"Trociuk is
.. a disheartening endorsement of biological concepts of
parenthood ... flawed .... it legitimizes a heterosexual view
of the family. .. It must be ignored."
This is a Judge practicing his sexual orientation
for decades while on the BC Bench. It is inconceivable that
the Law Enforcement officers and other Judges were unaware of all
his activities. Law Enforcement Officers, are of course unable
to act without the support of the Judiciary.
The university community tells us that at least
one of the Status of
Women university profs is not just
a run of the mill Communist... she's a self professed
MAOIST!!! The difference we're told is that a MAOIST
believes in
We say it is
Hedy Fry, and these
"Second Wave Feminists" /
Status of Women /
Women's Studies types that need to be eradicated from tax
funded positions and be forced to make Reparations to the thousands
of Fathers and their families whose lives who have been destroyed by
them since the sixties. We need also the restoration of the
Enticement &
Seduction provisions of Common Law which these SOWs had struck
by Statute.
...
No one would listen to my
father , no one would give him a chance to speak. ... My dad was an
abused husband, he was abused by his wife, and the justice system.
... He was a kind man who fought a good fight but no matter what he
did or said, he could never win with this system.
The common practice in BC Courts when Fathers do
not pay Child Support
- which most of the time is merely
Imputed - is to send
non-paying Father to Prison until he or his family members pay the
fees imposed by the Judge.
Even when mothers agree that Child Support should
no longer be paid, we find that the
Family Enforcement agencies, which are private contractors
functioning as
Bounty Hunters, typically refuse to end their claim on the
father's income,.
"Lohstroh, a 41-year-old
emergency-room doctor, was shot in the back Friday when he went to
pick up his two sons at their mother's home. Police say the
10-year-old boy climbed into the back of his father's sport utility
vehicle, fired a pistol several times through the back of the
driver's seat and then ran back inside the home."
"SEATTLE - A man shot and killed by officers after he brandished
an inert <child's plastic> grenade at
Seattle's new Federal Courthouse Monday was described as
angry about child support rulings, police said. ... Court records
indicated his
wages had been garnished in a child support case. ... He
was shot
twice by two veteran Seattle Police Department officers. ..."
Perry Manley split with his family living on the Kitsap
peninsula15 years ago. He was no longer required to make support
payments to his now-grown children, but his family said he was
never able to put the bitterness behind him.
His ex-wife
Susan Calhoun said
“he just still had issues, he
was still really bitter.” She said the problems started soon after their 1990 divorce,
when a court ordered support payments for their three children.
Calhoun said Manley angrily quit his high-paying job to spite
his family and the court.
“It was a power struggle, I think, he didn’t want anybody to
tell him what to do with his money,”she said.
Calhoun thinks the tragic event was a final swipe at the
courts and his children.
"SEATTLE - A man
shot and killed by officers after he brandished an inert grenade
at Seattle's new Federal Courthouse Monday was described as
angry about child support rulings, police said. ...
Court records indicated his wages had been garnished in a child
support case. ... He was shot twice by two veteran Seattle
Police Department officers. ..."
A man described as angry about child support rulings was
shot to death while brandishing an inert <child's
plastic>
hand grenade in the new federal courthouse here, police
said.
Hundreds of judges, jurors, employees and prisoners in
the 23-story building were evacuated and surrounding
streets were cordoned off Monday as dozens of police
cars responded, jamming lunchtime traffic.
Officers could not tell that "what appeared to be a
World War II-type of grenade" was inert until after the
shooting, Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said.
The man, dressed in camouflage, was identified in
newspaper and television reports as
Perry Manley, 52, of Seattle. FBI agents and other
authorities would not confirm the identification.
The man had
frequented the courthouse as well as the federal office
building and often expressed "a disdain for the federal
government as well as some of its policies,"
U.S. Marshal Eric Robertson said. <Security knew
Manley well.>
"I believe it's more of a global government
frustration," Robertson said.
Susan Calhoun, Manley's former wife, told KING
Television he became embittered and quit a high-paying
job after their divorce in 1990 when a judge ordered him
to make support
payments for their three children. The children are
now grown and those payments were no longer required,
KING reported. <Certainly not true in Canada,
likely untrue in Washington>
According to the report,
Manley also had e-mailed the station recently,
criticizing the child support system and claiming that
millions of noncustodial parents were being illegally
impoverished by the government.
Police and federal agents searched a Belltown apartment
building Monday evening. FBI agent Roberta A. Burroughs
would not comment on news reports describing it as
Manley's residence.
Five years ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
reported,
Manley paraded down a Bremerton street waving a flag and
wearing little more than a sandwich board that read,
"State Raped."
Manley came under investigation in April by the FBI
after U.S. District Judge Thomas S. Zilly denied his
attempts to bring a state lawsuit to the federal level.
Cases brought by Manley also were rejected two years ago
and in 2001.
In a letter filed in court in April, Manley accused
Zilly of treason, adding that such a crime was
punishable by death. Subsequently, on a fathers' rights
Web site, he wrote that he was visited by two federal
agents.
On Monday, the suspect arrived at the courthouse shortly
before noon with a backpack that he later strapped to
his chest. Witnesses said he tried to skirt security in
the lobby and began shouting threats, police Detective
Christie-Lynne Bonner said.
The backpack contained unspecified court documents and a
living will, indicating he might have expected police to
shoot him, as well as a cutting board which the man may
have intended to use as a protective device, Kerlikowske
said.
