For Immediate Release

Family, friends, and sympathizers to attend funeral tomorrow

BOSTON, April 28 – The family and friends of Steven Cook, along with several advocates for fathers rights, will attend the funeral of the recently deceased Needham man, Saturday, April 29. The service is to be held at the Eaton Funeral Home, 1351 Highland Ave., Needham, tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. (781-444-0201).

Cook was discovered dead from asphyxiation in his car Monday evening, behind a public building in Newton Upper Falls.

Jailed for calling daughter on wrong day of the week

Cook had been involved in a bitter divorce. He had been accused and acquitted by a jury of assault and battery of his wife, but convicted of violating the 209A domestic abuse protection order she held against him. He was found guilty of attempting to call his four-year-old daughter Colleen on a Monday instead of a Sunday, as permitted by the conditions of the abuse protection order, and began serving a 60-day jail sentence January 29 at the Dedham House of Correction. He was released April 2.

Cook's attorney Jerome Aaron characterizes Cook's jailing over the mistimed phone call as "outrageous."

Friends testify to "unrelenting" pressure

According to his longtime friends Doug Turcotte and [Ms] Bobene Desmond, Cook, a housepainter by trade, had been disabled due to a hip injury. He had no visible means of supporting himself. He had lost his house in the divorce litigation and no longer had a home.

With access to his four-year-old daughter restricted by the restraining order, and seemingly unending ruinous court orders that made it extremely difficult for Cook to do simple things like get his tools from his former home, Cook became so despondent he decided to end his life.

According to Turcotte: "During my last conversation with Steven a few weeks ago, he complained that his wife and her attorney were preventing him from seeing his daughter."

Longtime friend Berbone Desmond spoke with anguish over Cook's problems: "She [Cook's wife] stripped him of everything he had; they sold his mother's house... he was going to be a stay-at-home-dad because he had a bad accident years ago..."

Attorney Jerome Aaron concurs: "The process was unrelenting. She was in possession of the house, all the possessions, the children."

Family courts punish men, CPF asserts

In a prepared statement, CPF event coordinator John Maguire states:

"These courts are not courts any more¾ they are revenge tribunals¾ where every man is guilty of nameless, unspeakable crimes¾ where a pat on a child's head is suspicious, where opening a door for a child merits a six-month jail sentence, where even a phone call to a child is a sinister act."

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