Who is your real parent? Our Father on Netflix depicts the dark side of ‘secret serial sperm donation’. My birth has a similar origin but with a more…

Our Father is difficult to watch, especially if youve suddenly discovered as an adult that you have a never-known family of half-siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews thanks to a long-ago sperm donation. One review dubs the series Netflixs most gruesome real-life documentary yet.

It tells the tale of Indianapolis fertility physician Donald Cline, who used his sperm to inseminate at least 96 women (and counting) between 1979-1986. After years of being in the dark, the offspring have found each other thanks to diligent sleuthing by some of the half-siblings and DNA testing.

The majority of us live in a 25-mile radius, some within minutes of Cline. I walk around and I could be related to anyone. Ive probably met half sibs and we dont even know it, said a son named Guy.

Dr. Cline told many of his patients that he would be using sperm from a medical student or resident, and that no donor would be used for more than three women. The nefarious donations went on for so long in the small town that he used his sperm to inseminate his own daughter!

The Our Father series is in part a detective storythe sleuthing work of Jacoba Ballard, a young woman who was the first to uncover the physicians deception. When aDNA test revealed she had seven relatives in nearby parts of Indiana, she knew something was wrong.

It was a sick feeling, Jacoba said. What she unraveled was shocking: besides finding sisters and brothers with whom she shared a quarter of their DNA, each victim had a mother whod sought fertility treatment from Dr. Cline.

How did these suddenly-bonded young adults unravel the rest of the mystery? Figuring out familial relationships begins with more sleuthing than science. Newbie sibs zero in on the donor by identifying relatives whove tested and with whom everyone matches. Then, they trace backwards and start asking older relatives questions.

Things got complicated at times. Jacoba identified a second cousin they all matched with on 23andMe whos related to someone with the same surname as Dr. Clines mothers maiden name. Dr. Cline was indeed the cousins cousin, and yes, hes a doctor.

Right then my stomach dropped because she confirmed what we already knew but were hoping wasnt true, that Dr. Donald Cline could be our biological father, she says in the documentary. I was in shock. So many emotions, so many questions. He lied about a donor being used. Why did he do it? How long did he do it? How many siblings do we have? Jacoba recalls.

Our Father is also the story of local FOX 59 TV journalist Angela Ganote. She began unearthing the story in February 2015. At first she had great difficulty getting information from local authorities. But once the station began airing her interviews with Jacoba, at least one half-sib stared at her screen and thought she was looking at a twin. Many of them share blond hair and blue eyes.

The documentary opens with a hallway lined with photos of babies. Objects and imagery from Christianity are everywhere; the doctor was a marriage counselor and Sunday school teacher. A placard quotes Jeremiah 1:5,

God Knew Me Before I Was Born: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Then the camera pans to a sterile exam room with illustrations of uteri festooning the walls. Photos of kids are tacked to bulletin boards; lots of little blonds a la The Boys from Brazil.

The story unfolds in interviews with parents, kids, and co-workers. Numbers interrupt the narrative as test results reveal more offspring, up to #96.

A nurse who worked for Dr. Cline from 1981 to 1994 tells how it all happened. She gave patients questionnaires about traits they desired in a donor. Then shed go across the way to a hospital to collect samples from medical residents. Some couples would bring in a sperm sample, perhaps told that that it would be used or mixed with donor sperm.

A former physician colleague backs up the stories from the nurse, patients, and offspring. He adds how the layout of the office suite enabled Dr. Cline to collect and deliver his donations.

But the hospital samples were never used. In fact, Cline would have had to masturbate somewhere nearby while the women were waiting insemination. He would likely still be experiencing the after-effects of arousal as he was inserting the semen, one daughter said.

She recalled that shed be the only patient in the office, and the doc would duck out while she arranged herself in the stirrups.

Hed place his semen into a syringe and then place it at the base of my cervix. The fact that he was still on an endocrine high from ejaculation has no place in a medical setting. When my sons DNA test came back, my first words were I was raped and didnt even know it.

Added Jacoba,

What made him wake up every day and go into work and masturbate and place it into women without their consent?

