My mind was quite messed after reading this story. It’s a real-life story from Darren Looper-a, a 59-year-old dad from California, explaining how his life turned upside down after a single night. All he did was take away his teenage child’s phone. She had the outlook of a cheerleader and a good student. What happened afterward still feels surreal.
He raised her alone, as she was the only child after separating from his ex. The kids were born through a surrogate. One of them was his biological, and the other was not. But, he always said they are never treated differently because of it. He always said he signed up for two kids and meant it. It actually hit quite hard.
Everything went normally for years. Eventually, she joined high school cheerleading and the student council. Naturally, as any well-placed high school student, she had good grades. He trusts her fully. He drives her everywhere. He pays for her stuff. Let her sleep at the team houses because the coach is quite responsible. What totally normal dad stuff.
Things were anything but usual behind his back, which was terrible, but Darren says that his daughter, on the side, is stealing money from him. When he was entering it into spaces in his closet, that was weird and sad, too. The worst was that she told made-up stories about him to other parents, and those old people would buy her clothes and makeup, while Darren had no clue what was happening.
One day, Darren couldn’t find his phone, so he said Let me use yours. She tells me she can’t because it’s lost, even though I just saw her with it. He puts his hand on it, and she quickly pulls it away. He takes the phone and tells her she’s lost phone privileges while he goes shopping for groceries.
When he came home, the police were there. His daughter had called 911, saying he had hurt her while taking the phone. It made me angry because that is how my parents punished me: taking away my phone. It felt a little unfair then, but it was never abuse.
He spent five days in prison just like that. Once out, there was a restraining order so that he could never go back to his own living place. He would not be allowed to talk to his own daughter without permission. Since then, she has been living with his niece and totally refuses to speak to him.
He says she went over to almost everyone he knew and tore out every relationship he had. His son. His ex. His mom. His stepdad. His brother. Even his niece and her kids. Most people believed her and cut him off. Imagine that level of isolation. I cannot even picture it.
He even buried two of their cats that passed away, and she never even asked about them. That detail seemed small, but it really says a lot.
The case has dragged on for three years now. Just when Darren thought it might finally end, prosecutors added two more felony charges for sending a message to his daughter that everything could stop if he could just say the truth. They labeled it as witness tampering.
Referring to the seven years in prison just for taking a phone away, he strongly protests. He claimed that the worst thing his daughter ever went through was being a child of a father who could never be everything all at once.
He referred to himself as not a perfect father. After going on disability, money got tight. Life got harder. But he keeps saying he never hurt her. Those words were written here to keep himself from being destroyed by that memory deep inside.
He ended by saying that he is not a bad guy, but somehow he has been turned into a monster, and he cannot stop it. As someone who has seen family fights spiral out of control, I honestly believe how quickly things can spiral when lies meet the system.
This is not about taking a phone. This is about actually shredding a trust. Family is torn apart. And how one call can change everything forever.
This is exactly what he wrote in the Facebook Group
My name is Darren. I wanted to thank you for the work you’re doing because this process is one of the most emotionally painful processes I have endured. I am currently going to The Superior Court of T county. I am being charged with two felonies and now two new additional felonies. I know it makes me sound horrible. So I am a single dad with a not so little girl anymore. This has been going on 3 years since my daughter has been home. My ex partner and I had two kids with a serrogate. I knew he was on the self centered side but thought I could handle it. Over the years it got worse. When my kids were born the self centered words started like I would pick my son over you. He wasn’t his son he was our son. I took care of him, paid for most of the day to care and our son preferred me over him. Kids grow and change and bond to parents at different times. Anyway when my biological daughter was born (same surrogate so my kids are biologically related as well) other problems started surfacing. I didn’t want to teach my kids to love that way so I made the decision to go. He was too busy talking on the phone to worry about our kids in the car because I took care of everything like I always do anyway fast-forward my daughter was six months old when I moved and I took her and what he said to me was you take yours and I’ll take mine well I am not all about that. I signed up for two kids. I had two kids. My son is my son and my daughter is my daughter, but those relationships have been destroyed in this process. The problem I’m having today is with my own daughter. She has for years now told stories because I’m a single dad with a girl my daughter never wanted for anything but somewhere along the line, something shifted inside of her, and I can’t believe I’m gonna put this in writing, but I don’t know her. I have never met somebody so planned and and unemotional in my life so she would tell parents stories which by the way she was a cheerleader and I let her stay with her girlfriends from the cheer squad because I trusted the coach. She seemed like she ran a tight ship. My daughter was a sophomore late sophomore in high school and according to her journal, she started having feelings for some of her girlfriends well she would tell these parents things that I didn’t know like about me and these parents would buy her clothes and make up and all kinds of stuff when I cleaned her room out. I did 21 loads of laundry just from her room she had five boxes of dirty dishes in her closet so one night I needed to use her phone because I couldn’t find my phone. I had stopped cleaning the house about a month before I thought that my daughter would get a clue because I’ve been talking to her about doing anything for years and she was always busy. She was on a cheer squad. She was in student council. She got great grades in school until she started ditching and making excuses and lying and lying in line I told her whole life I said honey the one thing I cannot tolerate is lying because then I don’t know what I’m dealing with.  as a single dad sometimes you don’t have a choice to trust or not trust my daughter seemed trustworthy enough to me, but I didn’t look at her phone enough. I didn’t monitor her Cumings and going to that much because she seemed like a really responsible kid that was to my face, but on the back side, she was stealing money she was telling people things about me and when I went to use her phone, she said she couldn’t find it. It had been glued to her face since