Ottawa woman turns to Kijiji to search for the father she never met
Peter Mazereeuw, National Post Staff, September 13, 2012
Eva Carter is going online to find the father she has never met, turning to Kijiji after struggling for years with family members who refuse to reveal his identity.
Eva
Carter is going online to find the father she has never
met, turning to Kijiji after struggling for years with
family members who refuse to reveal his identity.
"My name is Eva. I am searching for my biological father or any relatives or any one with information [about] him. My mother is Suzanne Watson you would have met her when she was in Toronto in 1988," wrote Ms. Carter in an ad she re-posts on the site every few months.
The 23-year-old Ottawa woman turned to Kijiji after consulting non-profits, lawyers and even the Toronto police without finding a clue to her father's identity.
She isn't alone: Ads seeking a biological parent fill a significant chunk of the "long lost relationships" section of the Quebec-based classified website's Ottawa-Gatineau page.
Several specialized websites are devoted to reuniting parents and children separated at birth, especially for those who were adopted. Canadianadoption.com, Canada Adoption Registry, the Canadian Children's Rights Council, and Parent Finders of Canada are just some of the sites that offer help or information for those seeking to find parents or children.
Ms. Carter has tried several without receiving meaningful responses to her posts, she said.
Many sites like these charge for their services, said Dee O'Neil, another woman looking for her father on Kijiji.
"Pretty much every other website that I looked for or found, you had to pay some sort of fee. Being a single mom on a very limited income with three kids … that's not really practical for me," she said.
Ms. O'Neil, 28, and Ms. Carter have taken similar paths in their search. Both women had turbulent relationships with their mothers, who refused to reveal details about their birth fathers. Both tried a number of conventional methods to track down their fathers before turning to Kijiji.
"I figured that's probably one of the best ways to get it noticed," said Ms. O'Neil, who lives in Calgary but is searching for a man named Michael Cook she believes lives in the Ottawa area.
"I can do this from here, it doesn't cost me anything, there's going to be tons of exposure ," she said.
"[Kijiji is] the thing that I've gotten the most results from," said Ms. Carter. "I've gotten a lot of, 'I can be your daddy,' comments, and a lot of weird stuff, but I've gotten a couple people too who were interested and were wondering if I was their daughter," she said, adding she hasn't found a match so far.
Using Kijiji to find parents is no longer unusual, said Shawn McIntyre, community relations manager at Kijiji Canada.
"The community sections are not often used for [searching] out biological families like that, but we have seen it," he said. "Success stories have come across my desk where people have found family that they've been apart from for years."
Mr. McIntyre added that it is an unsurprising trend given the site's growth.
"We wanted a community based website. For us to have Kijiji to become a place where people look for everything, including family members and other people, obviously that's great for us," he said.
Ads on the Ottawa-Gatineau Kijiji get 2.2 million views each day, said Kijiji representative Kyla Kryski in an emailed statement.
For Ms. Carter and Ms. O'Neil, few options remain for finding their fathers.
"It kind of feels like there's a piece missing," said Ms. O'Neil, echoing what Ms. Carter said in a separate interview. "I want to fill that somehow and I think the only way to do that is finding him."
TV Show about Parental Alienation
W5 investigates: Children on the frontlines of divorce
November 7, 2009
The world of divorce is scary for any child. But when a divorce becomes especially toxic, children can become the target of an unrelenting crusade by one parent to destroy the child's relationship with the other. Experts call it parental alienation.
Affair led to mother murdering her own kids
Days after buying another woman Valentine's Day flowers, a Sydney father came home to find a trail of blood leading him to the bodies of his two young children lying next to their mother, a court has been told.
Australian Associated Press
Aug 24 2009
The woman had given the couple's three-year-old daughter and four-year-old son rat poison and an unidentified pink liquid before smothering them and killing them, court papers said.
She then tried to take her own life, the NSW Supreme Court was told.
Doctors agree the mother, from Canley Heights in Sydney's west, was suffering from "major depression" when she poisoned her children on February 19 last year.
She has pleaded not guilty to the two murders by reason of mental illness.
As her judge-alone trial began, the mother's lawyer told Justice Clifton Hoeben his client didn't think life was worth living after learning about her husband's affair.
American Psychological Association
Dating Violence Statistics in the United States
Nearly one in 10 girls and one in 20 boys say they have been raped or experienced some other form of abusive violence on a date, according to a study released Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.
Teen depression on the increase
More and More teens are becoming depressed. The numbers of young people suffering from depression in the last 10 years has risen worryingly, an expert says.
BBC, UK, August 3, 2004
Government statistics suggest one in eight adolescents now has depression.
Unless doctors recognise the problem, Read More ..uld slip through the net, says Professor Tim Kendall of the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health.
Guidelines on treating childhood depression will be published next year. Professor Kendall says a lot Read More ..eds to be done to treat the illness.
Woman convicted of killing 3 kids after custody battle
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, USA, August 26, 2008
HELSINKI, Finland - A court in Finland has convicted a woman of murdering her three young children and has given her a life sentence.
The Espoo District Court says Thai-born Yu-Hsiu Fu was found guilty of strangling her 8-year-old twin daughters and 1-year-old son in her home.
She tried to kill herself afterward.
The verdict on Tuesday says the 41-year-old woman was found to be of sound mind at the time of the murders.
Court papers show the murders were preceded by a bitter custody battle with her Finnish husband who was living separately from her at the time of the murders.
A life sentence in Finland mean convicts usually serve at least 11 years in prison.
New Brunswick woman ruled responsible in burning of baby's body
ST. STEPHEN, N.B. - A New Brunswick judge says a woman who burned and dismembered her newborn son is criminally responsible for her actions.
Becky Sue Morrow earlier pleaded guilty to offering an indignity to a dead body and disposing of a newborn with the intent of concealing a delivery.
Judge David Walker ruled Friday that the 27-year-old woman may have been suffering from a mental disorder when she delivered the baby but that that was not the case when the baby's body was burned and its remains hidden.
It is not known if the baby was alive at the time of birth.
At a hearing last month, the court heard contrasting reports from the two psychiatrists. One said Ms. Morrow was in a "disassociated" mental state when the crime occurred. The other said she clearly planned her actions and understood the consequences.