This man helped raise two girls – one of whom is his biological child – with a lesbian couple. When the women planned to move to NZ, he took a stand. Credit:James Brickwood

It was a landmark legal ruling with potentially dramatic ramifications for sperm donors, and the women who use them to have children. The man behind this case tells why he took his battle to the High Court.

Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size The school pick-up on that bright, sticky February afternoon in 2014 began like so many others before it, with no hint it would be the prologue to a chain of events that would reverberate through Robert Masson's* life and far beyond. Events that would over the next five years entangle some of the sharpest legal minds in the country, cost Robert more than $1 million in legal fees, draw the intervention of the federal Attorney-General, Christian Porter, and crest in a landmark High Court ruling that would flash across TV news bulletins in the US, the UK and Australia. This article is one of the most-read Good Weekend features for 2019 Behind the headlines around Robert's fight for paternity ("High Court Rules Sperm Donor Is Father") would quietly hover a single question: What makes a father? Robert Masson had no idea all this was ahead as he pulled up in front of the infants' school in Newcastle, NSW on that summer's day. He loved this twice-weekly moment when he would see seven-year-old Amelia and six-year-old Jane run excitedly across the playground towards him. And he loved this school: the elegant brown brick Edwardian buildings, the noisy classrooms, the collegiate teaching staff. Robert was treasurer of the school's Parents and Citizens Association, volunteered in the canteen and for reading groups, and used his experience from the business world to organise fundraising school fetes and trivia nights. He was often the girls' taxi service to sporting events and ballet. Thanks to tips from the other ballet mums, he was now a dab hand at tying Amelia's fine curly hair into a ballet bun. One of the fathers, a 30-something called Jim who Robert knew quite well, was waiting at the gates that day for the first dribble of kids to spill out. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, Jim turned to Robert, his voice more intense. "Hey, what's this about Susan and Margaret moving to New Zealand?" he enquired, referring to the mothers of Amelia and Jane.


A chill went down Robert's spine, though he didn't outwardly react. "That's the first I heard of it," he replied smartly. A compact, shortish man with lively eyes and a bald, bowling-ball round head, Robert was adept at maintaining his composure. Although Susan Parsons, the birth mother of Amelia and Jane, was born in New Zealand and would marry the Australian-born Margaret there in 2015, she hadn't lived in her birth country for more than 20 years. Margaret had recently been tested for bowel cancer and was about to undergo exploratory surgery. Robert had done his bit by taking the kids out and helping with domestic duties like the washing. "Daddy, Daddy," the girls screamed, running into his arms, before piling into the back of his SUV. Robert's mind was racing but he didn't raise the issue with Susan that afternoon when he dropped the kids off. He needed time to collect his thoughts. He'd been good friends with Susan since their late teens over 25 years ago; they'd got drunk and smoked weed together at parties. Susan had come to his 21st and had visited Robert's mum and grandmother on special occasions like Mother's Day (Susan's parents were back in New Zealand). They'd stayed in occasional contact over the years through Robert's moves to London, Melbourne and Sydney, as he pursued increasingly successful careers in the hospitality, telecommunications and education industries. It was when Robert travelled with Susan to New Zealand in early 2006 for her mother's 70th birthday that he saw how determined she was to have a baby, with a special urgency now that she had turned 40. Several earlier attempts at IVF with an anonymous donor had failed. It was around this time that Susan raised the proposition of having a child with him. She told Robert she was uncomfortable with the idea of resorting to an unknown donor again because the child should know its father. Being gay, Robert hadn't really entertained the prospect of having children, not imagining it was an option. But now he was deeply thrilled at the idea. The first attempt, at Robert's apartment in Sydney, was pretty awkward. They tried to have sex – Robert had had girlfriends when he was young – and then tried insemination with a syringe. Neither worked. A second syringe attempt two months later, this time at Susan's place in Newcastle, felt uncomfortable for a very different reason. An older woman called Margaret, whom Robert had never met before but who Susan introduced as a new friend, was there for support. But the trio shared a laugh afterwards and a month later discovered they had been successful. The warmth between Susan and Robert grew as the pregnancy advanced; he was able to hear the baby's heartbeat and feel her kick. He accompanied Susan to her pregnancy scans, including the nerve-wracking amniocentesis to test for chromosomal abnormalities. He never had any intention of being a distant father, either geographically or emotionally, so while Susan was in the final trimester he gave up his $250,000-a-year job in Sydney to apply for a position in Newcastle, taking a $100,000 pay cut. He was at Amelia's birth in late 2007, where he cut the umbilical cord, and was listed as the father on her birth certificate. He gave Amelia her first bath, and started depositing $150 a week into a joint account with Susan to help with expenses. By this time Margaret and Susan were living together, and Susan's focus shifted away from her friendship with Robert. Despite the odd difference here and there, over the next few years he remained on generally good terms with the couple, including after they had a second child, Jane, with an anonymous US donor. (Susan and Margaret had asked for a tripling in Robert's child support payments if he wanted to be the donor for this second child, which he told them was financially unsustainable). Regardless, he always treated Amelia and Jane equally, and both called him Daddy.


