The Family Court and the bailiffs have been branded a complete failure by a single mother after the father of her child dodged payments to her for six years and to another woman for 12 years.

The woman said she gave bailiffs the address, place of work and even dates when the man was appearing in court for traffic offences, yet bailiffs were unable to catch him.

It was only when the deadbeat dad was jailed for a serious attack in 2000 that Police grabbed him and forced him to face up to his responsibilities.

The woman, who asked not to be named, said she gave up in 1994, after six years of trying to get the courts to find her former lover and make him pay money for their son.

Another woman, whom the man fathered a child with, hadn't been paid anything for 12 years and was $28,000 in arrears.

“What is so very distressing is that the courts and baillifs can't find a man for six years, yet as soon as he appears in court, the Police can find him,” said the first woman.

“The bailiffs didn't fulfil the role they were given to do. I gave them where he was working, his address, even when he was appearing in court on a traffic matter and they still couldn't get him.

“It's just not fair. The burden of financial responsibility has been on me all these years and yet the courts are letting men away with arrears.”

The woman told The Royal Gazette that she pursued the deadbeat dad for six years through Child and Family court, until she gave up in despair in 1994.

“I just gave up. I kept calling them and giving them information about where he resided. His friends would come to the door and say he wasn't there. When the bailiffs called at his work he would get a worker to say they couldn't find him.

“I even told them in February 1992 that he would be in court for a traffic matter and I called the baillif's department, which was then situated underneath the court. I called them on the day and they told me they were under-staffed and couldn't go. They couldn't walk upstairs and arrest him.

“That's ridiculous. That's when I decided to stop getting frustrated and just forget about it and wipe it away.”

But in 2000 when Acting Senior Magistrate Carlisle Greaves started getting tough with fathers who wouldn't pay by locking them up, the woman decided to try once again to track down the man to get payments for their son.

A full year later, she obtained an order for the man to pay $65 a week. He was supposed to be released from prison in early May, but this was delayed because he was caught with narcotics.

The woman said that on his release, her former lover claimed he had a job lined up, and he was given two months to get some money together to pay for his child.

The woman, and the mother of another of the man's children, urged the court to check an address the errant father had given and it was found to be fictitious. This resulted in him being jailed for lying to the court.

By December last year, the man was imprisoned for failing to pay money to either of the two women, but he did make a payment of $600 to the first lady, leaving him arrears of $1,025.

This month, the man was ordered to pay the lady $48 a week on his arrears and a much larger share to the second woman because he hadn't paid her for 12 years and owed her $28,000.

“The judge advised me I was getting the ‘short end of the stick', and because the other lady had waited for longer she was entitled to a larger share, and also because he owed her $28,000,” she said.

“I objected but was told because I have a ‘decent' job and haven't relied on him all this time they believed the judgement was fair.

“I asked them to review the files to see how how much false evidence of employment he had given, misleading information about where he lived, and that he had basically avoided the bailiff at all costs for years.

“I questioned how long it would take them this time to locate him when he doesn't pay. I explained that the bailiff department took more than five years to locate him and never did.”