In a city where the majority of births are to unmarried women, last May's announcement by D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams raised a lot of hopes. The District government, the mayor told the Fourth Annual International Fatherhood Conference meeting in Washington, was going to unveil an initiative to help absent fathers play a more supportive role in the lives of their children. What's more, the mayor had indicated only a few days earlier that he was going to seek jail time for parents who hadn't made child support payments in more than a year or who owed more than $5,000 in back payments.

No telling what Roscoe Grant Jr. thought of the mayor's performance. Chances are Grant would have been rolling in the aisle or at least cracking up inside. Grant, a District resident, is, as best can be discerned, about as fearful of D.C. child support enforcement as the Pentagon is of Guinea.

Here's why:

For years, the mother and aunt of Octavious Williams tried to get Grant to recognize and then do right by his son, Octavious. They even went to city agencies for help but got nowhere. It wasn't until the family filed a paternity suit against him that Grant paid attention. And even then, it took a paternity test that came back positive to make Grant own up to the claim that he was Octavious Williams's old man. Yet it fell to a magistrate judge to force Grant to do the right thing. Last July, the judge ordered him to pay $968 every two weeks to Octavious.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 2003

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-- Anonymous, January 12, 2003