The priest, the stripper, and their baby

She was an exotic dancer at a Miami strip club called Porky's. He showed up wearing a Hawaiian shirt, eager to share a night in the VIP lounge.

They began a torrid, on-and-off love affair that ended for good in January, after she gave birth to a daughter she says is his. Now, she wants child support and has filed a restraining order against him.

It might be a routine, if tawdry, court case if not for respondent David Dueppen's job: Catholic priest with the Miami Archdiocese.

The sordid story line inflicts another black eye on an Archdiocese already embarassed in May, when popular Miami television priest Alberto Cuti� admitted to an affair with a woman, whom he quickly married.

Dueppen, 42, who once served at the same Miami Beach parish as Cuti�, is now on leave from his associate priest position at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Pembroke Pines.

Former stripper Beatrice Hernandez filed the restraining order last week, claiming that an argument over paternity and child support escalated when Dueppen began ``grabbing her by the throat and choking her.''

``He is the devil,'' said Hernandez, 42, of Miami, who provided DNA test results naming Dueppen as the father. ``He is the devil dressed as an angel.''

The couple's past relationship was well-known to the church. Three years ago, the archdiocese paid Hernandez a settlement stemming from their long-running affair, which started seven years ago.

Within the last year, Hernandez says, Dueppen -- still a priest -- unexpectantly showed up to rekindle their romance.

The result, she says: Her baby, Marilyn Epiphany Hernandez.

Dueppen, a former Miami-Dade middle-school teacher who became a priest 10 years ago, says his lawyer advised him not to comment.

``I can't talk with you,'' Dueppen told a Miami Herald reporter Friday, adding that Hernandez's version is ``going to have a lot of inaccuracies.''

Dueppen, at his own request, is on indefinite administrative leave, said Archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta, meaning he cannot perform church services or appear in priest garb.

Dueppen requested the leave for ``personal reasons'' during a meeting with Archbishop John C. Favalora in mid-August, she said.

Agosta could not say if Dueppen had revealed the baby's existence to the church, but she was unaware of the allegation. ``This information, if it's accurate, is very disappointing,'' she said.

Dueppen, looking to fulfill a spiritual void, turned to the cloth in 1999. He told The Herald at the time he had wrestled with giving up women and his dream of a large family.

``I sit down and ask Him that He give me the strength and the gifts to be able to serve His people,'' he said in an interview then. ``I am following what I believe is the will of God for me.''

A decade earlier, as a student at the University of Miami, Dueppen criticized the school's decision to install condom vending machines on campus.

``It will increase pressure for students to have sex, especially among freshmen. The only safe sex is abstinence,'' he told The Herald in a story on the controversy.

But abstinence was not in the cards when he met Hernandez, according to her account.

Hernandez says she met Dueppen while stripping near Miami International Airport. Her stage name: Lisa.

She spent a Sunday night with Dueppen -- who had shed his priest collar -- drinking wine in the VIP room. Soon, Hernandez says, Dueppen was visiting the club twice a month, and she began visiting him in the Keys, where he started out as a priest at St. Mary's Star of the Sea.

He later transferred to St. Francis de Sales Church in Miami Beach. They lived together in her West Miami-Dade town house for more than three years.

``He talked about having kids and marrying me,'' said Hernandez, who also has an older daughter from a prior relationship.

Hernandez said the relationship ended in 2006 over sexual differences.

Hernandez hired lawyer Jeffrey Herman, who threatened to sue the church under the claim that Dueppen abused his position of power by sleeping with Hernandez, and threatening her and her adult daughter with ``evil spirits'' if Hernandez left him.

The church settled out of court in July 2006, according to a Herald article at the time.

Hernandez says she and her daughter were paid $60,000. As a condition of the settlement, Hernandez and the priest were ordered to stay away from each other, she said.

According to church spokeswoman Agosta, Dueppen then went on leave to come to terms with his ``very public vow of celibacy.'' He returned after 13 months, she said.

``We are a forgiving church. He was addressing the issues and we were assured the issues had been resolved,'' she said.

Hernandez's current lawyer, Michael Feiler, said the church knew Dueppen was a problem and should have done more to ``police its ranks.''

``Instead of taking actions to correct his behavior, they just moved him 15 miles up the road,'' Feiler said.

By early 2008, Hernandez had quit her stripping job and opened a dollar store in Miami. One day, Dueppen showed up, she said.

``He has been looking for me everywhere, in every strip club,'' she said. ``A friend of mine ended up telling him the address of the store.''

They renewed their romance. ``He started talking about having kids again. He wanted to start fresh with me -- and I'm still in love with the guy, and I fell for it,'' she said.

Then, Hernandez discovered she was pregnant.

Dueppen ``refused to believe he was the father and repeatedly told [Hernandez] that she was crazy,'' according to the restraining order.

The priest, she said, finally relented to a paternity test after she threatened to tell the Archdiocese. Despite results showing Dueppen was the father, he refused to pay child support and threatened her into staying quiet, she said.

``Any movement you do -- you call the cops, you call the Archdiocese -- we are powerful,'' Hernandez, in the restraining order, quoted Dueppen as saying. ``You know what I will do. I will take this child away and you will never see this child again.''

Hernandez will be seeking child support and a permanent restraining order, said Feiler, who will represent her at a hearing in Miami-Dade family court on Thursday.

Save the Boobs

it's for a good cause

Coworkers Discover They're Brothers

After working side by side for weeks, two coworkers discovered that they are actually siblings brought together by a series of incredible circumstances.

