Contraception was obviously never an option for Howard Veal. and his legion of jump-off chicks. The Michigan man has 23 children with 14 different women. But he hasn’t paid for any of them. So a judge is imposing his own form of birth control on Veal, sentencing him to jail for failure to pay more than a half-million dollars in child support.
“In my entire career I have never seen a case like this where so much was owed to so many and ignored,” Kent County Judge Dennis Leiber, who has presided over support cases for more than 20 years, told ABC News.
What makes this case extremely pathetic is the fact that, in the last seven years alone, Veal has reportedly paid a total of $90 for two of his children. Court records state that Veal has accumulated a balance of $533,000 in child support payments he has yet to reconcile.
And get this: For a decade, between 1989 and 1999, the defendant impregnated at least one woman every single year.
In July, Veal pled guilty to failure to pay child support to Sherri Black for his children ages 11 and 16. Of the more than $63,000 owed to Black, the Muskegon High School graduate was asked earlier this year to pay 10 to 100 percent of the child support owed for reduced charges. By late August, Veal had paid nothing.
That did it for Judge Leiber. He ordered a 23–48 month jail sentence for Veal’s almost monstrous form of child neglect.
“You are the poster child for irresponsibility,” Leiber told Veal during a court hearing, according to The Grand Rapids Press. “You’re an insult to every responsible father who sacrifices to provide for their children.
There may be more stern tongue-lashings for Veal in the future as 14 other child support cases are pending against him.
“When you create a human being, I think you have a fundamental responsibility to provide for that child with necessities like food, clothing and shelter,” said Judge Leiber. “Those were the thoughts running through my mind when I saw a man that was spectacularly irresponsible.” –terry shropshire
