Mom jailed for keeping son from visiting convicted rapist dad in prison (Brooklyn, New York)

If this case isn't prima facie proof that fathers' rights have completely won out in this country, I don't know what is. Mom is being jailed (in solitary confinement) because she doesn't believe it's a good idea to send her 9-year-old son to Arizona to visit his serial rapist father SEON JONAS in prison. So now under the regime of fathers rights, good mothering and sound parental judgement is worthy of solitary confiment. She can't even get bail, when (father) batterers and child killers routintely get bail all the time. Disgusting.

Brooklyn Family Court Judge Robin Sheares has a lot to answer for.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2010/06/27/2010-06-27_jailed_for_her_son_50_days_for_keeping_him_from_visiting_his_rapist_dad.html

Brooklyn mom Sukhwant Herb jailed for 50 days for keeping son from visiting rapist dad
BY William Sherman
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Sunday, June 27th 2010, 4:00 AM

A Brooklyn mom has been tossed in jail because she refused to send her 9-year-old son to an Arizona prison to visit his father, a serial rapist locked away for decades.

Sukhwant Herb is serving 50 days on Rikers Island - in solitary confinement, she says - because she ignored a court order mandating twice-a-year prison visits for her son Seon.

She agreed to the visitation deal with representatives of the boy's father in September, her lawyer said.

Then she changed her mind.

"I don't want my son in that environment, seeing the prisoners in jumpers, and the slamming of gates, the noise. My son is 9, and it's horrible, horrific," Herb told the News in a phone call. "I'm locked here in a room, locked in 23 hours a day, with a TV.

"I turn [the TV] on just to hear another voice. The first time they took me outside for some fresh air was after 13 days in jail and that was for only one hour."

The 29-year-old mom from East New York can have visitors and make some phone calls.

But she doesn't want her son visiting her, either. "Not in this environment," she said.

Brooklyn Family Court Judge Robin Sheares shipped Herb off to Rikers on June 10 after having her arrested on a warrant.

The judge declined to comment.

David Bookstaver, spokesman for the state Office of Court Administration, said Herb was jailed because she missed five court appearances.

She had ample opportunity to try and modify the visitation order and is a flight risk, he said.

The circumstances of Herb's incarceration "are highly unusual," Bookstaver acknowledged, "but warranted."

Bookstaver said Herb "was given numerous opportunities to answer simple questions to avoid incarceration, but was uncooperative, could not produce proof of where she'd been, or where her son was attending school."

Herb's version of the hearing is quite different.

"I kept telling the judge where I was living, that I had a house in Ohio and was planning to move there with my son. But [the judge] kept screaming at me, 'I don't believe you, I don't care. I don't believe you.'"

Herb, who said she worked with a financial services firm dealing with foreclosures, is planning a move to Cambridge, Ohio, with her son and a 6-month-old daughter she has with her fiance, Dwayne Waithe, of Jamaica, Queens. The boy is living with Waithe while Herb is in jail.

Waithe said he was willing to put up his home, his trucking business and his bank account for Herb's bail, but was shot down.

"Even killers get bail," Waithe said. "This is unbelievable."

Herb conceded she made many mistakes in her dealings with Sheares. "It was a poor decision not to hire a lawyer earlier and fight all this in court," she said. "Still, this is wrong."

She recently hired a lawyer, Dale Frederick.

"It is not in the best interest of any child to incarcerate his mother for refusing to allow that child to go to a penitentiary, particularly where the father is a convicted serial rapist," Frederick said.

The father of Herb's son, Seon Jonas, 31, was convicted in 2003 of raping three women in Phoenix and is serving 27 years in an Arizona state prison.

Herb said she and Jonas, who met 11 years ago in New York, were living together in Phoenix when the rapes took place. Two of Jonas' victims were teenagers, she added.

"I had no idea of his secret life, that he did that," she said. "He was a kind man, was never abusive to me when we were living together."

After Jonas was imprisoned, Herb came back to Brooklyn with her son and moved in with her mother. The boy has not seen has father since at least the beginning of 2009.

"I am just devastated by this," said her mother, Gloria Herb.

Herb's aunt, Shelly Alexander, visited Herb last week and said, "She was just crying all the time.

"You sit across the table from the prisoner and right next to us was a woman who was a murderer.

"My niece made bad choices, but that doesn't make her a bad woman. June 30 is her birthday and she's going to spend it in jail."

It's unclear what will happen after she serves her sentence.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2010/06/27/2010-06-27_jailed_for_her_son_50_days_for_keeping_him_from_visiting_his_rapist_dad.html#ixzz0sARMshLN