We are going through a time when men are being demonized. According to Brian Greeley, spokesman for the Middlesex Sheriff's department, it is not his department's role to decide when or where to make an arrest. When an opportunity arises, officers make the arrest, he said. State officials said the amount of child support collected in the most recent fiscal year is 14 percent higher than the year before, and they credit the jump to their aggressive approach. Our main goal is to encourage voluntary compliance.
Most people do the right thing.
Laskey said the parents arrested are often located hundreds, and sometimes, thousands of miles outside Massachussetts. Two months later, police and investigators traced Robert Thomas, originally of Cape Cod, to his home in Hawaii. And, last year, Larry Silvia was arrested after traveling to Taunton from Florida to donate a kidney to his ailing sister. Many Wenger family members would not speak to the Globe, but Robert Wenger, who now lives in Clifton Park, N.Y., agreed to talk. According to court documents filed by his in-laws, their relationship with Wenger worsened after his wife, Diane Wenger, died of cancer in 1997.