A La Brea fa­ther faces the pos­si­bil­i­ty of go­ing to jail for fail­ing to pay $35,000 in main­te­nance for a child for who, he says, is not bi­o­log­i­cal­ly his."This is so un­fair. I just don't know how to deal with this. I want the world to see what's hap­pen­ing to me. To find out the youth who I tak­ing care of like my own son is not mine and now I have to make a jail," said fa­ther Mar­lon Thomp­son.The child is now 11 years old and Thomp­son al­so has a daugh­ter, a year and eight months old, with an­oth­er woman whom he mar­ried De­cem­ber last.Wor­ried and frus­trat­ed over the sit­u­a­tion, Thomp­son was ad­vised to seek the as­sis­tance of the Sin­gle Fa­thers As­so­ci­a­tion (SFATT), which is now try­ing to help him.

He was or­dered to pay main­te­nance, $150 a week, by a Point Fortin mag­is­trate in 2008. But he struck an agree­ment with the child's moth­er out­side the court and he be­lieved the main­te­nance or­der was dis­con­tin­ued, he said. How­ev­er, last Sep­tem­ber, five years lat­er and three months be­fore his wed­ding, he gave him­self up to the po­lice af­ter he heard a war­rant was out for his ar­rest.

"I did not know that (main­te­nance or­der) was still in force."The court or­dered him to pay the mon­ey in two tranch­es. Thomp­son said he filed for cus­tody of the child.How­ev­er, he de­cid­ed to take the child to Vic­to­ria lab for a pa­ter­ni­ty test in March."I don't even know how to ex­plain how I feel when the test show he was not my son," he said as he pro­duced the test re­sults.

Thomp­son took a copy of the re­sults to the court. He said the court or­dered an­oth­er test done, this time with the moth­er present. He said the mat­ter was called on two oth­er oc­ca­sions. "She nev­er went," he said.The last time the mat­ter was called was on Ju­ly 17, two days af­ter the dead­line had passed for him to pay the mon­ey.The mag­is­trate, he said, again or­dered the moth­er to be present for the test and ad­journed the mat­ter to Oc­to­ber.Thomp­son said the court is­sued a war­rant for him for not pay­ing the main­te­nance and when ar­rest­ed he will go straight to prison to be­gin his three-month term. "I have a fam­i­ly to take care of. My wife can­not work and my daugh­ter was born with an un­de­vel­oped lung," he said.

His wife's three chil­dren from pre­vi­ous re­la­tion­ships al­so live with them."Don't get me wrong I love him. He is still my son. I al­ways tak­ing care of him. I am not a dead­beat dad."SFATT pres­i­dent, Rhon­dall Fee­les, yes­ter­day said he would call Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Em­manuel George seek­ing their as­sis­tance. He al­so in­tends to write to the ju­di­cia­ry and the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice."He (Thomp­son) should get a stay on the war­rant," said Fee­les.