Security officers were unable to talk the man into
putting down the grenade, police were called and after
about 25 minutes of negotiations "the man made a furtive
movement," Robertson said. "At that point the officers
had no choice but to stop that threat."
Chay Adams, 27, of Seattle, said she witnessed the
shooting while after leaving the U.S. Marshals Service
office on the ninth floor where her father is a deputy
marshal.
She and about eight other women were evacuated to the
fifth floor, from which she saw police confront the man,
who had been sitting on a bench with a yellow backpack
strapped to his chest in the ground floor atrium lobby.
He was nervous and kept clasping his hands, but there
was nothing unusual about him, she said. "If they
wouldn't have known what happened, you wouldn't have
paid any attention to him," Adams said.
The only time I saw his face it was on
Tuesday's front page and, by then, it was because Perry Manley
was dead.
But, several times a week for years, I have read messages from
the angry man who was fatally shot Monday at Seattle's new,
extra-safe federal courthouse.
Marshals, police and security tried to talk Manley out of what
appeared to be a suicide mission to protest what he saw as the
system's vendetta against divorced dads.
But it wasn't easy to talk Manley out of anything concerning his
conviction that the courts, the state and women in general were
out to get him and child-support beleaguered brothers like him.
I know because, when he first started writing to me, I tried.
Manley began sending me e-mails about five years ago, around the
time he strapped on a sandwich board lettered
"State Raped"
and marched down the main street of Bremerton -- my hometown.
His name was equally well-known to the judges who dismissed his
frequent lawsuits. And to police. And the folks at the
Department of Social and Health Services. All, in his view, were
instruments of the systematic torture and abuse of non-custodial
fathers.
The notes to me were about all those things. About why
Judge Thomas Zilly should be fired for dismissing his claim.
And why
Judge John Coughenour should be impeached for failing to see
that single dads had become indentured servants. And about the
"evidence" he had gathered "proving" a DSHS agenda against dads.
Manley's anger was apparently ignited by a bitter divorce and
custody battle in 1989. But it flamed into a consuming bonfire
after a Kitsap County judge ruled that Manley was deliberately
dodging child support and ordered part of his income withheld.
Soon most of his e-mails to me were about the state-sanctioned
tyranny of women. About their carelessness with children and
their cruelty toward men. And, over time, the messages became
more manic and more rambling. Sometimes he wrote me every day.
When I wrote about Beltway sniper John Mohammed and the shooting
of a young Tacoma mother named Keenya Cook by Mohammed's teenage
sidekick, my first e-mail of the day was predictably from Perry
Manley.
Mohammed's wife had driven him to violence by taking his three
children away, Manley told me. Just as the state had colluded
with his wife to take his three kids.
By then I had come to almost count on such messages from Manley.
And, by then, I had also stopped trying to answer since there
seemed to be simply nothing to say.
Not that my little blip of a connection to this tragedy counts
for much. But now I wonder if I could have been more of a
sounding board for a man whose anger seemed to be spinning and
spitting sparks like a Fourth of July firework.
A column about Cherry Gilbert, whose restraining order against
her abusive husband caused the former sheriff's deputy to lose
his job, was further proof to Manley that men are the real
victims. Never mind that Gilbert's husband had held a gun to her
head or that the court eventually reversed a ruling that she was
not be entitled to any part of his pension.
An interview with Connie Raney, a victim of domestic violence
who was refused rental housing because of the potential danger
posed by her husband, set off Manley, too.
And a column about Ballard High School principal Method
Odemene's sexual harassment of a female vice principal
confirmed, in his mind, that women drive men to destruction
while never being held accountable.
Manley had the same reaction to a piece about former Seattle
police officer and former City Council member John Manning when
I interviewed him about the allegations of spousal abuse he
needed to surmount in a new bid for a council seat.
Even more general columns on sex education, the morning-after
pill and a new law allowing young women to take unwanted
newborns to hospitals contributed to Manley's ever-growing
catalog. To him, this was simply further proof of the
irresponsibility of women and the discounting of men.
Women
choose to get pregnant, Manley told me. They choose to become
mothers. Then they either want to abandon their children or use
them to manipulate and bankrupt men who must pay for those
children, often without even being able to see them.
"Please write about Perry Manley," said one of my earliest
e-mails yesterday, sent by Steve Peterson. "You often write
about women's causes. This was a man who just wanted some
fairness restored to what it means to be a father. His efforts,
however misguided, were a brave stand for thousands of others."
Like his friend, Peterson wants us to know about the
"pain of having your children held ransom by ex-wives and a
legal system that betrays fatherhood." Like Manley, he wants air
space for his view that wives too easily "leave their marriages,
break up their families and then are rewarded by the courts for
having done so."
Perry died, Peterson said, because no one would listen.
I did "listen," Steve. I read every escalating word. And I
worried and wondered what could be done to cool this man's
anger.
Now that it's too late for Perry Manley, I can only hope that
others who are consumed by the same kinds of flames will find a
path through their anger that doesn't lead,
<child's plastic>
grenade in hand, to a last stand.
Perry Manley is dead. He was
a father and a good man. He spent a great deal
of time and effort over the past 15 years
fighting injustice in family law, particularly
regarding issues of custody and child support.
On Tuesday, he gave his life to the cause.
