Adoptee in Australia Searches for Dad

“HE’S a ‘dead ringer’ which makes Fremantle woman Erica Freeman sure that this man is her biological dad.

But all she knows about David McLeod is gleaned from a 1969 newspaper clipping.

“I look exactly like him. We have the same hair and features. You’ve just got to see the picture and you’ll know. It’s just so bloody obvious,” she said.

“I’m 6ft tall, long and thin, just like David. I’ve got the same body, hair and everything.”

Ms Freeman, who was born in Tasmania in May 1969, was adopted at birth.

She met her biological mother when she was 20, after her adoptive parents died, but they no longer speak.

It is believed Mr McLeod, who lived in North Hobart in 1968, met Ms Freeman’s mother through friends.

“It is my understanding that he doesn’t even know I exist. I think (my birth mother) spent a couple of nights with him but just never had the courage to tell him she was pregnant,” she said.

“He left town. Then she saw the article so she cut it out and saved it and gave it to me when I met her.”

The article clipping, from the now defunct The Australasian Post, shows Mr McLeod working as a shop assistant in a trendy Melbourne clothes store called The Gasworks.

The image shows Mr McLeod working at the Lonsdale St boutique with its owner, fashion designer Peter Morton, and then 17-year-old model Bev Stillman.

That’s all the 44-year-old has of her biological dad, who she is desperate to find.

“He’s the one on the left holding the necklaces. I know nothing else at all,” she said.

“He was around 21 at the time. That’s all I have.

“I have a birth certificate but my birth mother had put ‘father unknown’ on it.”

Mr McLeod, whose middle name is unknown, would now be in his 60s.

Ms Freeman, who lives in Fremantle with her two sons, has been unsuccessfully searching for him for years.

“I made my first big attempt when I was pregnant with my first child in 1997,” she said.

“If I find him and he rejects me it will be disappointing, naturally, but I have nothing to lose.

“I just feel that he never had a chance. Not only does he have a daughter he doesn’t know about but he has two grandkids. I could have brothers or sisters but I don’t know.”

Keith Schafferius, a private investigator of 45 years, has been trying to help Ms Freeman track down her dad.

“There are about 87 people of that name in Australia. I’ve phoned some and written to every one of them,” he said.

“There’s a chance I’ve touched base with him and he has chosen not to call back but he wouldn’t have known what it was about.

“I’m not charging Erica anything anymore because really I don’t do this for the money. I just want to see her find him so her boys can get to know their grandfather.””

Adopted daughter searching for dad David McLeod

[The Australian 6/6/13 by Kristen Shorten]

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