Sheriff candidate downplays past legal woes

The Democratic candidate for Spokane County sheriff was sued by his ex-wife for not paying child support in the 1980s, was under a temporary court order in 1993 for allegedly harassing a former girlfriend and pursued by a collection agency for not making payments on a computer.

James Flavel, who is running a low-key campaign against Republican incumbent Ozzie Knezovich, said his failure to pay child support was a result of cash flow problems, and the anti-harassment order stemmed from a date in which he and the woman “didn’t see eye-to-eye.”

His legal problems are far in the past, Flavel insisted. “You try to leave that bad stuff behind you.”

Flavel, 59, is a real estate salesman who operates three online dating services – Christian Singles, Senior Singles and Matchfinders for Singles – with his current wife, out of an office building in the Spokane Valley.

A former Idaho State Police officer, Flavel won the Democratic primary unopposed last month and now faces Knezovich in the Nov. 7 general election. He describes himself as someone with business experience as well as law enforcement training, and says he wants to bring those skills to the county’s law enforcement department.

But court records show that his financial situation in the 1980s and 1990s was not always good.

After he divorced his wife, Gwynethe Flavel, in Idaho in January 1981, he moved to the Spokane area. In December of that year, she went to Spokane County Superior Court for an order that he pay child support for their two children, then ages 9 and 6. Gwynethe Flavel said her ex-husband had failed to pay temporary child support during their separation and had failed to show up in Idaho courts when she tried to get a judge to make him.

Their disputes over unpaid child support continued off and on during the 1980s, court records show, and in 1991, Gwynethe Flavel returned to court saying he was “habitually in arrears,” with the unpaid amount reaching as much as $20,000 at one time. The court ordered his wages garnisheed to force the payment.

Flavel attributed the court cases to “a very bitter, nasty divorce,” and his job as a real estate salesman, for which he didn’t have a steady weekly paycheck.

“I paid my child support in lumps, because I was in a business with good times and bad times,” Flavel said recently.

The divorce settlement left his wife with a steady income because she got possession of the Dew Drop Inn and other property in Priest River, Idaho, he said. But he conceded that the court ordered him to pay child support on a regular schedule, and he didn’t do that.

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t take care of my kids,” he said, adding he eventually paid all his back child support and “I have a close relationship with my sons.”

Flavel at first said he had trouble remembering the incident that resulted in a temporary anti-harassment order being issued against him. In April 1993, Christine Vande Vanter of Spokane asked the court for a protection order against Flavel, saying he had left harassing messages on her pager and in her mailbox at work, and told her in a phone conversation he would use “professional tactics” against her. She said she took that to mean things he knew from his experience as a state police officer in Idaho.

She said in court documents that Flavel was angry because she said she did not want to have a relationship with him.

At one point, Flavel was “on her roof, trying to get into her bathroom window,” she said in the request for the anti-harassment order. “I was very afraid of him.”

She received a temporary order for Flavel to have no contact with her, or go within two city blocks of her home. The no-contact order was extended once, then dismissed in mid-May when neither Flavel nor Vande Vanter showed up for a hearing to extend it.

After some of the details from the court file were read to him, Flavel described the incident as “one of those quarrels” people have when they are dating.

“We were out on a date one night and we got into an argument,” he said. “But I’ve never laid a hand on a female in my life.”

He said that he and Vande Vanter continued to date after the court order was dismissed, but eventually went their separate ways and he later married his present wife, Katrina. Vande Vanter could not be located for comment.

A dispute with Household Retail Services over a bill for a computer also brought Flavel into court in 1993. The company said he and his second wife, Frances, owed $5,559 on a computer they had purchased in 1989, and hadn’t made payments since March 1992. The two were separated at the time, and their divorce became final in 1993.

Flavel said recently that the computer didn’t work, he tried to send it back to the company that had gone out of business but it kept coming back to him. The court file shows he did argue at the time that the finance company should at least knock the interest off the payments because of problems with the computer.

The court issued a summary judgment in 1995, ordering Flavel to pay the debt.

Flavel said he has been involved in a number of business ventures in the Spokane area since coming here in 1981. He has a real estate license, which he keeps with K-C Properties, and helps his wife operate several businesses, including the online dating services, out of the building on North Argonne.

He said he or his wife do personal interviews with all of the new members of their dating services, and work to match members who are compatible.

“We put ‘em together,” he said.