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FWD: Greg Minor Speaks Out
[The Boston Globe Online][Boston.com]
Minor's details
Finally giving his side of story, Celtics insists he's a
good father
By Stephen Kurkjian and Peter May, Globe Staff, 08/09/98
Having been depicted by the mother of his three children
in court and in the media as a neglectful father and
violence-prone man, Celtics forward/guard Greg Minor
realized he had to speak out following an encounter with
a fan at Logan Airport last spring. ``You've got to take
better care of your family business,'' Minor recalls the
fan telling him as they waited for luggage.
Although he quickly challenged the man, saying that he
did not know all the facts, Minor was convinced by the
remark that he needed to be more energetic in getting out
his side of the story.
``Since the age of 12, I've been the one who has been
responsible in my family,'' said Minor during a four-hour
interview with the Globe last week. ``And I come from a
small town where everyone gets along and does things the
right way.
``Coming from a family and town as close like that, you
think I'd have children born out of wedlock and leave
them behind?'' said Minor, now 26. ``That's insane.''
Minor and his attorneys had declined requests for
interviews, and soon he was portrayed as indifferent to
his children's welfare, or as Sports Illustrated
described him in May, a ``standard bearer for
irresponsible fatherhood.''
That perception was drawn from statements made by Celestyne Y.
Rowan, 27, the mother of his children and
Minor's girlfriend for six years before their breakup, to
the Globe, Sports Illustrated, CNN, and Oprah Winfrey.
However, that portrayal appears to have been drawn from
incomplete information. While he appears to have
displayed financial and emotional immaturity during his
relationship with Rowan, as well as anger and bitterness
toward her after their split, there is little indication
that he knowingly neglected his children or cut himself
off from them.
Based on Rowan's accounts, it was easy to believe the
worst about Minor. While he had signed a contract with
the Celtics that was paying him $12.5 million over a
five-year period, she said he was providing only $2,000 a
month in support for his children. In addition, he had
allowed Rowan and the children to be forced from their
Louisville, Ky., home by not following through on a
contract to purchase the property, and he had had only
infrequent contact with the children, she said.
However, Minor and Stephanie Barrack, his fiancee, are
now providing versions - and with some issues, documents
- that differ from Rowan's accounts and on some points
contradict her.
Informed of this during an interview Thursday, Rowan
persisted in portraying Minor as neglectful about his
financial and parental responsibilities in 1996 and 1997,
during the year after their relationship ended.
However, she did concede that during that year Minor
provided nearly $30,000 above the $2,000 a month in child
support. Neither Rowan nor her attorney, Maury D. Kommor
of Louisville, offered details of those payments to
reporters or mentioned them in court last year.
Although the sides continue to dispute issues publicly,
privately they are trying to settle their differences on
child support, custody, and visitation rights. Jefferson
County Family Court Judge Denise G. Clayton has imposed a
gag order on Minor and Rowan, but both sides confirmed
that negotiations are ongoing and a deal is possible.
``I want to move on, Greg wants to move on, but I want to
make sure that the children are taken care of,'' Rowan
said Thursday.
But agreeing on things that happened in the past, and on
whether Minor acted responsibly as a parent, is a
different story. The major areas in which they disagree
are the following:
Support payments
Rowan told reporters last year that she was having a
difficult time making ends meet on the $2,000 support
payments being made by Minor. The Globe reported in June
1997 that Rowan was fending off bill collectors, unable
to make the monthly installment payments on her washing
machine, dryer, and refrigerator, or replace a tire on
her car.
While at the time Rowan was receiving only the $2,000
court-ordered support payment from Minor, she made no
mention of the fact that during the eight months between
September 1996 and April 1997 she had received an
additional $27,120 from Minor to take care of expenses
for herself and the children. In addition, he said, he
had documentation to prove that he had put $7,248 in
charges on his Visa card to pay for plane tickets and
hotel accommodations for a trip to Boston taken by Rowan
and the children during the Christmas season in 1996, as
well as gifts for the children.
After signing his new contract with the Celtics in August
1996, Minor now says, he realized that his relationship
with Rowan was ending and he needed to meet the financial
needs of their children. He says he directed his
financial adviser to wire additional money that Rowan
might need to meet her monthly bills. Minor acknowledges
that Rowan did not abuse the authorization and sought
only to meet necessary expenses. But he emphasizes - and
Rowan now agrees - that the children could not have been
living in near-poverty while the wire transfers
continued.
``If I felt I was a bad parent or I didn't handle my
responsibilities, then I'd say fine'' about being
criticized, Minor said. ``But my obligation was to make
sure my kids were brought up the proper way, to make sure
they got the proper schooling so they didn't have to
struggle like I had. And I did that.''
Vacating family home
A few weeks before signing his contract with the Celtics,
Minor put down $38,000 to buy a new house that Rowan had
picked out for herself and the children in a
well-groomed, safe neighborhood in Louisville. Both Minor
and Rowan say that under their agreement Minor was to
take out a real estate loan for the remaining $117,000
and Rowan would make the monthly $900 mortgage payments
out of her child support money.
However, Minor never finalized the mortgage with the bank
and Rowan lived in the house for nine months without
making any payments. Finally, on April 30, 1997, Larry E.