How, he asked himself, could his relationship with these darling girls survive a move to New Zealand? He just couldn't let that happen. Robert Masson* had an active role in the girls' lives before the court cases. He refused to let that be taken away. Credit:James Brickwood In the honeyed light of late afternoon, a few days after learning of the impending move, Robert was sitting on the back deck of Susan's home, chatting to her and Margaret while the girls gambolled about in the swimming pool. He silently girded himself for what he was about to say. "Jim tells me you're moving to New Zealand … when were you planning on talking to me about it?" "Yes," they replied, seemingly surprised he knew about their plans. On and on they talked. How Susan wanted to return to New Zealand to support her elderly parents. How they had hopes of opening a B&B there. About Margaret's recovery and their wish for a tree change. "Why don't you come with us?" Susan suddenly said. He knew instantly that he couldn't abandon his 73-year-old mother, who lived locally and was recently diagnosed with lung disease, nor his three fledgling businesses in hospitality and real estate. It was also an unreasonable thing to expect from his partner, Gregg, whom he'd met three years earlier, who would also have had to pull up stumps. He wondered to himself whether Susan knew all this when she made the offer. An emotion-charged phone call a few days later would drive the trio to mediation. "It's not the end of the world," said Susan, trying to reassure him of their plans, but sounding to Robert awfully flippant. "We can throw the kids on a plane during school holidays and send them over to you." "That's not my version of parenting," he replied. A mediation session six weeks later only escalated the impasse, with Susan and Margaret telling the counsellors they felt "ambushed" and "blind-sided" by Robert's demands. The last straw was when documents were exchanged between their respective lawyers. Susan and Margaret refused to sign a proposed parenting plan because it inferred that Robert and Gregg were also parents to Amelia and Jane (the men explained they'd simply filled out the slot on a standard form). Robert soon found his time with the children radically reduced. The mothers weren't responding to text messages and had the locks to their home changed.


The only time Robert saw his girls during this period was through his weekly volunteer work at the school: reading to the class and working in the canteen. On the advice of another father, Robert went to the Australian Federal Police website and registered the two kids as a flight risk but heard nothing back. Shortly afterwards, however, he agreed to the family's departure for a holiday in New Zealand. But the AFP stopped them at Sydney airport, only clearing them to leave after a flurry of phone calls with Robert. Later, a snow trip to Japan that Robert planned for the kids had to be cancelled when the logistical discussions between him and the mothers became next to impossible. Robert was at the end of his tether, which led him to seek some serious legal advice from a small practice in Sydney's Rozelle, recommended to him because it specialised in couples undergoing IVF, surrogacy, sperm donations and co-parenting arrangements. Facing one another across a small round table, Erin Steiner, a straight-talking former policewoman, outlined his responsibilities as a parent – and his children's rights to a meaningful relationship with him. Robert told Steiner he wanted two things: to stop the mothers from moving to New Zealand with the kids, and to obtain orders that would allow him to spend a regular amount of time with the kids each week. The heart of the issue, Steiner explained to him, was whether he was a legal parent. If Susan and Robert had had sex to conceive Amelia, there would be no doubt about his legal status as a parent, and Amelia's rights to a relationship with him. But the laws relating to artificial insemination are different. Putting biology aside, the length and quality of the relationship he had with the girls would most certainly make him, in the eyes of the Family Court, a significant person in their lives. But to be recognised as a parent, he had to provide evidence he was not merely a "sperm donor" who had just parachuted into the lives of the two mothers. Robert had long felt he was on shaky legal ground. He'd been warned by the mothers' solicitors that this could end up in the High Court. "Do you really think it might go this far?" he asked apprehensively. Steiner and her associate in the firm, Tahlia Bleier, traded glances. They'd heard this before – clients who imagined their case was much bigger than it really was. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," cautioned Bleier, a lawyer in her 20s who never shied away from a challenge. “This judgment creates clarity for sperm donors but also creates problems,” says lawyer Tahlia Bleier. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer "Hello? Oh hi," Robert says warmly into the phone before heading downstairs, leaving black and silver framed photographs of Amelia and Jane propped up in front of me. We're in the upstairs living room of his Newcastle home, and while he's gone I look closely at the photos. In one, the smiling, fair-haired girls are sitting next to him on a deck; in the other, Robert has them in a joyful embrace. He's already given me a tour of this rustic converted 1920s warehouse, with its black tallow-wood floorboards and a small goods lift tucked away in one corner. On either side of the living room are two neat-as-a-pin bedrooms, set aside for the girls when they stay, piled with soft toys and cushions. "This is about two consenting adults who were both single at the time deciding to have a child together, and I was always involved," he says when he returns. "When Amelia was a baby, like all new parents, I was paranoid about her breathing, so I was constantly checking on her. Overnight I changed from being a heavy sleeper into a light sleeper."


