Tragically revealing conversation with Ian Briggs, Royal Air Force (RAF) aeronautical engineer veteran, father of Gavin Briggs, also an RAF veteran of 15 years, young father of three, who sadly took his life last summer after being hounded for years by CMS, the Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency, with false claims of missing arrears in child support, wrongful assessment of income, and aggressive demands for unlawful payments over and above his regular payments.
What emerges from this detailed narrative is a story of both betrayal and extortion, as Gavin's first ex-wife and second ex-wife both made extraordinary demands for child support, while, in the first case not providing child support payments for the boy in Gavin's custody as resident parent, later issuing false and baseless child abuse allegations—cleared by a police investigation, and in the second cutting off visitation rights, and making increasing demands for child support, which the Child Maintenance Services added to, demanding 15,000 pounds in fabricated arrears and re-assessing his income wrongfully, adding on an extra 26,000 pounds.
Gavin's appeals to CMS to check their records to confirm that his payments had been made correctly and in time and his attempts to correct the income calculations seem to have fallen on deaf ears as they continued to pressurize him for payments. In addition, changes he sought to make at his workspot to improve things seem to have triggered retaliation, he was told he might be fired—an absurd yet common response these days as high numbers of whistleblowers revealing fraud or corruption at work report being targeted for retaliation by corrupt employers. The combined pressure as well as a long period of beating on brick walls and watching parts of his life fall away seem to have taken a toll on him. Ian, his father, reports he was very close with his son but had no idea he was going through such extreme despair as to take the irrevocable step of taking his life. Ian says Gavin was a Robin-Williams kind of man, ebullient and vibrant, the loss of whom is impossible to recover from.
Attempts to connect with CMS to clear up this matter and have them correct their records has proved a mixed bag as some of the people he spoke with have offered him revealing information, while others have since stonewalled, citing lack of authority when the deceased has children since he has not been named by Gavin as a spokesperson. One startling phone call from a team leader was left unrecorded by him—making it an unofficial call—but offered confirmation that the figures cited by CMS did not appear to have any basis in factual evidence, that someone had pulled those figures out of thin air.
Ian actually does have pay stubs and check stubs and evidence of all payments, he says, so it is doubly egregious that CMS refuses to recognize this, as also the coroner who, at a recent pre-inquest hearing did not take into account the lead-up to Gavin's death, which heavily implicates the CMS, CSA, and his workplace, Hitachi. The people at the workplace themselves have responded more fully to Ian's disclosures, he says, undertook an internal investigation, and have started to institute changes, now after Gavin's death. CMS and the coroner however seem to both resist the evidence of CMS having blundered extensively and having made mistakes in their figures—although, with CMS, given the numbers of other cases reporting similar anomalies, the question must be asked, was it a mistake or was it deliberate? In other words, is this evidence of entrenched corruption, open theft, sinister harassment of parents to extort and bankrupt them, and organized asset theft?
Thousands of cases are known where vets have been pushed to suicide by CMS false-claims, Ian says, while the CMS makes 38 million a year as it takes a hefty cut from child payments for every parent pulled into the system, sometimes by the other parent in a divorce, sometimes by the advising lawyer of the other parent. Again, what becomes plausible is the picture of an organized crime network operating in the shadows and directing targeted takedowns of fathers just as much as mothers (as covered in earlier panels, especially News Panel 1), involving lawyers, Family Court judges, CMS case workers and managers, and spouses who are either co-opted or unknowing of the enormous encroachments CMS is engaging in as it aggressively and unlawfully pursues the paying parent for fictitious arrears and excessive sums.
Ian reports that he is continuing to appeal to the coroner and to CMS to acknowledge the facts behind Gavin's death, based on the clear evidence, and wants only for CMS to acknowledge their wrongful acions, which have led to the needless loss of a young father, irreplaceable to his father and his children both.
Many thanks to Ian Briggs for speaking out and for pursuing CMS, the coroner, and MP's with the facts of this case, and helping to highlight oth
