REMEMBERING RODNEY

Rodney David Effert lived for only a few hours. He was born on April 14, 2005, in the basement of his grandparents' home in Wetaskiwin, Alberta. There was no hospital room waiting for him. There were no nurses surrounding him. His mother's pregnancy had been concealed, and she gave birth to Rodney alone. Rodney entered the world alive. That fact matters. He breathed. He cried. For those few hours, Rodney was not an unborn child or a hidden pregnancy. He was a newborn baby. His mother would later tell investigators that if she ever had a son, she would name him Rodney David Effert. That became his name. Rodney had almost no opportunity to create the kinds of memories that usually help tell a child's story. He never reached a first birthday, took a first step or spoke a first word. But the absence of those memories does not make his life less worthy of remembrance. Rodney was here. His life began on April 14, 2005. And only hours later, it was taken from him.

RODNEY'S STORY

Katrina Ann Effert was 19 years old when she became pregnant with Rodney. She concealed the pregnancy from most of the people around her. According to evidence later presented in court, she had discussed the pregnancy with a small number of friends months earlier, but she continued hiding it from her family and wore loose clothing as the pregnancy progressed. On the morning of April 14, 2005, Katrina went into labor at her parents' home. She gave birth alone in the basement. She used scissors to cut Rodney's umbilical cord. Rodney was alive. For several hours after his birth, he remained with his mother. Then Rodney began to cry. Katrina later admitted that she became frightened that her parents would hear him and discover what she had concealed. She initially tried to stop Rodney's crying by covering his face. Then she took a piece of her clothing and wrapped it tightly around her newborn son's neck. Rodney stopped crying. He had been strangled. After Rodney died, Katrina wrapped his body and carried him outside. She placed her newborn son over the fence into a neighboring property, where his body was left behind a shed. For four days, Rodney remained there. On the morning of April 18, a neighbor discovered the baby's body. The RCMP began an extensive investigation to determine who the newborn was and what had happened to him. Investigators canvassed the neighborhood and eventually spoke with Katrina. At first, she denied ever having been pregnant. She also denied knowing anything about the baby found behind the neighboring home. As investigators continued questioning her, Katrina gave several different accounts. At one point, she attempted to place responsibility on a man she had previously been involved with, claiming she had given birth elsewhere and that he had taken the baby from her. Police investigated that story. It was not true. Eventually, Katrina admitted that she had given birth to Rodney at home. She admitted that Rodney had cried. And she admitted that she had strangled her newborn son because she wanted him to stop crying and feared that her family would discover him.

Rodney David Effert had lived only a matter of hours.

WARNING SIGNS & MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

Rodney's circumstances were unusual because the danger surrounding him began before anyone outside the home even knew that he had been born. Katrina had hidden her pregnancy from most of her family. However, the pregnancy had not been completely unknown. Months before Rodney's birth, Katrina told several friends that she was pregnant. One friend encouraged her to keep the baby or consider adoption. A coworker also confronted Katrina after hearing that she was pregnant.

At home, Katrina's mother had heard a rumor about the pregnancy and directly asked her daughter whether she was pregnant. Katrina denied it. She continued concealing the pregnancy until Rodney was born. There is no evidence that child protection authorities knew Rodney existed before his death. There had been no opportunity for a pediatrician to examine him. There was no hospital discharge. There was no child welfare case involving him. Rodney's life began and ended before the systems ordinarily responsible for identifying an endangered infant even knew there was a child to protect. The missed opportunities in Rodney's case therefore existed primarily among the secrecy surrounding the pregnancy. People had heard rumors. Some knew she was pregnant. Questions were asked. But no one knew that within hours of Rodney's birth, his crying would lead to his death.

JUSTICE FOR RODNEY

Rodney's case would ultimately become a lengthy and legally significant Canadian case involving the distinction between murder and infanticide. Katrina Effert was originally prosecuted for second degree murder. In 2006, a jury convicted her of second degree murder. That conviction was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered. She was tried again. In June 2009, a second jury again found Katrina guilty of second degree murder in Rodney's death. She received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for ten years. But that was not the end of the case. Katrina appealed again. Both expert witnesses who testified concerning her mental condition supported the position that her mind had been disturbed following childbirth, which is central to the Canadian Criminal Code offense of infanticide. On May 2, 2011, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that the second degree murder verdict could not stand. The court overturned the murder conviction and substituted a conviction for infanticide. The Crown attempted to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. On October 13, 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada denied the Crown's application for leave to appeal. The infanticide conviction therefore remained in place. For the infanticide conviction, Katrina received a three year suspended sentence to be served in the community with probation. Her probation conditions included counseling as directed, notifying her supervisor if she became pregnant and completing 100 hours of community service.

 

Katrina Ann Effert

Relationship to Rodney: Mother

Original convictions: Second degree murder and concealing the body of a child

Final conviction for Rodney's killing: Infanticide

Final sentence for infanticide: Three year suspended sentence with probation and 100 hours of community service

FOREVER REMEMBERED

Rodney's life was extraordinarily short. His legal case was not. For more than six years after his death, courts debated how Canadian law should classify what happened in the first hours of Rodney's life. Two separate juries called it second degree murder. The Alberta Court of Appeal ultimately ruled that the evidence required the lesser conviction of infanticide. The Crown tried to take that decision to Canada's highest court, but permission to appeal was denied. Those decisions made Rodney's case part of a much larger legal discussion about infanticide, childbirth, mental disturbance and how Canadian law treats mothers who kill their newborn children.

But Rodney should not disappear behind that debate. Before there was a criminal charge, an appeal, a retrial or a legal precedent, there was a baby.A newborn boy who  cried because crying was the only voice he had. He should have been comforted. He should have been fed. He should have been wrapped in a blanket and placed somewhere safe. Instead, the sound that announced Rodney was alive became the sound his mother wanted to silence. Rodney never had the opportunity to become anything more than the newborn at the center of a court case. That is why remembering his name matters. Rodney David Effert existed independently of the woman who killed him and independently of the legal controversy that followed. He was born. He lived. And however brief that life was, it counted. Abuse Angels remembers Rodney David Effert as a child whose entire lifetime fit inside a single day, but whose humanity was never measured by the number of hours he lived. We remember Rodney. We speak his name. And Rodney David Effert will not be forgotten.