Thompson, the contractor who had built the house and
arranged the sale to Minor, informed Rowan by letter that
she had to vacate because Minor had not followed through.
A month later, Rowan moved from the comfortable,
four-bedroom house to a far worse neighborhood in the
west end of Louisville where Rowan and the children were
forced to share a single bedroom in her mother's home.
Minor said last week that he was shocked and deeply
troubled to learn that Rowan and the children had been
forced to leave the home and that he did not know of
their plight until he read about it in the Globe in early
June.
According to Minor, he thought Rowan had finalized the
loan papers on her own and had been making the mortgage
payments out of her support money, as they had arranged.
He shifted the blame to Rowan for not calling him in
Boston or telling him about the situation when she saw
him and Barrack at a party in Louisville in early May.
However, Rowan said it was Minor's fault that she and the
children were forced to move. She said that Minor was
angry with her for seeking a significant increase in
child support and had not returned numerous messages she
left on his pager.
Thompson, who is involved in a lawsuit with Minor over
the house, sided with Rowan. He said that he spoken with
Minor, Minor's financial agent, the bank officer, and the
Celtics' front office, informing them that the sale had
not been consummated and that Rowan and the children may
have to leave the house.
``I believe that he was trying to find a better mortgage
so the monthly bills would be lower, and that's why he
kept stalling,'' Thompson said. ``I didn't want to do it
but I had no alternative but to force them to leave.''
Financial straits and court default
While denying that he delayed signing the mortgage
papers, Minor acknowledged that he was in dire financial
straits at the time. Although he had received $1 million
immediately after signing with the Celtics in August
1996, Minor said that money was used for his agent's fee
($310,000), down payments on the houses he bought for
Rowan and for his mother in Georgia and on a condo for
himself in Waltham, and a long list of personal debts he
had accrued while he and Rowan were together.
The $33,000 in monthly checks that Minor was netting from
the Celtics also was not bringing him, Rowan, or the
children many luxuries. After a hearing on Jan. 27, 1997,
that Minor did not attend, a domestic relations
commissioner ruled that his monthly support payments be
increased to $30,000 to reflect his new
multimillion-dollar contract with the Celtics. A family
judge upheld that amount in June '97 and set up an escrow
account. It wasn't until last November that Minor got the
amount reduced considerably.
At the original January hearing, Rowan, under questioning
by her attorney, Kommor, testified that she was receiving
$2,000 a month in child support, without mentioning that
Minor was sending her additional money to pay living
expenses.
She and Kommor also told the hearing commissioner that
Rowan was making $1,000 monthly mortgage payments out of
her child support checks.
Later, while agreeing that Rowan did not make any
mortgage payments, Kommor said neither he nor Rowan
intended to mislead the hearing officer. Instead, he
said, they were trying to provide an accurate picture of
what Rowan's anticipated financial condition would be if
and when Minor followed through on his pledge to complete
the mortgage deal with the bank.
In addition, Rowan emphasized that all of the extra
$27,120 that Minor sent to her went to hospital bills for
the children and other necessary living expenses. ``Not a
dime of that money went into her pocket,'' said Kommor.
Of course, Rowan's testimony could have been countered by
Minor if he had attended the hearing, but he defaulted
from it, claiming he hadn't had adequate notice. However,
court papers show that he was handed the legal notice of
Rowan's request to increase child support payments by a
Jefferson County special court bailiff, and a copy of
that notice was sent to his mother's home in
Sandersville, Ga.
Minor was successful last fall in getting a judge to
reduce his $30,000 payments to $7,860 but said he would
have been able to avoid the costly, year-long litigation
battle if he simply had been informed that Rowan was
going into court and if she had provided a clearer
picture of her financial situation at the hearing.
Both Minor and Rowan acknowledge that any hope for
restoring their relationship had disappeared by early
1997 and communication between them was breaking down.
Emerge program
On two occasions in 1996, angry words between Minor and
Rowan had led to Minor striking Rowan and shoving her.
Minor was arrested on June 21 and charged with
fourth-degree assault, but a Louisville judge ruled that
the charges would be dropped if he completed a 48-week,
battery-prevention course in Massachusetts titled EMERGE.
His experience with the program was not trouble-free.
According to news reports, he did not attend 14 of the
first 36 sessions, and nodded off or declined to
participate in some of the others. Although he ultimately
attended the requisite amount of sessions and the assault
charge was dropped, Minor, like about half of those who
are ordered to attend EMERGE, was not considered a
successful graduate.
``Mr. Minor is not considered to have successfully
completed the program because of insufficient progress in
other areas,'' wrote EMERGE director David Adams in his
report. ``Mr. Minor does not appear to grasp the adverse
effect that his violence has had on Ms. Rowan or his
children ... At the conclusion of the program, Mr. Minor
had no empathy for Ms. Rowan or an understanding of her
concerns as a parent.''
Minor acknowledges that he did not agree with some of the
instruction during the EMERGE sessions and that he had
difficulty getting counselors to listen to his side of
the story. However, he said he learned much about himself
and how to contain his anger.
``In all my years, there was only one relationship like
that,'' Minor said of his assaulting Rowan. ``I'm not
proud of it but I can't change it. At the same time,
though, I can learn from it and I have, and I've moved
on.''
This story ran on page F01 of the Boston Globe on
08/09/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
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