But if the goal was to make his patients pregnant, the doctor did. The fact that he used his specimen to impregnate me made me sick to my stomach. On the other hand, because of his skills, I have twin daughters who are absolutely delightful. You cant be angry when you have what you always dreamed of, said one former patient.

Jacobas half-siblings share their emotional ups and downs, their words eerily echoing my own as I have struggled to accept, beginning in September 2018, that I, too, have a mystery family, the result of mysterious sperm donations. Since then, Ive been on several Facebook groups for NPEs not parent expected and read many stories, but none on the scale of Our Father.

It helps to connect with others. Especially useful was a recent study in the American Journal of Human Genetics from Christi Guerrini JD, MPH, from the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine, Family secrets: Experiences and outcomes of participating in direct-to-consumer genetic relative-finder services. I wrote about it here.

As I watched the progam and saw the numbers tick up for Dr. Clines offspring, my empathy for their angst began to ebb. Their reactions were overwhelmingly of anger and negativity, or at least that is what dominated Our Father. Perhaps it was like a Facebook page for people with the same disease dominated by those with the most dire experiences. I couldnt help but wonder without the horrifically egocentric fertility doctor, those half-siblings wouldnt exist.

Consider some of their comments:

Some of them recognize past clues and present commonalities:

Some of the siblings saw something more sinister. Every time we get a DNA match, we say it looks like one of the Cline boys or it looks like a Cline girl. Most of us have blond hair and blue eyes. I hate to say this, but it is almost like we are this perfect Aryan clan and its disgusting. The goal appeared to be to produce more whites because whites would eventually disappear.

All of the photos in the office were of Caucasian babies, said a sister named Julie. Added Jacoba, You wonder if the person who created you was a racist bigot who used my mom as a pawn, and he did it over and over and over again.

The Nazi hypothesis is as opposite as possible from the motivation behind some of the thousands of surprise-donor-conceived offspring like me from the New York City area, from the 1950s and 1960s. Our existence, in some cases, grew out of a desire to replace some of the six million Jews the Nazis killed during the second world war.

The number of Dr. Clines offspring may not even be known or knowable. But he did the deed. When forced to provide a DNA sample, the results showed that the probability that Jacoba is his biological child was beyond doubt: 99.9997 percent.

But in the end, he wasnt punished much. In 2016, Cline was only charged with two counts of obstruction of justice, to which he plead guilty. Technically, the court found, he wasnt sexually violating the women because they were his patients and had given permission. Although some of his offspring feel that their mothers had been raped, legally that claim couldnt hold up.

Dr. Cline was sentenced as a level 6 felon and fined $500, which is a slap in the fing face, said Jacoba.

But progress has been made. In 2018 illicit donor insemination became illegal in Indiana, although theres still no federal law. And dozens of more doctors have been caught using their own sperm.

My reactions to discovering one-half of my genetic parentage was different than the siblings in my father. Ive shared my story in Libby Copelands book The Lost Family, in several blog posts and articles for Genetic Literacy Project and with the New York Times Modern Love Podcast.

The feelings among my half-siblings vary.

Who was our biological father? Weve narrowed down our sperm donor to two of three brothers from a wonderful family that were excited to be part of, even in such a strange way. We look a lot alike. And well have an answer pretty soon, pending a recent match that filled in a few blanks, and also led to the discovery of a wonderful new cousin, half-niece, and possible brother or cousin.

Its weird, and adjusting took time, but Im thankful. Now that were at an age when we are starting to lose people, finding new siblings is a great gift. Thats no solace to many of the aggrieved victims of the deeply deceptive Dr. Cline. But it does illustrate that the proliferation of DNA tests can, in some circumstances, bring some joy and help expand a sense of family.

Ricki Lewis, PH.D is a writer for PLOS and author of the book The Forever Fix: Gene Therapy and the Boy Who Saved It. You can check out Rickiswebsiteand follow Ricki on Twitter@rickilewis

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Who is your real parent? Our Father on Netflix depicts the dark side of 'secret serial sperm donation'. My birth has a similar origin but with a more...