A once-respected fertility doctor fathered dozens of children with women against their
will – and somehow, he avoided jail time.
Here's the whole truth behind Donald Cline, the subject of Netflix's new documentary,
Our Father.
In 2014, Indianapolis resident Jacoba Ballard wondered if she had any unknown siblings.
Her mother, Deborah Pierce, was artificially inseminated by Dr. Donald Cline, and Ballard
thought there might be one or two other people conceived from the same donor.
She found her first sibling on an online forum for donor-conceived children, where she connected
with a woman whose mother was also treated by Donald Cline.
They took 23andMe tests and found they had several more half-siblings, eight of them
in total.
What confounded them was that they were all born between 1979 and 1986, meaning it couldn't
have been a random donor.
The DNA tests weren't enough to confirm their biological father's identity.
Instead, they researched their DNA matches online and scoured through social media accounts
in order to find a common thread that might lead to their master donor.
It was then they realized that either Donald Cline or a relative of his connected them
all.
According to ABC30, Ballard found she was a 99.9% match with Cline after more DNA testing.
As Ballard and her siblings contacted more DNA matches through social media, the numbers
continued to grow.
Indianapolis resident Matt White found out he was conceived through Donald Cline's sperm
from watching the news.
According to The Atlantic, his mother used to point out the fertility facility where
she received treatment whenever they drove past it, and he was later able to confirm
the address as Cline's old office.
New Palestine resident Julie Harmon, who also goes by Julie Manes, suspected something was
amiss since her blood type didn't match those of her parents.
According to IndyStar, after seeing that same news report, she contacted Jacoba Ballard
and took a DNA test which revealed she too was connected to Cline.
When he was initially confronted by Ballard, Cline vastly underestimated the number of
treatments he performed with his own sperm.
"I did donor insemination over hundreds of people and I only donated my own sample maybe
9 or 10 times."
According to ABC30, when confronted in person, Cline would admit that number was closer to
50.
It's expected that he has fathered more children than that, but it's hard to know exactly how
many since DNA testing isn't universal and Cline's clinical records from that time have
since been destroyed.
According to The Atlantic, he only stopped using his own sperm in the 1980s, once sperm
banks were readily more available and frozen sperm became the norm.
Donald Cline's patients were all told their donors were medical residents, and a donor
would only ever contribute to three pregnancies at the most.
Since Jacoba Ballard and her half siblings were all born within 7 years of one another,
about twice the length of a typical residency, they knew something was wrong.
The Indianapolis Star reports that while under investigation in 2015, Cline continued to
deny ever using his own sperm for treatments,
Unfortunately, Cline's lies ran much deeper.
Julie Harmon's parents were considering adoption when Cline told them he could mix in the father's
sperm with that of an anonymous donor.
Cline had already been treating the couple, but used Harmon's father's sperm exclusively
with no success.
This new proposal gave them renewed hope.
During one of these later treatments, Cline told Harmon's mother that he was only using
her husband's sperm, leading her to believe that Julie was her husband's biological child.
Harmon was the first in her family to find out the truth, so she was left with the painful
task of breaking the news to her family.
According to The Indianapolis Star, the reveal left her father distraught and unable to speak
about it for years,
When Indianapolis resident Liz White went to Donald Cline for fertility treatments,
he told her to keep it a secret.
He promised that the sperm donor would be anonymous and would match her husband's blood
type and physical appearance.
White was never meant to tell her husband or son.
When artificial insemination became a viable infertility treatment, many doctors instructed
mothers to keep the donation a secret from their children and partners.
This was usually done to avoid legal issues as to who the father was, and to ensure the
privacy of both parents and children.
According to The Huffington Post, in order to maintain secrecy surrounding sperm donations,
few doctors kept records on sperm donors or their biological children.
Cline obviously meant for his illicit practices to be kept secret.
The Indianapolis Star reports that Cline accused his plaintiffs of libel and slander while
being investigated by the Indiana Attorney General.
Donald Cline was once the go-to fertility doctor in Indianapolis.
When couples didn't find success with frozen sperm treatments at other clinics, they went
to Cline.
He used fresh sperm and would inseminate within the hour it was obtained to optimize its viability.
As a result, he built a reputation of success, and his name became well-respected in his
field.
According to WTHR News, he was among a pioneering group of endocrinologists who froze women's
eggs after in vitro fertilization instead of discarding them.
Indianapolis Monthly and the NHS credit him as one of the first doctors in Indiana to
perform surgery using a laparoscope camera, a much less invasive procedure than its earlier
alternatives.
Unfortunately, Cline was hiding a darker truth beneath his accomplishments.
According to the probable cause affidavit filed against Cline, he would use his sperm
for inseminations when he didn't have fresh donor sperm on hand.
The report even says he "felt pressured" to do so.
He also kept note of which of his clients received his sperm, so that if they ever wanted
another child he'd know to use his own sample again.
When Jacoba Ballard and her half-siblings met Donald Cline in person for the first time,
he shielded himself with Bible verses and implied that God had permitted his actions.
After their meeting, he called Ballard and recited a Bible verse to amplify his point:
"One of my favorite scriptures was Jeremiah 1:5.
Before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you."
His tactics exploited Ballard's Catholic faith, which she and Cline both shared.
Cline found religion while in medical school and later became an elder of the Zionsville
Fellowship Church in Zionsville, Indiana.
