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Tracking Deadbeat Dads
Nov. 4, 2005 — -- Robert and Victoria St. John started their married life with a fairy tale wedding, celebrating their union in one of Chicago's most glamorous hotels.
Vicki was a former Miss Illinois; Rob was an ambitious young stock trader. It was the early '90s, and Rob prospered in the market, making nearly $5 million in one year. They were rich at home, as well, living in tony Lincoln Park, a lakefront suburb of Chicago, with their children -- a boy, Parker, and a girl, Robyn.
Victoria described their life as "blissful." "We had a blessed life," she said. "The kind of life people dream about."
But it didn't last. There were the usual fights about money and time, and after just 2½ years of marriage, Robert filed for divorce. And that's when life for Victoria and her two children turned nasty.
"My ex-husband, for whatever reason, was angry and hurt, and he was on a mission," Victoria said.
That mission, she says, was "to see me without any of his money and without our children. You know he always said to me, 'I have nothing to lose. You'll either be broke, or I'll get the kids.'"
The child of divorce herself, Victoria says she refuses to speak badly of Robert to the children.
Victoria tells her kids, "'I was there when you were born, I saw how your dad was, so in love with you, and how happy he was. And that he's a good man who's made some very poor choices.'"
But those choices made Victoria's life of plenty suddenly disappear. She says she was left to literally gather coins from under the sofa to buy food and diapers.
"I was going to the grocery store that we used to go to with an account, with baggies of change to buy diapers," she said -- an experience she calls "humiliating."
Yet at the same time, records reportedly place Robert in strip clubs, where, according to Victoria's lawyer, Rico Mirabelli, he withdrew thousands from ATMs. Plus, her lawyer says Robert was spending thousands more on his Chicago rent and on the legal bills, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for the child custody fights.
Eventually, Victoria says she was forced to sell her Chicago home.
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