HILO, Hawai'i — Two new investigation units are being formed to track down and punish parents who deliberately dodge court-ordered child-support payments.

"It's going to be a full-court press to persuade people that we mean business about paying child support," said Big Island Deputy Prosecutor Rick Damerville. "If you owe child support, you want to think about getting those payments made because it's not going to be pretty."

State lawmakers this year provided money to the state attorney general's office to hire staff to pursue civil contempt-of-court cases against scofflaw parents statewide, while Big Island prosecutors are launching the state's first unit dedicated to criminal prosecutions of parents who deliberately skip out on their obligations.

The Hawai'i Child Support Enforcement Agency, under the state attorney general's office, is responsible for receiving and distributing child support and for enforcing child-support orders.

Many parents fail to pay. A recent report by the state auditor found the Child Support Enforcement Agency collected just 55 percent of the current payments due in fiscal year 2005, and collected on only about 41 percent of its delinquent accounts.

The state was ranked last in the nation that year for its delinquency collection rate in a federal ranking of 54 jurisdictions, according to the state audit.

As of June 2006, the agency had about 120,000 child-support cases, and Damerville said he has heard estimates that 8,000 people on the Big Island alone are seriously behind on their child-support payments.

CIVIL SANCTIONS

There are a number of civil sanctions that are routinely imposed on people who fail to make child-support payments. Among other things, the state can seize the parents' tax refunds, garnish their wages, and yank the debtors' professional licenses and drivers' licenses.

At the state level, First Deputy Attorney General Lisa Ginoza said her department is planning a new unit financed with $175,000 in start-up funds lawmakers provided this year to pursue civil contempt of court cases against parents who are able topay child support but refuse to do so.

The unit would have a deputy attorney general and two investigators, and would assemble evidence for contempt of court cases against people when there is proof that deadbeat parents have assets or income that would allow them to pay.

If a judge finds a parent in contempt for disobeying a court order, the judge can impose a variety of punishments or other conditions that may include jail time, Ginoza said.

The difficulty lies in proving that parents have the ability to pay, Ginoza said. The law places the burden on the state to prove that an absent parent has the ability to pay, and "sometimes that's not the easiest thing to prove," she said.

Ginoza said she is not aware of any instance in recent years where the state was able to prove civil contempt of court in a child-support case.

The attorney general's office tried this year to get the Legislature to change state law to place the burden of proof on parents to show they can't pay, Ginoza said. Lawmakers declined.

Ginoza said the attorney general's office will launch the new unit and pursue cases under the existing law, and then return to the Legislature next year to once again ask that the law be changed to put the burden of proof on absent parents.

The idea for the county's child-support prosecution unit grew out of discussions Damerville had with an angry Big Island mother who was owed tens of thousands of dollars in back support payments by the father of her three children.

After struggling for years because she received little financial support from the man, the frustrated woman told Damerville the absent father bragged to his now-grown children about his boat, his house and his money.

BUT FEW CRIMINAL CASES

Deliberate failure to pay child support is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, but Damerville estimated only a half-dozen or so people have been arrested for nonpayment in recent decades. Only one was successfully prosecuted, he said.

Now, the Big Island has a federal grant of $103,250 to hire an investigator and a paralegal to build criminal cases against deadbeat parents. State and county officials expect the new unit will work closely with the Child Support Enforcement Agency in the state attorney general's office to identify cases ripe for prosecution.

Cases will be pursued only when there is evidence the responsible parents have the ability to pay, but are lying about their income or hiding assets to avoid paying, said Big Island First Deputy Prosecutor Charlene Iboshi. The county is not interested in pursuing criminal cases when parents are disabled or cannot pay for legitimate reasons, she said.

TOO MANY SCOFFLAWS

The criminal cases are important because "there's still a large number out there who aren't getting the message, and they won't get the message until they're standing in front of a judge or a jury, and face the possible sanction of jail," Damerville said.

A similar strategy of filing criminal cases against state tax cheats improved the compliance rate as word circulated that people were being prosecuted, said Damerville, who was involved in that effort as a deputy attorney general.

Damerville said his office intends to follow each criminal child-support case "wherever it takes us." For example, some people may be dodging taxes as well as child-support obligations, and some employers pay cash to help their workers to avoid child-support obligations, he said.

Those cash jobs may violate a number of employment and tax laws, and "we are going to investigate and prosecute, and that's the way it's going to be," Damerville said.

"The biggest asset that Hawai'i has — we don't have oil, we don't have gas, we don't have gold, or huge manufacturing plants — our No. 1 asset is our children, and you just cause insurmountable damage to children in a situation where you, as the noncustodial parent, are not doing your share," he said.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.