Man Ordered to Jail Because His Daughter Did Not Obtain Her GED

Did you ever think it would happen in America? It is an outrage! It should not have happened, and all Americans who know about it should do something-even though there is little more we can do than express our opinions. We should do whatever we can, however.

Imagine for a moment you have a teenage son or daughter. You have done everything in your power to raise your child to be the best person you know how. He or she has been known to skip classes. To make matters worse, you are separated from your spouse. To further complicate matters, a judge orders you to be responsible for your child's education, and when that child passes all the parts of a General Equivalency Exam (GED) to get a high school diploma, except one, you are sentenced to six months in jail for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for not following a court order. The only way you can get out any sooner is for your child to retake the part of the test that he failed again and pass it this time.

Such a thing could never happen in America, you might think. But it has! The judge who gave the outrageous order is Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus, and a court spokesman said such an order is rare. He ordered Brian Gegner to jail for six months, because he did not obey an order to have his daughter, Brittney, obtain a GED. She attended school in Cincinnati at Fairfield High School and Butler Tech.

The father of 18-year-old Brittney Gegner is not the only one who thinks the order is not fair. Brittney said if anyone should be punished, it should be her, and she is determined to pass the test to get her father out of jail. Brittney, the mother of an 18-month-old, points out that she is about to be 19, and her father is being punished for something that happened when she was a minor of 16. She says she would rather be in jail than to have her father, who could lose his job while in jail, there.