An eight-year-old girl prescribed Prozac and a man with 13 children by ?seven or eight mothers? were some of the problems highlighted by family Magistrate Tyrone Chin on Monday night.

He told the audience at the ?Effective Strategies for the Development of Boys in Bermuda? that he had a man in his 50s come in to court with a woman 20 years his junior to sort out maintenance for their 11-year-old.

Further probing revealed there were 12 others. ?I asked how many mothers were there?? said Mr. Chin. ?He said ?seven or eight?.?

The 11-year-old was the same age as some of the man?s granddaughters, said Mr. Chin.

He said the prolific dad had told him: ?Every summer I have a barbecue and I invite all my children and all the mothers.?

Asked how the mothers got along, the man said some weekends three or four of them got together and went out on the town without him.

And he said he would phone a child if he hadn?t seen them for a couple of months.

Mr. Chin continued: ?He said he also went to every PTA meeting. He?s got 13 children, he?s been to a lot of PTA meetings in his life. He works at it.

?Some fathers come in to my court with three or four children and they are not working at it.

?The man with 13 is working at it. The wives know each other, the children know each other.

?He?s the hub in the wheel. We are losing that today, that thread through it all.?

Shadow Attorney General Trevor Moniz told : ?There is no way in this world that you can properly fulfil your functions as a father to seven or eight different households, it is not possible.

?Big deal, so he goes to a few meetings every now and again and throws them $50 every now and again. He isn?t supporting them.

?Mr. Chin is judging the man against the lowest common denominator and finding him a little bit better. They are all terrible.?

He said divorced fathers found it hard enough covering two households.

Mr. Moniz continued: ?Among certain groups of people it?s a point of pride and machismo to say I have all these children so I am a very potent man.

?But not every father takes care of them properly. They might buy them a pair of sneakers or take them to the movies but they are not really present in their lives.

?People keep spouting that it takes a village to raise a child but only because the parents aren?t doing it properly.?

At Monday night?s meeting at the BIU, Mr. Chin reeled off situations he has encountered as a Family Court Magistrate and he said anger was an increasing problem.

Anger management programmes are being put in the middle schools and should now be put in primary schools, said Mr. Chin.

Anger stemmed from abandonment and could be treated, he said but the other side of abandonment was depression.

?Depression is treated with counselling and Prozac. I have seen eight year olds on Prozac.?

He said one eight year old had been through court after giving up on her father who repeatedly promised to pick her up for the weekend only to let her down time and time again.

?Sure enough her bags were packed and she was waiting by the door at six o?clock on Friday. Six o?clock comes along no call, her hopes have been dashed.

?Week after week of talking the talk but not walking the walk, being built up and let down, depression sets in, she gets counselling and proscribed Prozac ? eight years old. That?s the reality of it.?

Mr. Chin said women came to his court every day claiming maintenance arrears often between $10,000 to 20,000, with the record owed being $124,000 from an alcoholic father.

However desperate the hard-pressed mothers were for the money, many would be happy to write off the money if the father would take an active role in their children?s lives, Mr Chin has found.

?Twenty thousand dollars goes a long way but this is how much she needs the father to step up to the wicket and be a father.?

He said parents should not be afraid of confronting their children over bad behaviour. ?Caring brings confrontation, if you don?t care you don?t confront.?

He said curfews had to be kept. Too many mothers were condoning bad behaviour by sons.

?Momma?s boys in the black population is prevalent. When it comes to my court, mothers defend their boys to the hilt when these boys have already said they are guilty.

?They are rewarding bad behaviour in a roundabout way.?

Violence had spiralled along with violent video games which desensitised youths while the growth of the Black Entertainment Television (BET) was also to blame said Mr. Chin.

?When did Bermuda change? When cable TV came to Bermuda. All of sudden we had angry youth. For what? Low esteem? Turn off BET.?

Self esteem could be built by encouraging the things children were good at said Mr. Chin, even if they were not academic.