After years of protest
marches, filing lawsuits, and objecting to the
treatment he and other parents receive, to no
avail, Perry Manley dressed himself in military
clothing and went to the courthouse with one
last appeal - and a dummy hand grenade. After
being noticed by security guards, and confronted
by police, he placed papers on the floor that he
wanted to present to a judge. Then, one twitch
and it was over.
The tragedy of Perry Manley's
life and death is apparently not at an end.
Readers of MensNewsDaily.com will likely
not be surprised by the aftermath. A local
paper, The Seattle Times, went directly
into spin mode. (article)
Not one, but three staff writers, plus two
contributing staff writers and a researcher went
to work portraying Perry Manley as an angry,
confused, and obsessed personality who was
simply too stubborn for his own good. Perry
Manley's death, they contend, was suicide -
that's just the kind of guy he was.
For 15 years Perry Manley
raised critical issues that lie at the heart of
human existence; family matters, children, his
right to sustain himself, to act as the father
he was, and for basic freedom from arbitrary
government intrusion - and he was ignored. It is
clear that there are those among us that would
like everything he fought for during his life to
die with him.
The staff at The Seattle
Times started their report with "Perry
Manley didn't want to pay child support" and
described his legal pleas as "rambling." He
didn't have a problem that needed to be fixed.
He had an obsession.
But RealChangeNews.org,
in an article the week before, seemed a great
deal less confused. (article)
He objected to divorce on religious grounds. He
did not object to supporting his children, but
objected to being forced to pay arbitrary
amounts to his ex-wife. Forced to accept
divorce, he felt strongly that he should have
equal parenting time and that under such an
arrangement, child support should not be
ordered. He strongly objected to having child
support withheld from his wages.
But even RealChangeNews.org
got caught up in the spin. "Three attorneys with
experience in family law say Manley's legal
arguments don't excuse a man from supporting his
children. They agree, however, that
representation of fathers has been atrocious
over the years - something that's slowly
changing." I suppose though, if you're
sufficiently intelligent and have a few more
facts, you can put two and two together from
that. Fathers get screwed in court. Perry
Manley, who had suffered unemployment, was not
able to pay the large arbitrary amounts the
system requires of him. Screw him though - throw
him in jail (again) for non-payment. Things are
slowly changing. I guess that means someone
might consider doing the right thing when hell
freezes over.
It's certainly no coincidence
that his fight began following the federal
family law reforms (around 1990) that created a
national fathers' rights movement. Similar
reforms have gone into effect in other countries
with an international fathers' rights movement
as a direct result. What is called "child
support" today is a large arbitrary amount set
by a political process intended to favor private
and public collection agencies. The higher the
amounts are set, the more these institutions
profit. "Child support" is just a label. The
amounts ordered no longer have any direct
relationship to children's needs or often - as
in Perry Manley's case - the ability of parents
to pay.
Attorney Ruth Moen insisted
that men manipulate the system as often as
women, a position that seems entirely untenable.
Her description of how things work is built on
images of court proceedings that took place at
least a quarter century ago. Courts based
decisions on facts and feelings in individual
cases. Litigants (parents) tried to "manipulate"
the court by presenting their circumstances and
pleading their cases. Today, decisions are made
en masse by legislators and review
committees. How is it that a practicing family
lawyer isn't aware of such dramatic changes in
family law that have been in effect for 15
years?
RealChangeNews.org:
"Lawyers say shared custody is a growing
phenomenon, but one that only works when the
divorced mom and dad can communicate without
conflict." Raise your hand if you consult a
lawyer when trying to decide how to best raise
your children. Just as I thought - I don't see
any hands. Responsible parents decide how best
to raise their own children. If divorced, they
may need to consult a lawyer to help make the
arrangements they need. If a lawyer can't help
make those arrangements, then a lawyer is of no
use. Perry Manley found himself in that
situation - oh, so familiar to millions of
parents, especially fathers. He represented
himself.
To construct an image of
Perry Manley as a rambling buffoon, the staff at
The Seattle Times turned to his ongoing
disagreements with U.S. District Judge Thomas
Zilly. "Being required to pay child support for
his three children, Manley claimed, was a form
of involuntary servitude, where a man is forced
to work to support a child he is not responsible
for raising." Judge Zilly, along with several
other judges, dismissed his claims that the
state was violating his rights by garnisheeing
his wages. In April, Perry Manley sent a letter
to Judge Zilly accusing him of Treason. Manley
said the crime was punishable by death and the
letter was turned over to the U.S. Marshals
Office.
Finding protection of
individual rights AWL in the modern practice of
law, he did the best he could on his own. In the
years I've dealt with fathers' rights issues
I've heard the effect of current "child support"
law described as "involuntary servitude" many
times and Perry Manley is not the first to
conclude the laws are unconstitutional and to
describe judicial support for these laws as
treason. His arguments may have been technically
incorrect, but I have never found these
arguments illogical.
Finding current child support
law to be unconstitutional is not particularly
difficult. The amounts ordered as "child
support" are arbitrary. They are decided en
masse and applied in procedures that
literally defend the arbitrary amounts against
the intrusion of due process of law. Courts have
preserved these laws only by taking the dramatic
step of reclassifying marriage and family as
public institutions and declaring that
individual rights do not apply. (Thus, a
fathers' rights political movement was born
rather than fixing the problems through a
correction in law obtained through litigation of
an individual case - i.e. through "due process
of law.")
Related:
P.O.P.S. v. GARDNER, 998 F.2d 764 (9th Cir.
