Tuesday, July 18, 2000
County's biggest child support case begins
Mom: 'He never sent anything, not a dime'
By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Every year or so, Theresa Miller got a phone call from the father of her child.
Charles Aniagolu is accused of failing to pay more than $142,000 in child support for his 13-year-old daughter.
(Luis Sanchez photo)
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And every year, she says, he told her he would soon send money to take care of their daughter.
“He never sent anything,” she told a jury Monday. “Not a dime.”
Her testimony in Common Pleas Court came on the first day of one of the biggest child support trials in Hamilton County history.
Ms. Miller accuses her former boyfriend, Charles Aniagolu, of failing to pay more than $142,000 in child support for her 13-year-old daughter.
Prosecutors say Mr. Aniagolu, a former correspondent for the British Broadcasting Co., is the biggest “deadbeat parent” in the county.
He was at the top of the
list last year when prosecutors announced an indictment of 69 men and women who owed a total of $1.3 million in support payments.
Mr. Aniagolu says he never should have been on that list. He argues that Ms. Miller is seeking too much money from a man whose top salary in the past decade was $48,000.
His attorney, Kenneth Lawson, told jurors Monday that his client was an 18-year-old student when he met Ms. Miller, who was then 26, in the early 1980s.
When their daughter was conceived years later, he said, Mr. Aniagolu was a student who earned a few thousand dollars a year. Mr. Lawson said his client earned as little as $2,200 and as much as $48,000 in his years working as a journalist.
He said Ms. Miller, formerly of Bond Hill, distorted his wealth to the Hamilton County officials who set his level of child support.
Mr. Lawson said the charges against Mr. Aniagolu are “based on lies.” He also said his client was never properly notified of the child support payments he was supposed to be making.
Prosecutors, however, said Mr. Aniagolu never attempted to pay any of the child support.
He may dispute the amount, they say, but he cannot defend his failure to pay any support at all.
“This child received zero support from this defendant,” Prosecutor Mike Allen said before the trial began Monday.
If convicted, Mr. Aniagolu faces up to one year in jail. His trial resumes today before Judge David Davis.
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