Child Custody - An Attack on Fathers

In Saskatchewan right now there is a well publicized custody battle raging between the baby's biological father and the couple that has adopted him. The latest story covered by the Star Phoenix can be found here. A less-than-brief recap: Rick Fredrickson was involved with a woman last year. After they had broken up, she found out she was pregnant. She never told Fredrickson, planning instead to give the baby up for adoption. Just before she was to give birth, one of her family members informed Fredrickson that the child was his and that if he wanted custody he had better act fast. He immediately sued to stop the adoption, but was unable to prove his paternity without a DNA test. Fredrickson was not told about the child being born until after the Prince Albert couple who was adopting the child had already whisked the baby boy away. That was in July. Since then, paternity has been proven, but Fredrickson still has not seen his son.

There appears to be a lot of dirty work going on here. Even though custody was being disputed, the P.A. couple was allowed to remove the child from the hospital without issue. The Family Court Judge, Sean Smith, has stated that biological paternity was not a "trump card" when it came to winning the case because the baby has already bonded with the P.A. couple. There is also questions being raised regarding the original adoption, since the couple is close friends with the mother's sister, who works with an agency in charge of finding foster and adoptive homes for children at risk. There is also allegations that money may have changed hands. The RCMP are now investigating.

To rub salt into the gaping wound, the P.A. couple are now looking to sue Fredrickson for child support! They are a wealthy couple looking to sue the blue-collar father, who has never seen his son, for child support. They probably came up with the idea after the Judge issued visiting rights to Fredrickson. However, he has not been able to visit because the facility (Children's Haven) that is supposed to host the supervised, one hour visits is not allowing any visits until both side have agreed to the terms. Oh, and by-the-way, the adoptive mother sits on the board of this Children's Haven centre.

There have been so many injustices being done here that it boggles the mind. I realize that the P.A. couple likely have been trying to adopted for a while now and that they could provide a suitable home for the baby. However, their wealth and connections should not supersede the rights of the father. Women have had to fight for years in order to control their reproductive rights, we cannot forget that men also have rights. My heart goes out to Fredrickson and hope that this mess is soon sorted out.

For more information, browse through the stories here.

Republican Sex Scandals - They Do Make Me Smile

Is it evil of me to be truly enjoying the most recent Republican sex scandal to grip Washington? I mean, Mark Foley built his career on creating and supporting laws that were meant to protect children. Now it has been revealed that he repeatedly e-mailed lewd messages to underage male pages. He actually helped pass a law making it illegal to solicit sex from a minor, which is basically what he was doing. Republican scandals are just so delicious; they deny, deny, deny, then apologize profusely, then check themselves into rehab, blaming their mistakes on their addiction. It always comes out later that several people knew of the issue, and chose to cover it up. The democrats have their own share of scandals. However, they lack the "holier than thou" attitude of the republicans which makes their scandals taste so good. So I guess I'll just sit back and enjoy this story that has gripped our southern neighbour. I mean, it's better than thinking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, the coup in Thailand, social unrest in Haiti, the fight over the Gaza strip, Hezbollah,...