New Jersey Teen Suing Her Parents: Father Of Cheerlead Rachel Canning's Boyfriend Declares His Son Is Not To Blame
Mar. 6 2014, Published 5:34 p.m. ET
RadarOnline.com has all the latest in the case involving Rachel Canning, the cheerleader who's petitioning a New Jersey court to have her estranged parents pay $2,600 a month in child support after the parties had a nuclear fall-out last fall over the teen's behavior.
As we previously reported, one major sticking point between Canning, a senior and cheerleader at Morris Catholic High School, and her parents, retired Lincoln Park police Chief Sean Canning and wife Elizabeth, was their disapproval over the girl's boyfriend, 18-year-old Lucas Kitzmiller.
The parents' laundry list of complaints about the youth included allegations he'd had a detrimental hand in her suspension from school; and that the boy's parents would drop off the drunken teen couple at all hours of the night. Her mother said in court docs that she became "obsessed with drinking every weekend as a result of dating him."
Canning's parents eventually told her she couldn't live with them if she continued the relationship, to which she defiantly told them in an e-mail, "Well I'm not coming home if I can't see him."
On Thursday, the focal point was on the star-crossed teen relationship, as the father of her boyfriend railed against the girl's parents for making their son a scapegoat in the mercurial situation.
"My son has been painted in a questionable light by some of the comments from the Cannings," he told Mail Online "Their only experience of him is that he met the father long enough to shake hands. That's the only interaction they have ever had. They made their decision about him from that.
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"If you read the court papers, you can see the trend is with every boyfriend she's had it's always the boyfriend who's the bad influence. We have been dragged into this."
Kitzmiller added that his family would rebuke the other allegations when the case returns to court Apr. 22.
On Tuesday, State Superior Court Judge Peter Bogaard shot down Canning's financial request, saying a win for the "spoiled" youth could create a "potentially slippery slope" in legal precedents between parents and children.
"What kind of parents would the Cannings be if they didn’t try to set down some strict rules?" the judge asked. "I’m not going to put myself in anyone’s shoes, Sean Canning is trying to raise a child.
"It’s clear to me all the positive qualities Rachel obviously has, in terms of sports and academics, but I’m not going to step on a father for how he tries to get his child on the right tracks when she has obviously come off the tracks, to put it mildly."