Child Support Agency contributes to Suicide, The Australian 2006

Not sure of date

John Stapleton

KATE Stanton admits she cries a lot.
Next month is the anniversary of her son Gary's suicide - she believes as a direct result of the conduct of the Child Support Agency.

Gary Stanton was 34 and working at a hotel in Goulburn when he shot himself, leaving a note which read in part: ``Why?? I owe too much debt to banks and government will never have a good quality of life.''

Mrs Stanton, a registered nurse who lives on the southern tablelands of NSW, says: ``I have very firm views that the Child Support Agency was involved with his death. Anything I can do to help people understand the problems with the CSA I will do.''

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of the tragedy is that she has frequent contact with her grandson, Blaine, who is now eight and she says is the spitting image of his dad.

``Everytime we speak to him on the phone he wants to know something about his dad's life,'' his grandmother says.
The boy was born as the result of a brief liaison.
Mrs Stanton says her son had no idea he was a father until the child's mother applied for child support some years later after the breakdown of her marriage. DNA tests proved the boy was Gary's child.

Although he had not known he was a father, child support payments were backdated to the boy's birth.
``He was paying huge amounts to the CSA,'' Mrs Stanton says. The Agency is now pursuing his estate for $25,228.84 in back debt, the amount owed in the final month of his life.

``My youngest son spoke with someone at the Agency prior to Gary's funeral to ask why this debt was so incredibly large. They could not even offer condolences. They said, well, we'll just take anything he had to pay his debt. That made me realise that the Child Support Agency really don't care.''

The final month of his life, although not on a high salary, Gary Stanton paid $594.96 in child support while accumulating a further $185.06 in overdue penalties.

``He was very heavily in debt, he owed money to finance companies, he came to his father and I to help him out financially, which we did, of course. He died because he believed he would never maintain a new relationship, because of the money he owed to the CSA and because he had a son he had never seen.''

Although he made repeated attempts to see his son, he never had anything but photographs of him.
``He wrote a letter to the CSA asking that they pass on a letter to his son's mother. What they did was open that letter, date stamp it as received by them and sent it back to him.

``He really wanted to see his son, he really wanted to know his son. All he ever wanted to be was a dad and have a family.