Rich and Super Rich Deadbeat Dads
The #metoo movement and then times up has led to many rich and powerful men being held accountable at least socially for their for a multitude of abuses rape, sexual assault, harassment and egregious violations of sexual ethics. One area of victims though have gone utterly passed by. The children of these powerful men who though they could easily afford to paid no child support or attempted not to.
There was a “Today I Learned” recently about Charlie Chaplin being forced to pay child support to a longtime mistress for a daughter even though a paternity test was negative. What that Tumblr tidbit didn’t tell you was that it was well known she was his child, his wife at the acknowledged it openly. Charlie Chaplin paid a lab tech to fake the results of the paternity test.
After Strom Thurman died in 2003 after a long career of reinforcing racism, anti semitism and general bigotry in American government it transpired he had a half black daughter. It was termed a “relationship” but in 1920’s South Carolina a black housemaid can not be assumed to have had any agency. She stayed silent for her father.
Hell Thomas Jefferson had multiple children by his wife’s half black, half sister who was his literal slave, Sally Hemmings. And it wasn’t all that long ago that Jefferson’s descendants voted to no longer recognize Hemmings descendants as Jefferson family members.
It turns out Arnold Schwarzenegger had secret children with the maid. There are rumors about Trump children born out of wedlock.
Chaplin was forced to provide for his daughter. I hope the rest were/are being provided for because I was not.
My father isn’t an actor or politician. He’s a former diamond cutter and trader who 20ish years ago started a Manhattan real estate empire. He became a developer and now his real estate development firm is known as one of New York’s largest privately funded developers. He has a project in Denver-my city that is going on at the moment worth conservatively $130 million, it covers a city block. He’s also a pillar of the New City Chabad community, funding a Jewish preschool with an emphasis on the arts.
My father has paid exactly zero dollars in child support. He promised that if my mom footed the bills for 18 years, he’d pay for and support me through college and any post grad I wanted to do. The thing is at the time he still lived in Johannesburg but then he moved and brought his family to New York. After the move my mom didn’t have a direct phone number or address. It’s hard to serve papers on someone who you can’t find. And that was the plan. When I graduated my father’s family here found an excuse to fire my mom’s firm as the accountant for a family partnership. It was more than ten years before we heard from any of them again.
In the meantime my mom had manifold financial troubles none of which were her fault and I learned what foreclosure meant. We were in foreclosure several times but my mom was always able to cure. And we weren’t made homeless.
I tried to contact him over the years. Sent emails I was never sure got anywhere because there was no reply. I reached out to his family here still very much enjoying benefits of his wealth. A 4 cousin I was in school with was treated to jetskis, a waterfront home on Long Island and hospitality while he studied in New York. Serveral years ago I had a health scare. Terrified I tried contacting his family. I couldn’t get through the message without crying I was so scared. I wanted family medical histories. I never got a call back. I did find out that the message was heard my father was called and his response was to ignore me.
Last year my mom actually got a phone number for him through a private investigator. I had the chance to communicate with my father for the first time since I was 8 years old when he called one time.
I told him about this blog. I told him I wanted him to be proud of me. He said he’d never look at my art. I said I’d like to know him, have a lunch when he was in town, that I’d like if my future children could meet him, have a grandfather. He said he would never have a relationship with me.
This time the sale is tomorrow and the only money would be from my super rich father and he won’t do it. $16,000 is nothing for him but he doesn’t have to and won’t.
I don’t say this for pity or because I’m e-begging. I’m saying this because it’s time for the children of wealthy, powerful deadbeat dads to be acknowledged. It’s time to stop keeping our father’s secrets. It’s time to stop living life as our father’s dirty secrets. And it’s time to hold the same men who were outted as part of metoo accountable be held accountable for another kind of victim.
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