Outside, it's a chill but crystal-clear winter's afternoon, and Robert, a dapper 49-year-old dressed in black trousers, brogues and a fineknit pullover, is giving his first in-depth interview about his five-year journey through the courts. With a gift for cordial conversation and hospitality – over several hours he offers a large plate of sushi, later biscuits and chocolates – he's remarkably candid, but requests that the false names assigned to everyone by the courts be used in this story, and that he be photographed only in silhouette, to protect the children's identities. Robert appears to be a good man and a devoted father. Still, I'm aware I'm only hearing – and reporting – his side of the story, and that the mothers' version would almost certainly be very different. The women, who the courts have also described as loving parents, have turned down my request for an interview, including choosing not to answer a set of questions sent to them by email. As journalists we aim to show both sides, to pat everything down in the name of fairness. But this story doesn't fit in the box like that: beyond the human travails is a complex and contradictory minefield of law and legal precedent. The wheels of justice move slowly, much slower than children grow, which means parents can miss out on critical moments in their children's lives waiting for rulings to be brought down. To understand why Robert has gone to such great lengths to remain an involved father – including selling off many of his assets, including a beautiful Georgian mansion he'd meticulously restored, to pay his legal costs – you need to hear a slice of his family history. "My dad was a racing-car driver, a bit of a daredevil," he recalls. "But he was a haunted man – when he was nine he accidentally shot and killed his sister playing with his dad's gun." An emotionally abusive alcoholic, Robert's father left his mother in the early 1970s with just $75 in her pocket and three kids to raise before Robert had turned two. "Mum always had businesses – a country pub, a haberdashery store and later a telecommunications shop – and this filtered through to me," says Robert, who himself has been a successful real estate investor. He did not see his father – who is now deceased – while growing up. Without a father figure of his own, Robert vowed that if he ever had kids, he'd never become a deadbeat dad. "You have all these studies showing that girls who feel connected to their dads and respected by them look for the same relationships with boys in life," he says. "They have higher self-esteem, and tend to be less promiscuous and better-adjusted." He tells me that the younger daughter, Jane, only recently found out that he was not her biological father. "They told her without informing me; I'm still struggling with that," he says. "She knows her dad [an anonymous sperm donor] lives in the US but she won't be able to meet him." It's news to no one, of course, that family structures have undergone a dramatic change over the past 30 years, at least in part because of quantum leaps in medical technology. Pity the underfunded and overstretched Family Court, which has to grapple with the increasingly varied way in which babies are conceived and born. Lesbian couples and single heterosexual women can get pregnant using donor sperm, sometimes from anonymous donors in sperm banks, sometimes from close friends or acquaintances, men who may or may not want to be involved in the raising of their future offspring. Women in their 40s struggling with fertility can use donor eggs, some relying on altruistic surrogates, others carrying the child themselves.

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