The
photographs of baby Liam are posted on a Web site, uploaded
there by a Saskatchewan woman who has raised the boy since
the days after his birth at the request of his biological
mother -- who decided she could not care for him herself.
But the site is also where Liam's
biological father,
Rick Fredrickson, saw him for the first
time, after months of trying to win custody of the child
that DNA tests prove is his.
"This was my introduction to my son,"
said Mr. Fredrickson, who has never met the baby in person
and found the pictures as a result of Googling the child's
caregivers' names.
The Web site is simply one facet of a
bizarre and complex custody battle in Saskatchewan, which
pits Mr. Fredrickson and the rights of a father against the
couple given custody of the baby by his former girlfriend,
and who claim he was nothing more than a "sperm donor."
On Nov. 13, a pre-trial will begin in a
Saskatoon court to establish who will win the right to raise
Liam, who is now almost six months old, but the dispute has
already escalated into a public -- and intensely personal --
battle.
And although Mr. Fredrickson has never
met his son, the custodial parents have inquired through
their lawyer as to whether he is interested in making child
support payments.
"It's entirely common situation where the
father admits paternity and does not have custody that he's
got an obligation to pay child support," said Dale
Blenner-Hassert, a lawyer representing the Rollers. "It's
not about to whom it goes, but that it's for the support of
the child."
Mr. Fredrickson, however, says he has no
plans to send money to "a third party when I have been
saying all along that I want to bring him up myself."
Liam was born on April 26, 2006, at the
Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon.
His mother, Oriole Bird, had been in a
relationship with Mr. Fredrickson that had ended the
previous November. She had never told him she was expecting
a baby.
Instead, she arranged a custody and
guardianship agreement with Brian Roller and his wife,
Nicola Sherwin-Roller, a married couple she knew who live in
nearby Prince Albert, Sask., and who are unable to have
children of their own.
The custody arrangement, which legal
experts say is a precursor to formal adoption, awarded them
the right to raise Liam as their own, collect the federal
child tax credit and even apply to change his last name to
their own.
The agreement was dated April 27, 2006,
the day after Liam's birth. It stated that "the biological
father of the child is not known."
But court documents show that Ms. Bird
did know who the father was, and that on April 23, Mr.
Fredrickson had found out as well, through a phone call from
her stepbrother.
After that call, Mr. Fredrickson says --
in interviews and sworn affidavits -- he did everything
possible to establish his involvement in the child's life.
He tried to make contact with Ms. Bird,
but she would not take his calls, and so he communicated to
her family that he and his new fiancee were willing to raise
the baby.
Then, Mr. Fredrickson says he began
contacting social service agencies, trying to determine his
legal rights and how to establish the baby's paternity.
He was told red flags would be raised and
that after the baby was born, authorities would intervene.
But Mr. Fredrickson was not notified of
Liam's birth, and found out only weeks later that the baby
had gone home with another family.
The agencies he had contacted earlier now
told him the matter was a custody dispute and outside their
jurisdiction. They advised him to get a lawyer and a DNA
test.
Mr. Fredrickson did both, and when the
paternity test came back, he was both a new father and a
newly minted father's rights advocate.
But soon things became even more
complicated.
Dorothy Bird, Oriole's mother, told him
she believed her other daughter, a family services director
for a native band, had surreptitiously arranged for her
friends, the Rollers, to take custody of the baby.
Mr. Fredrickson began to suspect that
money had changed hands, a claim he says is supported by the
new car his unemployed former girlfriend bought shortly
after giving birth.
He has taken that story to the news media
and related it in an interview with the RCMP, who were asked
by the Canadian Children's Rights Council, a father's
advocacy group, to investigate a possible "illegal
adoption."
Reached at his Prince Albert home, Mr.
Roller said he would not respond to "lies and bulls---" and
said Mr. Fredrickson's biological role in Liam's birth "is
the only true thing" in the case he has brought forward.
Mr. Blenner-Hassert said claims of
illegal activity by his clients are "entirely false."
"No money, no backroom deal," he said.
"It was simply a private custody agreement between two
parties."
But his clients are also firing back with
allegations of their own.
In an affidavit sworn by Nicola
Sherwin-Roller, she alleges Mr. Fredrickson was once charged
with "communicating with another person for the purpose of
engaging in prostitution with an underage individual."
"I am very concerned that the Petitioner
is but the provider of the sperm that produced Liam and is
nothing more to him," she stated. "Further, I am concerned
that the Petitioner is not a safe and trustworthy
individual."
Mark Vanstone, Mr. Fredrickson's lawyer,
said his client -- "like a lot of people" -- was once
charged with a criminal act, but that he maintains his
innocence and was never convicted.
"How they got that information is another
source of interest for us," he said.
The personal attacks have added to
already complicated court proceedings and tense
communications between both sides.
On Oct. 4, a judge ordered that Mr.
Fredrickson would be given one hour a week to visit with his
son. But when the day of the first visit arrived, Mr.
Fredrickson claims the Rollers cancelled, saying the timing
was "inconvenient."
Three weeks after the access order was
given, he has still only seen his baby via the Internet --
photographs located on a genealogy Web site.
Mr. Vanstone is confident his client will
get his wish in the long run.
"It's a case about whether the child has
a right to be with his natural parent or not," he said. "And
I think there is precedent under the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child putting some kind of premium on that
relationship."
But Mr. Blenner-Hassert said biology is
not a trump card under Canadian family law.
"At best, he's got some access rights,"
he said. "The test is: What's in the best interest of the
child?"
Leslie Belloc-Pinder, a family lawyer and
sessional instructor at the University of Saskatchewan,
agrees.
Arguing that it is in the best interest
to leave a child with a foster parent, guardian or even a
social services agency has defeated the claims of biological
parents before, she said, in decisions made all the way up
to the Supreme Court of Canada.
And the fact that Liam has been raised by
the Rollers since birth will work in their favour, she
added, as few courts support removing a child from a happy
home.
"The amount of time this child has spent
with the family is relevant," she said. "I know the dad's
point of view is that only happened because he didn't know
what was going on, but time is not on his side."
sagrell@nationalpost.com
Father in custody
battle <Rick Fredrickson> dies in crash, August
14, 2007 
