Equal Rights are a Two Way Street!

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By Frank J Kuhel, JR.

I have been a strong supporter of equal rights for women all of my life. That is the way that I was raised. My Father always respected women and my mother was a huge supporter of women’s rights including working with women’s rights groups and Safehouse. When I was in college I worked to raise funds to support Safehouse and was always the guy that called out men when they were sexist pigs so it came as a surprise to me when my ex-wife used the legal system and the same groups that I have supported for all these years to abuse me.

My ex-wife tried to scald herself in the tub after we got into a verbal argument about her insisting on breast feeding our son in spite of the lithium that she was taking for her bi-polar major depressive. The doctors told both of us that it could hurt our son because it passes thru the breast milk into the baby. He was 3 months old at the time. I called my parents to come watch Devin and turned the water off so she couldn’t hurt herself. The authorities were called and she ended up being sent to the state psychiatric hospital in Osawatomie for several weeks on the advice of her psychiatric caseworker. The following Monday the DCF came to my house to check on me and my son which was fine with me until I was told by a female social worker that they had to check on me simply because I was a man and men are incapable of caring for a child without a woman present.

She then proceeded to grill me on how I was feeding him and I told her that when her doctors put her on lithium, I started feeding him formula because her medication made it dangerous to breastfeed our child. She went thru everything that it takes to care for a baby and I answered all of her questions. I also told her that I often babysat for my nephew who was 6 weeks premature and that I had changed more of his diapers than his mother did. When my son would cry in the night I was the one that got up with him and took care of his needs. After she left I called the supervisor of the local DCF office and told him about the social workers sexist statements and asked that he train her that men can be capable parents.

After she was released, she would attack me with knives and other weapons and when I defended myself with the bare minimum of force she would call the police and I would be the one sent to jail. We finally separated in the fall of 2003 and she was granted custody of our son and child support. Even though she was receiving over a $1000 a month in disability (SSI), I was forced to pay her bills so I had to move in with my parents and ended up losing my house I owned prior to our marriage. During our separation she accused me of raping her because I refused to have sex with her and the sheriff’s office came to my parent’s home at 3:45 am to get a report. I was cleared of the charges when it was determined I had less than 5 minutes to commit the assault from when I took her to the doctor for a migraine shot and when I picked my son up from the babysitter.

She also accused me of sexually assaulting my son two different times and she got a PFA on her word alone that kept from seeing my son. She ended up losing custody of him shortly after that because her house was devoid of any furniture and dangerously dirty. He was placed in foster care for 6 days. The detective that investigated the allegations told me that a full 80% of these cases during a divorce where child custody was in question were false accusations to affect the custody decision. Again I was cleared of these charges when everyone that investigated including my son’s guardian ad litem and his MLSW counselor that she chose said that I had not abused my son. The Judge ordered that she be charged with child abuse for putting him through 2 sexual assault investigations when he was less than 2 years of age.

Even with all of this evidence of her unfitness, when the divorce was finalized the court ordered that we have shared custody because the judge still followed the Tender Years Doctrine that had been outlawed in Kansas in 1973 as sexually discriminatory. It stated that a child needs their mother until the age of 10 regardless of how good the father is at parenting or how bad the mother is. She violated the custody order multiple times and kidnapped our son from my sister’s house hiding with him in Oklahoma at a homeless shelter. I was told that it was a civil matter and that the police couldn’t get involved even though the police took him out of my arms and gave him to her before we separated. Her cousin got her to let him stay at her house and called me to come get him. I finally got full custody no visitation when she was plotting to kill her first ex-husband and kidnap her 3 daughters, kill me and kidnap my son and disappear. I received a PFA because of this plot but I had to show multiple police reports from several law enforcement agencies in 2 different states while they took her word with no documentation when she made her false accusations.

After I got full custody she would call DCF or the police weekly to the point that we became well acquainted with each other. They would knock and say that she has called again and we would talk for about a half an hour. They never found any abuse or neglect. That is why I cannot support believe the woman without at least some corroborating evidence because I have been on the other side of the coin. I still support equal rights for women but with equal rights comes equal responsibilities.

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