He and his wife even taught a class at their home called "Growing Kids God's Way."
Cline once added his name to a full-page advertisement in the Indianapolis Star which stated that
life begins at conception, and his views motivated his groundbreaking use of freezing embryos
during IVF.
According to Indianapolis Monthly, Cline expressed remorse at his court hearing, telling the
judge,
"I have learned from scripture that the way of the fool is right in his own eyes."
Liz White began treatment with Cline in 1981.
He inseminated her 15 times over four months.
Now aware of the sperm donations' origins, she compares her treatments to rape and says
she would never have consented to using his sperm even if Cline did inform her.
Other women who have undergone a similar ordeal feel the same way.
Katherine Richards, a woman in Livermore, California was similarly deceived by her fertility
doctor when she was inseminated in 1978.
The doctor, Michael Kiken, promised her an anonymous donor that would match her husband's
profile.
He used his own sperm for Richard's two children, despite looking completely different from
the father.
Richards filed a lawsuit against Kiken, claiming she was "medically raped" and believes he
violated his Hippocratic Oath, according to Mercury News.
To make matters worse, Richard's daughter inherited a Tay Sachs disease gene from the
doctor.
In 2017, Donald Cline pleaded guilty to two charges of obstruction of justice.
His penalty was a year of probation and a $500 fine.
He did not receive a prison sentence.
This punishment provided little comfort to his victims.
While he also lost his medical license, he had already retired 8 years prior.
The judge declined to reduce his sentence to a misdemeanor.
Additionally, the charges he received didn't cover his medical dishonesty; he was penalized
only for lying to the Indiana Attorney General during the initial investigation.
At the time of Cline's sentencing, there were no laws in the United States that prohibited
doctors from using their own sperm for insemination
"Cline was only charged with obstruction of justice.
That's because, technically, there is no Indiana law making it illegal for a doctor to use
their own sperm sample."
Ever since Donald Cline escaped virtually scot-free from any substantial legal penalties,
his perverse medical practices have been made illegal.
His biological children rallied together to change Indiana law so that doctors would be
held accountable when misusing donor samples.
Act 174 now makes fertility fraud a level six felony and awards victims $10,000 in damages.
In reverse cases, the law protects people whose eggs and sperm are used without their
consent.
According to WRTV, the law also allows the formation of an investigative committee to
research fertility fraud.
According to The Atlantic and Bill Track 50, Senator Rodric Bray introduced the bill in
January 2018, but it died without a vote.
Even then, The Indianapolis Star reports that Cline's victims felt it didn't go far enough
since it made no mention of criminal charges against the guilty party.
After several months of campaigning for votes, Governor Eric Holcomb signed the bill into
law in May 2019, according to WRTV.
Although Donald Cline's medical practices were shocking enough to warrant a Netflix
documentary, he's hardly the only doctor to have used his own sperm to inseminate his
patients.
The Guardian reports Dutch doctor Jan Karbaat had fathered 200 children.
He died in 2017, before he could be held accountable, but DNA testing immediately confirmed 49 children
as his.
Dr. Norman Barwin of Ottawa, Canada took medical irresponsibility to another level; in cases
where he didn't use his own sperm, he distributed sperm from the wrong donors.
In a lawsuit that was settled for $13.375 million, at least 16 of the plaintiffs claimed
to be Barwin's biological children, and at least 75 of them were conceived with incorrect
sperm, according to CBC.
In 2019, Fox debuted Almost Family, a show
about three women who learned they were all conceived by a fertility doctor who used his
own sperm for more than 100 patients.
The problem with the show is that it was meant to be a family comedy, in which doctor Leon
Bechley, played by Timothy Hutton, is portrayed as a well-meaning father figure.
Unsurprisingly, victims of Donald Cline's medical malpractice didn't take too kindly
to it, according to The Daily Beast.
Julie Harmon thought the show made light of what she believes is sexual assault.
In the show, one of Bechley's children moonlights as his defense lawyer and works to have Bechley's
sexual assault charge dropped.
One of his biological children even calls him dad.
The Daily Beast reports that many of Cline's children held a joint viewing of Almost Family,
and some thought it didn't accurately reflect their experiences and feelings with discovering
their genetic origins.
What was particularly off-putting was that Bechley's excuses for his fertility fraud
mirrored Cline's.
"When I started out, infertility was a dead end street.
I became the last resort for desperate patients.
I stacked the deck."
Bechley was eager to create a miracle for his female patients and framed his insemination
as a good deed.
According to The Atlantic, a friend of Cline's wrote a letter to the judge in his defense
and similarly framed him as a caring individual who prioritized his clients.
One consequence that many of Cline's biological children fear is the threat of accidental
incest.
Many of them live in Indianapolis and often run into each other.
Cline's daughter-in-law is a gynecologist at the same office that former patient Liz
White visits, and White once saw Cline's daughter at a nail salon.
The bulk of Cline's biological children are well into their thirties and early forties.
With families of their own, the fear that their children might date one another looms
over them.
After all, it's possible that not all of Cline's children have been identified.
For those who have connected with other half-siblings, their proximity is a growing concern.
Two of their children have been on the same softball team, and two others have lived on
the same street.
It helps that the siblings often gather together and hold family reunions, which makes it easy
to identify one another and map out their numbers.
When interviewed by The Atlantic in 2019, the half-siblings said they had celebrated
their second annual family picnic the previous Father's Day weekend.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available.
Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).