Gary Nisbet and Randy Joubert, who share the same parents, were adopted and raised by separate families in neighboring Maine towns, never knowing the other one existed. They attended rival high schools, moved to the same town of Waldoboro, Maine, and both wound up working for the same company, Dow Furniture.

The two rode side by side in a delivery truck and slowly put the pieces together.

"Something clicked with me," Randy said. "So I got him up by the truck and said Gary, this is going to sound bizarre, but were you adopted?"

Gary, somewhat perplexed, confirmed that he was in fact adopted. After comparing some notes -- dates of birth, and finally birth parents names -- they stared at each other in disbelief.

"This is such a small world," Gary said.

Randy, the older brother, was the one who first had a hunch they may have been related.

"People are saying we look like brothers, and we go on deliveries together for the last month and a half and we keep getting it" Randy said. He had recently dug up some information about his adoption and discovered that he had a brother who was born on June 10, 1974 -- Gary's birthday.

For two weeks the two kept the news to themselves, but last week they shared their story withco-workers.

Owner Lisa Dow says she cried when one of the brothers told her, "I would have never found him if you didn't hire me to work here."

Gary and Randy are still in disbelief.

"I've been riding around with this guy for a month and a half and he's my full blooded brother," Randy said shaking his head.

TRUMPET LIPS

the Word for Wednesday

GROK



To understand something intuitively or by empathy.

We must look to Robert Anson Heinlein for the origins of this word, which he invented for his science-fantasy book Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961. In this, Valentine Michael Smith, a human being raised on Mars, returns to Earth with psi powers given him by the Martians and is transformed into a messiah.


Grok is a word borrowed from Martian (and you won’t see that written very often) in which it literally meant to drink. To grok is to gain an instant deep spiritual understanding of something or to establish a rapport with somebody.


The book became a cult classic despite its deeply flawed nature (Heinlein remarked self-deprecatingly about it that it was incredible what some people would do for money; it was originally published in a brutally edited form and became available as originally written only in 1990).


The term went into the language, at first among countercultural types in California and among SF fans (there used to be lapel buttons around with the message “I grok Spock”), but was eventually taken up by computer geeks, among whom it has largely remained.

the Joke for Wednesday

Bob and his three golf buddies were out playing and were just starting on the back nine when Bob paused, looked down the fairway, and began to sob uncontrollably. The other three gathered around him and asked, "What's wrong?" Bob looked down at his feet, sniffed, and dried his eyes some, then apologized for his emotional outburst. "I'm sorry, I always get emotional at this hole -- it holds very difficult memories for me." One of his buddies asked, "What happened? What could have gotten you so upset?" Bob stared silently off in the distance, then said in a low voice, "This is where my wife and I were playing 12 years ago when she suddenly died of a heart attack -- right at this very hole!" "Oh no!" the other golfers said. "That must have been horrible!" "Horrible? You think it's horrible?" Bob cried in disbelief. "It was worse than that! Every hole for the rest of the day, all the way back to the clubhouse it was... hit the ball, drag Alice, hit the ball, drag Alice..."

WOW!! CNN's Rick Sanchez Calls FOX News Liars

the Word for Tuesday

MUGWUMP



A person who remains aloof from controversial issues.


This archetypal American word derives from the Algonquian dialect of Native Americans in Massachusetts. In their language, it meant “war leader”. The Puritan missionary John Eliot used it in his translation of the Bible into their language in 1663 to convey the English words duke, officer and captain.

Mugwump was brought into English in the early nineteenth century as a humorous term for a boss, bigwig, grand panjandrum, or other person in authority, although often one of a minor and inconsequential sort. This example comes from a story in an 1867 issue of Atlantic Monthly: “I’ve got one of your gang in irons — the Great Mugwump himself, I reckon — strongly guarded by men armed to the teeth; so you just ride up here and surrender”.

It hit the big time in 1884, during the presidential election that set Grover Cleveland against the Republican James G Blaine. Some Republicans refused to support Blaine, changed sides, and the New York Sun labelled them little mugwumps. Almost overnight, the sense of the word changed to turncoat. Later, it came to mean a politician who either could not or would not make up his mind on some important issue, or who refused to take a stand when he was expected to do so. Hence the old joke that a mugwump is a person sitting on the fence, with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.

There is also a slangy sense — less known these days, I believe — of a person who has been persuaded by his possession of a minor official position into a sense of self-importance, often becoming obnoxious as a result.

the Joke for Tuesday

The phone rings and the lady of the house answers, "Hello".

"Mrs. Shapiro, please."

"Speaking."

"Mrs. Shapiro, this is Doctor Rosenfeld at the Medical Testing Laboratory. When
your doctor sent your husband's biopsy to the lab yesterday, a biopsy from
another Mr. Shapiro arrived as well, and we are now uncertain which one is your
husband's. Frankly the results are either bad or terrible."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Shapiro asks nervously.

"Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the other
one tested positive for AIDS. We can't tell which is your husband's."

"That's dreadful! Can't you do the test again?" questioned Mrs. Shapiro.

"Normally we can, but Medicare will only pay for these expensive tests one
time."

"Well, what am I supposed to do now?"

"The people at Medicare recommend that you drop your husband off somewhere
in the middle of town. If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him."

THIS IS VERY SCARY

This apparent disaster-waiting-to-happen is on the Island of St. Maarten. The airport has a particularly short runway that ends just 40 feet from beach, leaving large planes just barely enough room to land. So they have to come in low, directly over the beach, making it a prime destination for an afternoon of quiet, relaxing sunbathing