FYI

Choose a Language

Powered by Squarespace

Like to Read? Try Listening too!!

Download and Listen to any Audiobook for only $7.49. Save 50% for 3 months on over 60,000 Titles.

Social Media

 

 

Search

Shaun Dawson

Create Your Badge

 

Ever Listen to a Book?

Try Audible Now and Get A Free Audiobook Download with a 14 Day Trial. Choose from over 60,000 Titles.

Want the Latest News??
Traffic Monitor

 

Donations Accepted & Appreciated

Entries in DNA (3)

Thursday
Oct292009

You Are Not My Son?

Phil Boete and Ron Ryba


This is the heart-wrenching story of a father and son who thought they had found each other after years of separation, only to find out that fate had played a cruel trick on both of them.

Ron Ryba was a high school football star when he met his high school sweetheart, 16-year-old Kathy Butler, in 1975. They were in love and she became pregnant and bore him a son. It was a hard decision but they decided to give the baby up for adoption through the Catholic Charities of Trenton, N.J.

A few weeks later, Phil Bloete was adopted by a New Jersey couple through the same organization.

Ron and Kathy eventually broke up and ended up marrying other people. Ron stayed in touch with the Catholic Charities and through the years they provided him with baby pictures and assured him that the boy was doing well.

About five years ago the two men - Phil Bloete was now a high school English teacher - began writing to each other through the charity organization. They eventually decided to meet each other.

"I wanted him to know that he was born out of love and I had given him up as a gift," Ryba said, who explained that he and the baby's 16-year-old mother decided their son deserved a better upbringing than they could provide.


The meeting went well and they bonded in what they thought was a long-awaited father-and-son reunion. If fact everything went so well and the two grew so close that Ron decided to add Phil to his will last year. That was when things took a strange turn.

The results of the DNA tests that Ron's lawyer required they take, shocked everyone....the two sets of tests showed there was "zero percent chance" that Phil was related to Ron or his ex-girlfriend, Kathy....he was NOT their son.


Both men feel let down by Catholic Charities, which has been unable to come up with any information to untangle the mess.


Ron Ryba and Phil Bloete are not father and son, but they are friends bound together by a heart-wrenching mystery. Where is Ron's son? Who are Phil's birth parents? They remain determined to find out.



"We'll just take this journey together; we'll do it together," Ryba said.

 

Their story was told on Good Morning America in the video clip below:

 


 

 

 

 

Bookmark and Share
Follow me on Twitter

Tuesday
Mar312009

13-Year-Old Alfie is not the Daddy

Maisie Alfie and Chantelle



Alfie Patten is the 13-year-old British lad who was supposed to be the youngest father in Britain. Now that dubious title will have to be passed on to someone else. After the results of the DNA test came back, it was determined that he was not, after all, the father of  little Maisie Roxanne born to 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman - who had vehemently proclaimed that "There has been no one else". In fact many neighborhood boys had come forward to say that they too had had sex with Chantelle Steadman and claimed to be the father. It is not clear who the baby's real father is.

Richard Goodselltyler-barker



When both 14-year-old Tyle Barker and 16-year-old Richard Goodsell stepped forward to say that they may be the baby's father (with many others following), Alfie was distraught. According to his  43-year-old mother Nicola Patten:
"He's absolutely devastated these lads have come forward to say they slept with her at the time she got pregnant. Everything is wrong. Now that is in his mind and I'm not happy. I don't know where they get this from. I mean, that's my son, that's his baby. Alfie is distraught and upset about everything. But Maisie is fine."

However, Nicola decided that the only way to confirm that Alfie was indeed the father, was to take a DNA test. Max Clifford, the publicist representing Alfie and his family, said:
"Nicola has agreed that DNA tests are the best way to resolve the issue of paternity. It is inevitable there are going to be doubts, particularly with the number of boys who've come forward claiming to have had sex with Chantelle. There is one boy in particular who does seem to have a stronger resemblance to the child."

Now that the truth is out: What will Alfie do, why did Chantelle lie and who is the real father? To be continued..........

Bookmark and Share

Friday
Jan042008

Charles Chatman - Freed After 27 Years


charles-chatman.jpgcharles-chatman-freed.jpg


The year was 1981 and Charles Chatman, 20, had just been convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 99 years in prison. He would spend the next 27 years behinds bars for a crime he did not commit. He went before the parole board 3 times while incarcerated and was given the opportunity describe the crime or at least give his version of the events. Each time Chatman would respond by saying:
"I don't have a version of the crime. I never committed the crime. I never will admit to doing this crime that I know I didn't do."

His pleas of innocence was finally heard after new DNA evidence proved that he did not commit the crime. District Judge John Creuzot, whom defense lawyers credited with shepherding Chatman's case for exoneration through the legal system, recommended that Texas' Court of Criminal Appeals find Chatman not guilty. With several relatives dabbing at their eyes with tissues and cheering, Chatman was released.

Chatman was the 15th prisoner released by Dallas county since 2001. He holds the record. He spent more time innocently in prison than any other freed inmate. Four former prisoners were at court to support him. Dallas county also holds the record for the most prisoners released after DNA testing proved them innocent. The state of Texas has released at least 30 wrongfully convicted persons since 2001, the most of any state in the country.

Chatman believes that race had a lot to do with his arrest and conviction. The jury had only one black member.
"I was convicted because a black man committed a crime against a white woman," Chatman said. "And I was available."

Judge John Creuzot of State District Court, who had championed a review of his case, ordered him released in a jubilant Dallas courtroom. “He’s my fourth one,” said Judge Creuzot, who had invited Mr. Chatman to his courtroom to hear the news that a DNA sample recently taken from him did not match the profile from the rape victim’s vaginal swab of 1981.

Chatman said he wants to work with the Innocence Project of Texas to support other people exonerated or wrongly convicted.
"I believe that there are hundreds, and I know of two or three personally that very well could be sitting in this seat if they had the support and they had the backing that I have," Chatman said. "My No. 1 interest is trying to help people who have been in the situation I am in."

 


Add to Technorati Favorites