1993), U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals -
child support reclassified as "social policy" to
be legally treated like taxes and welfare
entitlements rather than as a private interest
subject to respect for individual rights. This
case directly affected family law in the State
of Washington where Perry Manley lived.
The arbitrary en masse
approach leaves many fathers with unpayable
debts. They face financial ruin when they cannot
get orders realistically adjusted to
circumstances. They are ordered to work most of
their adult lives to pay off an arbitrarily
determined debt - an amount unrelated to their
children's needs - and threatened with debtors
prison if they don't. No reasonable person would
accept this debt and its enforcement procedures
voluntarily. The issue of servitude is clear by
definition. What distinguishes current "child
support" from a personal obligation (incurred
willingly by having children) is that the
amounts are not realistically related to support
of children and cannot be realistically adjusted
to family circumstances.
Treason was intentionally
defined very narrowly by the authors of the
Constitution, does not include errors in
judgment nor normally would it include
intentional acts of corruption by judges. You
cannot be charged with treason merely for
defying the king - so to speak. You pretty much
have to be a citizen who's helping a foreign
force invade the country. But for someone not
armed with this particular legal knowledge -
even if wrong - the charge is not entirely
unreasonable. (And besides; Maybe Perry Manley
was just as correct in his interpretation as
judges who canít find any reason to declare
current child support laws unconstitutional.)
Judges have the power and the
obligation to protect and defend the
Constitution. That includes the power and
obligation to protect and defend individual
rights and the system of individual rights that
is defined by the Constitution. No reasonable
and informed person can now perceive the support
of many courts over many years given to an
alternate system, in which individual rights
have been abolished, as upholding the
obligation. By striking so directly at the heart
of our political definition and identity, they
strike at the country itself. The death of the
Constitution by refusal to apply it is literally
the death of the United States.
Corruption of family law
started with a profit motive, but itís obviously
had a much deeper impact. Perry Manley, like
many others, recognized that it does not make
sense to continue to ignore the problem. The
problem Perry Manley and others face is that if
judges refuse to obey the constitution and
massively support corruption instead, who is
going to do what to fix the problem? Perry
Manley, a father and a good man, wanted to be
part of the solution.
With his solo marches against the current state of family law and impassioned
e-mails decrying child support as unconstitutional, Perry Manley may have
seemed, to some, beyond reason. But his 15-year tirade against the legal system
has, in the day after his violent death, been held up as heroic by dozens of
non-custodial parents.
Manley was shot to death by police officers at the federal courthouse in
Seattle on Monday after walking into the lobby with a <child's plastic>
hand grenade. He was a
regular presence there, filing lawsuits against a system he considered biased
against men.
Lawyers who practice family law here and advocates pushing the Legislature to
readdress parental rights sought to distance themselves from Manley's act, but
acknowledged that Washington is one of the toughest, most inflexible states in
the nation when it comes to enforcing child support. Finding a parent in
contempt for failing to live up to court-ordered payments is common, they say,
as is wage garnisheeing and driver's license suspension.
The federal government has applauded this direction, rating Washington
seventh in the nation for determining paternity, tracking down parents and
enforcing payment. But a growing chorus asserts that well-intentioned government
efforts have crossed the line.
"Unfortunately Perry was pushed too far and went about things the wrong way,
but the underlying cause he was fighting for is a very real problem today," said
Joseph McGill, a friend of Manley's from The Other Parent, a group that
advocates for the rights of non-custodial parents.
Depending on one's point of view, Olympia's policies have positioned the
state as either a committed defender of children or a punitive task master.
"There's a lot of men out there who feel they really don't have a voice, that
there's nothing they can do," said B.J. Shea, who hosts a radio talk show on
men's issues, where Manley was a frequent guest. His complaints, Shea said,
always touched a nerve.
"It's amazing, the calls we would get," said Shea. "I think he knew what was
going to happen at the courthouse and that people would be talking about all
this afterward. It's probably what he hoped for."
Several legislators have floated new family court bills seeking to encourage
cooperation between parents on matters of custody and child support, so far
without success. Currently, child support payments are determined by tabulating
each parent's income, the number and ages of the children in question and the
relevant visitation arrangements. Typically, a judge decrees the final monthly
payment, and there is little room for argument.
"Once you're in the system you cannot get hurt at work, you cannot be out of
work. They assume you're going to have a certain amount of dollars on the table
every month," said Mark Mahnkey, a poster on the blog Hate Male, who knew
Manley. "It's a tremendous burden. This guy went to an extreme measure to get
some attention to those issues. But he's not the only one."
In the late 1990s, Washington also set up a Web site, the "Most Wanted," as a
final measure against parents who wouldn't pay up -- though it is recognized as
a better means of public humiliation than financial redress.
Adolfo Capestany, scheduled to take over as acting chief of the state's
Division of Child Support in July, is unapologetic about the state's tactics. In
fact, he is proud.
Washington collected $640 million in child support payments last year --
about 62 percent of what was owed. The more money Washington collects, Capestany
added, the more federal funds the state gets.
Enforcement typically begins with wage garnishing -- as it did in Manley's
case -- but if a non-custodial parent continues to elude officers, which Manley
also did, enforcement measures can toughen considerably. The state may intercept
tax refunds, siphon money from a bank account, suspend driver's licenses or
seize and auction a parent's car.
"We don't want to suspend people's licenses but it's effective in getting
people's attention," Capestany said, adding that much of the fault lay with
parents who run, refusing to stay in contact with state officers to apprise them
of intermittent payment difficulties.
