Ross) I’m sure she would have, but I was waiting for the right time in my life, when I felt ready,’ she says.
‘I do understand that he might be hurt by the way things have happened but my mum was not sure who my father was, until I took the DNA test.
‘I do wonder why, when he found out from the CSA that he had a child and started paying maintenance, he didn’t get in touch.’
Then there’s her mum’s ex-husband, whose name is on the girl’s birth certificate, who held another man’s baby in his arms, not knowing how cruelly he’d been duped.
When approached by the Mail, he confirmed he had insisted on a DNA test, but said he had never heard of Ross.
Meanwhile, 15 miles apart, a man and a young woman, who may be father and daughter, are walking the streets complete strangers — which is probably the saddest part of the whole sorry saga.
‘What happened to me feels like extortion’