Brother of Las Vegas teen is legally his father, judge rules
A Family Court judge on Wednesday ruled that, by default, a Las Vegas man caring for his teenage brother is also now legally the boy’s father.
It still wasn’t known if Logan Gifford, who said he survived years of sexual abuse by his mother and suspects his brother might also be his son, was the boy’s biological father.
“The DNA test conducted does not have a final determination as to one of the two,” said Judge Vincent Ochoa during a brief hearing Wednesday in Las Vegas.
Despite that, Ochoa said Gifford, as far as the court is concerned, is the father of the 16-year-old who lives with him.
Gifford, now 26, was a teenager when a judge ordered his mother, Doreene Gifford, to serve an eight- to 20-year prison sentence and register as a sex offender in 2015.
Logan Gifford had accused his mother of sexually abusing him repeatedly over a period of years, including around the time the now-teen would have been conceived.
She entered an Alford plea to counts of attempted sexual assault and lewdness with a child under 14. Under an Alford plea, a defendant admits only that prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction.
Registered sex offender who lives in Massachusetts
Doreene Gifford, a registered sex offender, is now on parole and lives in Massachusetts, according to Timothy Treffinger, Logan Gifford’s attorney.
Previous testing found that both Logan Gifford and his father, Theodore Gifford, could be the 16-year-old child’s father. For both, the likelihood of paternity was found to be 99.9 percent.
Ochoa said Theodore Gifford “has decided not to participate in the court case,” which meant that Logan would be considered the teenager’s father moving forward by default.
“I can’t make (Theodore) the father if he doesn’t want to participate,” Ochoa said. “I’m going to grant the default and declare Logan Gifford to be the legal father of the child. This is the only solution we have. The DNA test was done and eliminated everyone except for two individuals and only one of those individuals wants to participate in this case.”
Treffinger told Ochoa during Wednesday’s hearing that further DNA testing would be expensive and wouldn’t make much sense for his client.
“Labcorp didn’t really have any options as far as a more confirmatory test than what we got,” Treffinger said. “I know there are specialized labs out there, but we’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars.”
‘Stop this madness now’
Doreene Gifford attended the 10-minute hearing via videoconference. At one point, she became emotional, though she kept steadfast in her belief that Theodore Gifford, her ex-husband, was the real father.
“I never had any doubt that Theodore was the father, but I cannot continue this case, mentally, physically or emotionally,” Doreene Gifford said. “I feel that it’s best that we just concede this case and stop this madness now.”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is withholding the 16-year-old’s name because he is a juvenile and because of the sensitive nature of the subject matter.
Following the hearing, Logan Gifford said he’s ready to move on.
“Clearly, we got the answer that we were anticipating,” he said. “Finally, there was closure, not only for me, as a male survivor, but also closure for someone who didn’t ask for any of this. This is meaningful to him. I didn’t want this to necessarily be made public, but it took that to get to this point.”
Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.
Previous photo captions on this story misstated the teenage boy’s age.