For Manley, the issue was mainly one of principle, friends and acquaintances
said.
"He believed it was unconstitutional to force him to pay a second person to
raise his children," said Shea, the radio host. "He had no problem raising his
own children and he believed in shared custody."
Shared parenting, in which the mother and father each assume 50 percent of
the duties and cover expenses on their own, has become the rallying cry of
fathers' rights activists. But child development experts often caution that the
arrangement can be disruptive and confusing to children who may shuttle back and
forth, one week on, one week off, between homes.
Once set, it is nearly impossible to get courts to lower a mandated child
support payment -- even if a parent's income levels have plummeted, several
lawyers said.
"They call it
imputed income, meaning that it's assumed, so that if a person
was once working as a computer programmer making $50,000 a year and now he's
working as a short-order cook -- barely making minimum wage -- the court says
you should always be able to be that programmer and make that money," said Lisa
Scott, a Bellevue attorney who has specialized in family law since 1998. "That's
a huge issue. If you get behind in child support, it gets horrendously difficult
to get caught up."
In Manley's case, however, a court found that he was intentionally
underemployed to avoid paying child support.
Capestany of the Division of Child Support allowed that in years past the
agency was not as sensitive as it might have been when dealing with parents in
difficult circumstances. The department took a hard line and sometimes failed to
listen, he said. But these days, "it's all about, 'What's in the best interest
of the child?' "
Manley, to be sure, espoused views many would consider extreme. He believed
the pro-choice movement was unconstitutional because it gave women rights that
men do not have. A woman, for example, may decide whether to abort, adopt or
keep her child, while men, he felt, are simply fathers, required to step up if
she so demands.
In the aftermath of his death in front of a building he considered symbolic
of an unassailable legal system, a wide circle of Manley's acquaintances were
trying to focus on the larger point of his message, not the way in which he
chose to make it.
"Had someone heard Perry and given him an opportunity for involvement in his
children's lives, I don't think this would have happened," said
Greg Howe, 39, a
member of The Other Parent. "All of us who are in this situation are not very
far from him."
Child support upset shooting victim; Seattle police
shoot man,
Jun 22, 2005
SEATTLE The man killed by police
after he brandished a grenade in this city's federal
courthouse had grown increasingly upset and unstable
recently as years of frustration with the child support
system mounted, friends said Tuesday.
Perry L. Manley, 52, of
Seattle, was shot to death by Seattle police Monday in
the courthouse's public lobby. An autopsy Tuesday
confirmed he died of gunshot wounds, but the King County
Medical Examiner's office refused to release any
details.
Authorities said Manley had tried to bypass courthouse
security while clutching a hand grenade, later found to
be inactive.
Most Popular Articles
Police and federal agents evacuated the downtown
building and cordoned off the surrounding streets during
the standoff with Manley, which lasted for about a
half-hour. He was shot after making a "furtive move"
with the grenade, U.S. Marshal Eric Robertson said.
Authorities said Manley was dressed in camouflage,
carrying court papers and a living will.
The two Seattle police officers who shot Manley were
identified Tuesday as William Collins Jr., 40, and
Timothy Pasternak, 46. They are on administrative leave
while the shooting is investigated.
The FBI served a search warrant Monday evening on a
downtown apartment building, which friends identified as
Manley's residence. An explosives unit from the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted in
the search.
FBI agents should wrap up their investigation soon,
spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs said Tuesday.
Manley was a
critic of the child support system and the courts'
handling of parental custody issues, and had filed
several lawsuits disputing his support obligations.
Court documents said Manley was the divorced father of
three children, ages 26, 23 and 22.
He was well-known around the courthouse and led a small
protest outside the building last month, when he
attempted to burn an American flag. But there were no
indications his frustrations would become violent,
Robertson said.
"We've had a lot of contact with him, but nothing like
what he did (Monday)," Robertson said.
Manley was ordered in July 2002 to appear in King County
Superior Court for failing to pay more than $8,200 in
child support. It was unclear from the court filings if
Manley paid that bill, but his response to the orders
alleged that he was being held in forced labor by the
state.
Kevin Turner of Bellevue met Manley a few years ago
through a child support reform group. He said Manley had
become increasingly withdrawn and disgruntled in recent
months.
"Frankly, it got to the point where I didn't know how to
talk to him," Turner said.
Turner said Manley's Internet postings and e-mail
messages had taken on a darker tone, and he described
Manley's confrontation with police as "basically
committing suicide."
Manley had been homeless for a time, but had begun to
turn his life around in the past few years, getting a
job at a restaurant, Turner said. But even those
improvements did not cure his ill feelings toward the
custody and child support systems.
Susan Calhoun, Manley's former wife, told KING-TV he
became embittered and quit a high-paying job after their
divorce in 1990 when a judge ordered him to make support
payments for their three children.
Joe McGill of Battle Ground, who knew Manley through a
child custody group called The Other Parent, agreed that
Manley's statements had become "pretty bizarre." But
McGill said he didn't think Manley intended to be killed
by police Monday.
"I think it might have been his last step to be heard,"
McGill said
Perry Manley didn't want to pay
child support, and the seeming unfairness of a
system that hounded him to turn over his hard-earned
cash...
Hundreds of federal-courthouse workers, jurors and
prisoners were evacuated from the building
yesterday. The courthouse was closed for the rest of
the day.
FBI agents search the Belltown
apartment of Perry Manley, who was shot and killed
after he walked into the federal courthouse in
downtown Seattle carrying a defused hand grenade.
