MANHATTAN (CN) - With a name resembling a kindergartner's alphabet primer, the lawsuit ABC v. DEF takes on far more insidious themes - namely the parental rights of a Bronx man who spent eight years in prison for raping his ex's teenage niece.
A federal judge issued an order in the case last week that could earn that man unspecified financial compensation from New York state.
Three law professors interviewed by Courthouse News say they have never heard a sex offender case quite like it.
Though the case was unsealed last year, a pseudonym still shields the name of the 50-year-old plaintiff.
The docket meanwhile evinces a powerful support network for his cause, including dozens of family members and friends who wrote to the court on his behalf.
Doe's attorney, Debevoise & Plimpton partner Michael Mukasey, is a former U.S. attorney general.
It's been 10 years since a jury found that Doe committed second-degree rape and other offenses against his ex-wife's niece, who accused him of assaulting her when she lived with the family between the ages of 13 and 14.
The jury acquitted Doe of the first-degree charges, and he is appealing the counts for which he was convicted, maintaining that he is innocent.
While still behind bars, Doe and his wife divorced, and he remarried another woman he had known for 25 years.
They had a child, "M.S.," shortly before Doe successfully completed his sex-offender and substance-abuse rehabilitation programs in the fall of 2012.
Since Doe requires permission to contact anyone under the age of 18, parole officers ordered him away from his new home - and into a homeless shelter - when his son turned 1 month old.
A Bronx Family Court already allowed the father of six to have unsupervised visits with his teenage daughter, and social workers saw no danger with his raising a newborn son.
Doe's accuser, now in her mid-20s, complained to a parole officer about his ability to rebuild his life.
"Why should he live happy and comfortable when he took something from [me] that [I] can't get back?" she asked them, according to court papers.
After this conversation, a Manhattan bureau chief of New York State's parole division ordered Doe away from his new family in a one-paragraph directive stating that the "victim's perspective is always important."
Bureau Chief Joseph Lima officer noted in his decision that Doe's crimes "occurred within the family constellation and in some instances while other family members were present in the residence."
Doe's attorney Mukasey noted in a legal brief that all four of their client's adult children wrote letters to the court on behalf of their father.
"He has a close relationship with his five oldest children, who range in age from 14 to 27," the brief states. "Mr. Doe has never been accused of neglecting or abusing any of these children; to the contrary, they speak fondly of their relationship with him and his importance in their lives. Mr. Doe desperately wants to establish an equally loving bond with his one-year-old son, plaintiff M.S."