the day I bought it for her, which was one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made when I saw her talking on it. I went to get it and she jerked it out of my hands. I took the phone away from her and told her she probably wouldn’t get it back again and I was leaving to go to the grocery store which I did and when I came home, there was two cops in my house at my house that arrested me on the spot. I’ve been going to court now for three years. My life has been turned completely upside down. My daughter has not been in my house since that day, she now lives with my niece, which is my identical brother‘s daughter she’s seven years older than my daughter, which technically is also my daughter because we are identical twins. It’s hard to even put this in words. My daughter is systematically going to everyone that I know and destroyed my relationships with my son, my ex my mother, my stepfather, my brother, my niece, and her new kids. My whole family has been turned upside down, and it will never be the same my daughter since the day this started has not come to me, she’s not made any attempts to rectify this in anyway, and at first I felt so guilty and so judged by absolutely everyone because people made me the narrative of me that they wanted. I had just moved back home, not long before my twin brothers a little bit over the top sometimes and his daughter kind of spearheaded that cause she’s going through her own daddy issues right now. Well, I’m not her daddy, but I have paid a price for that which is a hard one to understand. I don’t know if you get that. I don’t know if I get it. I just know that as of about almost a year ago I haven’t talked to my daughter at all because when they started, they put a restraining order against me after I sat in jail for five days keep in mind that all I did was take cell phone away, which I paid for we live in a house. I moved here so she could go to school down the street at for high school she was a cheerleader and so it seemed like the right thing to do. She didn’t walk to school. She didn’t ride a bike. I drove over to and from school because of all that stuff with human trafficking. She wanted to be a cheerleader when she was five years old and so I put her into a tumbling class and she went from there and she got a scholarship from high school to go to LA for college. She didn’t discuss anything with me my daughter and I I knew that things had distance a little bit since she went to high school, but I had no idea that we didn’t have a relationship at all. She hasn’t acted like she misses me. She gives a shit about me in anyway I had two of her cats that died and that I had to bury which I found incredibly sad, but she never called me. She’s never asked about him not since day one. She’s never asked about anything. She’s never asked me if I’m OK anything and I’m not but I will be. I saw this when this first started, but I couldn’t believe the ugliness I was seen, but I was spot on as time is gone on, and I have watched the dysfunction, not just her, but this is created a rift between me and most of my family because I get to see how they were instrumental in feeding her demons about me because they said things to a little girl that shouldn’t have been discussed with her. I would never talk to somebody’s kids and put their parents down. What an ugly thing to do. Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know that I appreciate what you do. Your last message that you wrote about was so spot on and this is such a crazy process that often times I have doubted myself through this and I’m not an idiot I’m not an asshole and I certainly am not this I have been made into a monster by the court systems and my daughter, which by the way CPS started sending my daughter money because she works for them now she is the liaison for new kids coming in. I want you to know that the worst abuse my daughter has ever suffered is the fact that I’m one person and I can’t be all things to all people and there were some areas that I let her down in because unfortunately people don’t understand that when you have kids life doesn’t stop you still get divorced lose jobs lose stuff. I went on disability when she was about 10 I didn’t ask to do that. It just happened. I’m also an older parent I’m 59 years old and she just turned 18 so there’s some differences in that as well.  I was trying to find nice words to say this, but I don’t think she likes me and I think I embarrassed her. At first that hurt my heart but today I know that it wouldn’t matter what I did because I didn’t spank my daughter since she was four years old and I don’t spanked her three or four times in her life I believe in spanking kids I do I think that the kids today are disrespectful. There are selfish and they think that the world owes them something . I see some lessons coming for most of them anyway I’m just dealing with this court thing right now because these two new charges were about me being a person of power in her life trying to change her mind about these charges what I said to my daughter, and I would say it to a judge was that my daughter wanted to go to dinner just me and her like we’ve always done. I had to ask my niece if I could take my own kid to dinner and she said no so I told my daughter this is on you. You could stop this anytime you want you just choose not to be really hard to tell your new employer that you embellish the truth as a matter of fact, embellish is a nice word because lying is probably more appropriate. Anyway, I’m gonna stop now because this store just seems to go on and the Price side paid is ginormous. There’s no justice in our legal system. The price I have paid for nothing has been huge. My daughter and I probably will never have a relationship. Maybe it needed to go anyway, but I didn’t know that but today what I get to see is not just what she did but what she continues to do. I’m not a bad guy, but I have been made into a monster and I can’t stop it. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna go spend seven years in prison for taking my daughter‘s cell phone away. I don’t know what to do. The legal system is so not what I thought it was. Anyway I’m handling the situation a little better. This is just the hardest thing I think I’ve ever endured. Anyway, I wanted to close with. I’m sorry for whining, but I don’t think I was whining. I think I just told the truth there’s a difference. I wanted to see if you have clients or if you see people because I need to talk to somebody to get some clarity on some of this because this has been driving and crazy anyway thanks again for what you do. It’s much appreciated more than you know. Make it a great day everyone D Source: Facebook
FAQ
Why was California Dad Put Under Arrest?
He was arrested after his daughter called the police and accused him of hurting her while taking her phone.
How long has this case been continuing?
Legal proceedings have been open for almost three years and continue.
Is Darren permitted to see his daughter?
Under court orders, he is not allowed to see or even talk with her without permission.
With what charges is he facing?
He is faced with multiple felony charges, including claims of witness tampering.
Did Darren confess to hurting his daughter?
No, he completely denies having ever hurt her, only saying he took the phone as punishment.
