Father & Son Reunited After 'Decade of Hell'

Despite a decade of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his mother, Darius never gave up on his dream to be reunited with his father.

"The state, the family courts and my mother did everything they could to drive me away from my father," he says. "They put me in juvenile hall, they put me in foster care, they lied to me, they tried to poison my mind and turn me against my father."

Darius' liberation came earlier this year when he turned 18 and "left hell" to rejoin his father.

Darius and his father told their story on His Side with Glenn Sacks on Sunday, September 21 to commemorate Equal Parents Week (September 22-28), an international week of recognition of children's right to both parents. His Side can be heard on KRLA 870 AM in Los Angeles and KKOL AM 1300 in Seattle at 11 PM. Also joining Glenn was family law attorney Elizabeth Courtney, as well as Gary, a loving father whose two teenage daughters have been pawns in a vicious alienation scheme perpetrated by his ex-wife.

To learn more about Equal Parents Week, click here or see Glenn's column "Equal Parents Week Highlights Need for Family Court Reform" (Lansing State Journal, 9/26/02) (co-authored by Dianna Thompson, former Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children). To read Darius' testimony in favor of a Los Angeles County Commission for Men to investigate family court abuses, click here . To learn more about the way family courts disregard the rights of fathers and the children who love and need them, see Glenn's columns "Fathers Bear the Brunt of Gender Bias in Family Courts" (Insight Magazine, 8/19/02) and "No Virtue in 'Virtual Visitation' " (Boston Globe, 7/12/02) (both co-authored by Thompson).