Perry Manley didn't want to pay child support, and
the seeming unfairness of a system that hounded him
to turn over his hard-earned cash to his ex-wife had
made him angry and obsessed over the past 15 years.
Manley had written and talked
about the topic ad nauseam. He had filed no fewer
than five lawsuits, and had joined others supporting
the rights of fathers as noncustodial parents. Being
required to pay child support for his three
children, Manley claimed, was a form of involuntary
servitude, where a man is forced to work to support
a child he is not responsible for raising. In recent
years, his writings and actions showed him to be
increasingly bitter.
In the end, his obsession is
apparently what got him killed, in what friends
believe was a last-ditch effort to draw attention to
his cause.
Manley was shot to death
yesterday, the day after Father's Day, by two
Seattle police officers inside the secure foyer of
the federal courthouse. In one hand, he clutched a
defused fragmentation grenade.
Manley, dressed in camouflage and
carrying a backpack strapped across his chest,
walked into the courthouse shortly before noon and
tried to inch along a small ledge that rings an
indoor reflection pond in an apparent attempt to
avoid the metal detectors. Eric Robertson, U.S.
Marshal for the Western District of Washington, said
security officers saw he was holding a World War
II-era hand grenade and confronted him.
Security officers summoned police
and spent more than 20 minutes trying to persuade
him to surrender. He placed papers he apparently
wanted to present to a judge on the floor and used
both hands to cup the grenade to his body, a police
spokeswoman said.
Police fired twice after he "made
a furtive movement with the grenade," Robertson said
at a news conference yesterday. He was shot once
with a shotgun and once with a .223-caliber assault
rifle, said Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. It
was clear the man was dead immediately after the
shooting, he said.
The incident prompted the
evacuation of hundreds of courthouse personnel,
including judges, jurors, employees and prisoners.
The courthouse was closed the remainder of the day.
Police later determined that the bottom of the
grenade had been drilled out, making it inactive,
but that wasn't apparent to officers, Kerlikowske
said. A bomb expert was called to examine the
contents of the man's backpack because officials
were worried he might have strapped explosives to
his body. No explosives were found. Instead,
officials found a cutting board and a copy of the
man's living will inside his bag, the chief said.
Kerlikowske speculated that the
cutting board may have been for protection against
police bullets and suggested, given that the man was
carrying a copy of his living will, that his death
may be a case of "suicide by police."
Manley, 52, was a well-known
figure at the U.S. District Courthouse who had
recently attracted the attention of the U.S.
Marshals Service after accusing U.S. District Judge
Thomas Zilly of treason in a letter filed in court
last April. Manley said the crime was punishable by
death, and wrote on a fathers'-rights Web site that
he was visited by two agents later that month.
Zilly, contacted at home last
night, acknowledged that "the letters were turned
over to the U.S. Marshals Office." The judge called
the shooting "tragic."
Carried will with him
A friend of Manley's, Richard
Roberts, said Manley wrote a living will the day
after the visit from the agents and always carried
it with him. Manley had said he believed agents were
"going to shoot him anyway," Roberts said.
Manley's ex-wife, Susan Calhoun,
48, of Suquamish, Kitsap County, said yesterday she
was aware that Manley had been killed, but had not
been formally notified by police. His oldest
daughter, Kristen Manley, 23, said she also was
aware of the shooting.
Both declined comment last night.
Police last night had not
released Manley's name, but his identity was
confirmed by a law-enforcement source.
Last month, according to
published reports, Manley attempted to burn an
American flag in a rainstorm on the plaza outside
the courthouse.
According to a story in the
homeless publication Real Change, Manley was so well
known to courthouse security officers that they
greeted him by name. Manley had notified the media
about his flag-burning plans, but only a Real Change
reporter showed up.
Tom Swanson, who accompanied
Manley to the flag burning and shares Manley's
belief that child support is illegal, said Manley
had promised that if the flag burning didn't attract
enough attention to his plight, he was going to do
something "more drastic."
"Nobody would listen to us," said
Swanson, who lives in his car in Tacoma and was
reached by cellphone.
"His final statement"
Roberts of East Bremerton said
Manley had been jailed at least twice for contempt
of court for failing to pay child support.
"He was an extremely hardheaded
individual," said Roberts, who met Manley at the
Silverdale Baptist Church in Bremerton 16 years ago.
"This was his way of making his
final statement. I'm sure what he did was
premeditated," Roberts said. "This is not a wacko,
but a guy who was at the end of his ropes. It's a
tragedy he felt he had to go this far."
Roberts said Manley wasn't
opposed to giving money to his ex-wife, he just
didn't think the state had the right to force him to
make payments.
Pleadings in the numerous lawsuits filed by Manley
over the years show the arc of his obsession.
Calhoun had their marriage
dissolved in 1990. He appealed a court order for
child support, which was summarily dismissed.
Manley's court filing, done
without an attorney, "contains no statements of
facts," the appellate court judges noted.
Over the next decade, Manley
would lose dozens of jobs and be jailed. The courts
noted that he was "voluntarily underemployed" in an
effort to attempt to avoid his child-custody
payments of more than $600 and back payments that by
2002 had grown to more than $8,000.
Living in a shelter
From 2001 until last year, Manley
lived at the William Booth Center, a shelter run by
the Salvation Army that provides housing and support
services to homeless men in the Chinatown
International District in Seattle.
