Wow, We Don't get Many Wins, but This is a Win.

[POC]

Michigan attorney general dumps poster campaign

Cox bows to criticism from fathers group over his child support billboard contest

By Jim Lynch / The Detroit News

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is pulling the plug on a controversial part of his PayKids child support program — a contest critics say places children between warring parents.

Three weeks ago, Cox's office announced a contest calling for children 17 and younger to create artwork for a Michigan billboard. Contestants were to create scenes "encouraging the payment of child support."

On Tuesday, however, Cox changed his mind about the contest. In an e-mail to The Detroit News, Cox said he had made a mistake and would stop the contest immediately.

"It was not an attempt to turn children against one parent or another," Cox wrote, "it was an attempt to use children's artistic abilities to positively address a social problem."

The announcement comes after fathers' rights groups blasted the program as insensitive.

Ron Brown, a Detroit resident and founder of the Fathers Helping Fathers Network, said the contest "is creating messages for the child, and those messages may be telling a child that one parent is not a good person."

Murray Davis, vice president of the National Family Justice Association, said he was "stunned" to hear of the contest when it was announced in September.

"In most divorce decrees," he said, "there is language stating that parents are not to disparage or denigrate each other to keep children isolated from emotional turmoil. This puts children in the middle of it."

A spokesman for the Attorney General's Office said the end of the contest would be announced today.

"We're disappointed that certain groups chose to cloud or distort the message we were trying to convey," said Randall Thompson, an office spokesman. "And that is that, while there are a lot of good parents out there, there are others with the means to pay child support but don't over many years. They're called felons."

You can reach Jim Lynch at (313) 222-2069 or [email protected].

http://www.detnews.com/2004/metro/0410/13/c01-302103.htm

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