(Credit: Facebook via WITI)
MILWAUKEE (WITI) — You only have to spend a couple of minutes with Casey to see he’s something special. He’s the kind of kid that makes you want to have kids. And at 3 years old he’s chock full of life.
It’s hard to imagine what parent wouldn’t want to give him the world. But his own father barely gives him a dime.
“He’s paid a total of a $189 in three and a half years,” says Jennifer Cvikel, Casey’s mom.
She says he only paid that much just to keep himself out of jail.
If you do the math, John Rau has paid less than 14 cents a day since his son was born. It would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. You see, Casey has leukemia.
“It’s a nightmare, I mean, your world just crashes right in front of you and you don’t even have a chance to react to it,” Cvikel remembers. “They just started taking him and this and that and more testing and then we were stuck in the hospital for weeks.”
For a year and a half, Casey suffered through chemotherapy, spinal taps and dozens of hospital stays. He even had to learn to walk again with physical therapy.
And through it all his father has not been by his side.
Instead, he’s been on Facebook, bragging about how much money he makes at his job, showing off his new “family whip,” and boasting about having tickets to a Packers game. When WITI investigator Meghan Dwyer confronted Rau about not paying support, he said he didn’t know his son was sick until last Christmas and he intends to start paying support.
But all of his bragging on social media is exactly why he’s now facing felony charges for failing to pay child support.