A facilitator there, Mike Jones, said he remembered
Manley, but he was unwilling to say much without
permission from his superiors. He said Manley was
forced to leave last year because he had reached the
limit of the amount of time he could stay.
Manley, who Roberts said was a
Navy veteran, participated in the veterans
transitional program at the shelter, which houses up
to 185 men, Jones said. Manley wore fatigues when he
lived there, Jones said.
In the meantime, he sued the state and several of
his past employers, claiming they were violating his
rights by garnisheeing his wages and turning his pay
over to the state. His most recent lawsuit was
assigned to Judge Zilly in January 2003, but like
the others was dismissed a few months later.
Manley, however, continued to
file often rambling pleadings, including several in
which he accused Zilly of treason. The most recent
was filed June 1.
Last night, the FBI searched
Manley's studio apartment in the 2500 block of
Western Avenue in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood,
Robertson, the U.S. Marshal, said. Manley was a
frequent visitor at both the federal courthouse and
the Jackson Federal Building on Second Avenue.
"In most instances, he would come in and would be
required to go through screening. At times, he would
sit outside in the courtyard area," said Robertson,
adding the man seemed to be motivated by "a global
government frustration."
The entire incident yesterday was
captured on digital security video, but Robertson
declined to release that footage. Still, he said,
"you can clearly see the [court security officer]
trying to get him to put down what was in his hand."
Jeff Sullivan, the chief of the
criminal division in the U.S. Attorney's Office, was
getting off the elevators on the fourth floor of the
courthouse when he saw the man, surrounded by armed
officers, backed up against the glass wall at the
west end of the courthouse foyer. Sullivan said the
man was on the secure side of the reflecting pond,
not far from the elevators that would have given him
access to the rest of the courthouse.
The man, Sullivan said, had his
arms through the harness of a yellow backpack across
his chest. Sullivan said the man had a manila folder
full of papers in one hand and an object he couldn't
see in the other.
"The officers had their guns out and had taken
safety positions," Sullivan said. "They were talking
to him. I clearly heard them tell him to put down
what he had in his hand."
Sullivan said he thought the man
may have said something like, "I'll come halfway,"
but the officers insisted he drop whatever he was
holding.
At that point, Sullivan said,
agents with the U.S. Marshals Service noticed him up
against the railing "and told me to get the hell out
of there," he said. A few minutes later, as
officials were ordering the evacuation of the first
five floors of the courthouse, he said he heard two
shots.
SEATTLE - Seattle police officers shot and killed a Seattle
man who was holding what turned out to be an inert grenade in
the lobby of the new Federal Courthouse in downtown Seattle. He
has been identified as Perry L. Manley, an outspoken critic of
the court system.
Manley was well-known to courthouse security guards. Court
records indicated his wages had been garnished in a child
support case. He had also been interviewed in at least one local
newspaper and had e-mailed KING 5 News protesting the child
support system.
Police were searching his apartment on Western Avenue in
downtown Seattle Monday evening.
Manley was from Seattle, born in 1952, and "often frequented
the courthouse as well as the federal building," said U.S.
Marshal Eric Robertson, adding he had a "disdain" for the
federal government and its policies.
At an afternoon press conference, Robertson said Manley came
into the courthouse at about 11:48 a.m. and tried to get around
the security screening area.
Courthouse security ordered him to stop. He held out the
grenade for the officers to see and they launched an emergency
evacuation of the building. They called in Seattle Police for
assistance.
"With their expert help, we cordoned him off so he could not
enter into the secure portion of the building. An officer with a
.223 as well as one with a shotgun took aim on him," Robertson
said. After 25 minutes of trying to get Manley to put down the
grenade, "he made a furtive movement with the grenade and at
that point the officers had no choice but to stop the threat."
He was shot twice by two veteran Seattle Police Department
officers.
"He went down with the grenade in his hand. At that time he
was continuing to cup the grenade," Robertson explained. "And we
called for the Seattle Police Bomb Squad to come in to disarm
and make safe that grenade...Also if you recall I said that he
had a backpack on. We did not know at that point what was in the
backpack, if there were additional explosives or anything that
could harm an emercency service worker or a law enforcement
officer."
Emergency medical workers were not allowed to approach the
body until the bomb squad could ensure their safety.
Members of the bomb squad searched the backpack found a
cutting board inside it, as well as a living will. Of the
significance of the cutting board, Seattle Police Chief Gil
Kerlikowske could only speculate, but living will did raise for
him the specter of this being a case of "suicide by police."
A woman cleaning windows in the lobby saw the man enter the
building. He was acting oddly, she said. "Usually you don't wear
a backpack in front of you." He drew the attention of security
officials when he tried to sneak around the security gate.
She described what happened next when they told him to stop.
He responded, "don't come near me don't come near me, I'll blow
it up!" "Don't come near me, don't come near me! Stay away, stay
away!" she said he yelled.
Chay Adams told the station that she saw police shoot Manley.
"He was agitated and he kept moving his hands," Adams said, who
said the man had been sitting on a bench with a yellow backpack.
At least two shots were heard on videotape made during the
ordeal. "Suspect now shot, suspect now shot," was heard being
announced by an officer over a radio.
No one else was injured, according to Robertson.
Slightly more than two hours after it began, Seattle police
spokeswoman, Carmen Best, said he was dead.
KING
A police officer aims a rifle at the Federal Courthouse
in Seattle after a man making threats was shot by police.
