Divorce Case: Marineka Bowman

In 2017, Marineka Bowman married Anthony Howard. By the end of the year, Marineka gave birth to their daughter, Gazelle Howard. When Gazelle was only two months old, her daddy walked out on his family. The following year, Marineka filed for divorce, but she never applied for child support.

At the divorce hearing, Anthony requested visitation for only two hours per week. Judge Natalie Haskins told him that it would be difficult for him to get custody in the future with a request like that. Nevertheless, she granted his request.

Due to Anthony’s job and busy schedule, he continually missed his visitation appointments. At times, two or three months passed without him showing up. But he never tried to modify his visitation schedule to be more compatible with his employment hours.

Since Anthony was absent more than he was involved, Marineka decided to take her toddler to visit her grandpa, who’d never met his grandchild. Since her dad lived in the West Indies, Marineka requested for a passport in 2019, so she could take little Gazelle for a short visit. But it wasn’t until April, 2020 when Marineka and Anthony stepped back into family court to address her passport request.

To her complete surprise, Anthony accused her of withholding his daughter from him and argued that he feared she intended to use the passport to abduct Gazelle by leaving U.S. jurisdiction. Therefore, Anthony’s attorney suggested that the parties attend a co-parenting class to ostensibly teach Marineka how to share parenting responsibilities.

Anthony’s unfounded accusation, his irrational fear, and the suggestion of a co-parenting class was not intended to resolve problems, nor was for Gazelle’s best interest. Rather, it was a direct attack against Marineka.

Judge Haskins favored the attacker in all three points.

1. She altered Anthony’s visitation schedule to every other weekend. (Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with modifying a visitation schedule provided that the motive is pure. However, in this particular case, the change wasn’t to allow Anthony more time with Gazelle, but rather, it was intended to take time away from Marineka.)
2. She denied Marineka’s request for a passport, based on Anthony’s “fear,” not on fact.
3. She ordered both parties to attend a co-parenting class. (To fulfill the stated purpose of co-parenting classes, both parents must attend the same class at the same time. This begs the question: Who’s going to choose the class that the other parent must attend? Judge Haskins reasoned that since Anthony made the request for a co-parenting class, it only made sense to give him the power to choose the class he wanted to attend.)

Although, free co-parenting classes were available, Anthony chose a particular class that was costly. Upon Marineka’s inquiry, she discovered the co-parenting class cost $2,500 per person and the full amount was due before the class started. In addition, if the teacher of the co-parenting class had to testify in court, the cost would increase. But to make matters worse, Anthony scheduled the class at the last minute.

Since Marineka wasn’t provided enough time to come up with the money, she was unable to attend the class. This subtle, but devious tactic, prevented Marineka from complying with the court’s demands. He was deliberately sabotaging any attempt she made to prove to the court that she was a responsible parent and fit mother. In other words, Anthony portrayed himself to be righteous and Marineka to be evil. This is the principle of reversal.

This one event revolving around the co-parenting class was the pretext used to completely reverse the custody and visitation roles. Judge Haskins agreed with Anthony that because Marineka was not “cooperating” with the court’s co-parenting objective and apparently lacked of communication, she was an unfit mother. As a result, family court ordered Marineka to drop Gazelle off at the visitation center on Father’s Day, 2021. Anthony was immediately awarded full and sole custody of Gazelle while Marineka was degraded to a visitor.

Immediately afterwards, Anthony petitioned the State for child support. However, when Anthony went to work, Gazelle was forced into daycare. Therefore, part of the child support arrangements included daycare costs. Child support was established against Marineka at $900 per month – for one child. However, Marineka doesn’t pay the daycare center directly. Rather, the full amount gets cycled through the Child Support Division of Delaware to increase the wealth of those bureaucratic criminals.

During Marineka’s visitation hours, she started noticing bruises on her daughter. So she took some pictures and reported the abuse to the Department of Family Services (DFS). During another visitation, she saw more bruises. And since the DFS didn’t appear to be doing anything, the second time she reported the abuse to the children’s hospital.

After Marineka had reported her daughter’s abuse on multiple occasions, Anthony’s attorney filed eight petitions in family court seeking an ex parte order with the intent to halt Marineka’s visitation with her daughter. These petitions were filed in May, June, and July of 2022.

The petitions were alleging that Marineka was engaging in psychological child abuse against Gazelle. However, the accusations only relied on hearsay. Gazelle never testified in court, nor were there any witnesses to hear her utter these words.

1. “The child said, ‘mommy said she didn’t love me.’”
2. “The child said, ‘mommy said she hates daddy and hates being around me.’”
3. “The child said, ‘mommy said she would feed daddy to the coyotes.’”