“I think he was really mean because his son’s birthday was on
Friday and his daughter’s wedding is coming up.”
Calhoun said Manley always claimed he was denied visitation
and access to his children but his family said that wasn’t true
and that the daughter visited him just six months ago.
Manley’s friend Tom Swanson said Manley was willing to die
for what he believed in but said: “Perry never wanted to hurt
anybody, he wanted to get attention.”
“I had the feeling the last time we were down at the federal
courthouse with the flag-burning ceremony there was a certain
amount of premeditation, that he was willing to die for what he
believed in.”
Manley was under investigation by the FBI for threats against
U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly who had repeatedly denied his
requests to bring a state case, possibly related to 'deadbeat
dad' child support payments up to the federal level.
He e-mailed KING TV a few weeks ago saying he planned to burn
a flag on the steps of the courthouse. In his note he also
wrote:
"25 Million U.S. Citizens called "NONCUSTODIAL PARENTS," are
impoverished and imprisoned by the government without the
authority or the power. The government denies these second class
parents the democratic rights we fight for in other countries.
Child support is illegal, unlawful, and unconstitutional. It
violates five basic elements of our Bill of Rights; that being
life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, due process, and equal
protection under the law. Peonage, seizure of property,
coercion, threats of fear and intimidation are illegal,
unlawful, and unconstitutional. How many children, grandparents,
and parents must suffer before you reveal the truth to America?
Many are suffering, commit suicide, live underground, or are
imprisoned. The time for oppression is coming to an end.This
must STOP now!"
Roads blocked, buildings evacuated
Police blocked off 8th and 9th Streets from Virginia to
Stewart while the drama unfolded. The streets were reopened at
around 2 p.m.
Several people in the building told KING5 News police
escorted them down the stairs and out of the building.
KING
The Federal Courthouse in Seattle was locked down after a
man entered the building with at least one weapon.
"We were notified that there was an incident in the building
and the marshals would like for us to evacuate the courthouse,"
said a woman who is an administrative assistant in the building.
"We were pretty calm. The marshals do an excellent job and
were able to get everybody out of the building," said another
woman.
Robertson said the entire 23-story federal building was
evacuated, but some employees were allowed to return while the
bomb squad worked.
The new federal courthouse opened last August. Many of the
major security features of the $171 million high-rise at Seventh
Avenue and Stewart Street are disguised. Even glass walls that
permit ample sunlight are blast-resistant.
The new courthouse houses the U.S. Marshals Service, judges,
support staff and court clerks, as well as the U.S. Attorney's
Office, bankruptcy courts, and probation and pretrial services.
KING
It holds 13 district courtrooms, five bankruptcy courtrooms,
and 22 suites for judges and their staff. Secure hallways lead
from cell blocks into the courtrooms, so prisoners don't contact
the public - unlike in the old building.
"The security plant that we have in place worked. The lobby
is … outside of the underneath of the structure. There is a
design in place to where if someone did come in with an
explosive it should not affect the foundation structure of the
building," Robertson said.
KING5's Linda Byron, Jim Forman, Tim Robinson, Deborah
Feldman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Perry
Manley
of
Seattle, RIP: Suicide-by-Cop, June
21,
2005
"SEATTLE - A man shot and killed by officers after he brandished
an inert <child's plastic> grenade at
Seattle's new Federal Courthouse Monday was described as
angry about child support rulings, police said. ... Court records
indicated his
wages had been garnished in a child support case. ... He
was shot
twice by two veteran Seattle Police Department officers. ..."
"I am writing on behalf of
Darrin Bruce White. I am the oldest of his four
children. My name is
Ashlee A D Barnett-White. ...
No one would listen to my father , no one
would give him a chance to speak. ... My dad was an abused
husband, he was abused by his wife, and the justice system.
... He was a kind man who fought a good fight but no matter
what he did or said, he could never win with this system.
Things need to change for all fathers going through this
same thing. We need to help, too many kids go without a
father because of this , too many kids are hurt."
Ashlee A D Barnett-White, Eldest Daughter
He was also paying $439 a month to support an
older
child from a previous marriage.
He had to take stress leave from his job as a train engineer
for BC Rail. Master Baker ordered Darren out of his home on
two days notice.
Presently, the burden of proof is on the Accused to prove
themselves innocent (unless you are in a Criminal Court), Rare is the Judge who enforces Perjury laws against a
woman.
In
"Women and the Process of Constitutional Reform"
McLellan warns that
<Horrors!>
"Provincial
Legislatures may impose a presumption of Joint
Custody... and perpetuate the domination of men over
women"
"RCMP say
the man died Saturday in a crash near the Dundurn military base
south of Saskatoon. He was driving a car that was hit head-on by
a truck pulling a trailer on the wrong side of the highway."
<Rick's death seems all too convenient!!!!!>
"Shame on them,"
Rick Fredrickson
said in an interview, after learning
the couple who left a Saskatoon
hospital with his newborn son this
spring while he desperately
sought help asserting his
Paternity & Right to custody
..
<The Adoptive Parents> now want
access to his financial records in
order to calculate how much he
should pay them for the child's
care."
Disclaimer: EqualParenting-BC.Ca encourages exercising democratic
rights such as the freedom of expression, but does not by association or
reference to other materials condone or sanction violence or hatred.
Perry Manley split with his family living on the Kitsap
peninsula15 years ago. He was no longer required to make support
payments to his now-grown children, but his family said he was
never able to put the bitterness behind him. 
