A headline ripped from TV?

[samhexum]

LAW & ORDER Season 5, episode 15: SEED

 

A woman under the care of fertility doctor Jordan Delbert (David Margulies) dies under suspicious circumstances. An investigation reveals that Delbert has illegally donated his own sperm to expedite at least 31 pregnancies. In trying to prosecute Delbert, the D.A.’s office is stymied by the laws of confidentiality — not to mention the fiercely self-protective “don’t ask, don’t tell” stance taken by the doctor’s past patients. Air Date: Feb 15, 1995

 

A former fertility doctor in Indiana accused of using his own sperm to impregnate patients plans to plead guilty to two charges of obstruction of justice.

 

Donald Cline, 78, allegedly fathered at least 25 children via sperm donation while he was a fertility doctor, Fox 59 reported, citing Cline’s biological children who were connected through DNA testing and the website 23andme.

 

Cline’s attorneys on Tuesday said the former doctor will admit that he lied to state investigators about inseminating the patients with his own sperm.

 

Paternity tests indicate Cline is likely the biological father of at least two of his patients’ children, according to court records.

 

“This wasn’t just a handful of kids or mothers that this happened to that resulted into a handful of children. We’re now into several dozen. And it’s going to continue to grow,” Matt White, whose mother was also one of Cline’s patients, told The Associated Press.

 

“I’m ecstatic. I couldn’t be any happier,” Jacoba Ballard, one of the children Cline allegedly fathered, told Fox 59. “I wish there were more charges. And I wish that all the senators and everybody would listen to us and do something but this is a start.”

 

No other charges were filed against Cline because Indiana doesn’t specifically prohibit fertility doctors from using their own sperm.

 

“We want to stop this from happening again because it was wrong on so many levels. Even though there are no laws against it, it was wrong and he needs to own up to what he did and we need to prevent this from happening again,” Amber Stafford said to Fox 59.

 

Cline, who retired from his practice in Indianapolis in 2009, is expected to plead guilty Dec. 14.

 

 

FROM MAY: Families in the Netherlands are accusing the head of a fertility clinic of using his own sperm, and not that of chosen donors, to impregnate women through IVF treatment.

 

Twenty-three parents and children, who were patients at the Bijdorp Medical Center, have gone to court asking for DNA tests on Jan Karbaat, the head of the clinic, who died at age 89 last month, The Telegraph reported.

 

Authorities have already seized personal objects that might contain DNA samples, including a toothbrush, from his home. His patients have come forward to say that Karbaat admitted to using his own seed and cited his good health and intelligence.

 

“He saw it as something noble. He had no concept of ethics,” one of the plaintiffs in the case said. They’ve also noticed that their children resemble the now-dead man. The offspring’s physical traits, including eye color, match Karbaat’s, and not the official donors’ characteristics.

 

“They say it feels like they were raped by Karbaat,” Tim Bueters, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told Dutch media. He asked the court for permission to test Karbaat’s DNA, saying, “It’s a fundamental right to know where you came from. It’s a question of identity (and) helps someone to form their personality.”

 

Karbaat’s lawyer is denying the accusations. “There is not the slightest evidence that Mr. Karbaat was the donor,” Lisette de Haan said.

 

Karbaat might have had foresight. In his will, he requests that no DNA tests be carried out on his him post-mortem, The Telegraph reported.

 

Multiple plaintiffs claim Karbaat told them that he may have fathered their children. One woman claims to have an email with evidence, according to Dutch media reports.

 

Another plaintiff said a verdict wouldn’t offer resolution. “As a mother, this judgement won’t give me anything,” said Esther Heij after the court hearing. She said her son was upset that Karbaat didn’t come clean before he died.

 

“I see at home how my son’s life has been affected,” she said. The now-shuttered clinic limited the number of children each donor could father to six. Karbaat allegedly admitted to illicitly fathering over 60 children.

 

FROM JUNE:

A Dutch court has ruled that DNA tests may be carried out on the belongings of a late fertility clinic doctor accused of falsely impregnating dozens of women.

 

Jan Karbaat, who died in April at 89, allegedly used his own sperm, rather than samples from chosen donors, to father his patients’ children.

 

“DNA samples of a recently deceased doctor may be taken from sequestered goods to establish a DNA profile,” a Rotterdam court said.

 

The test results must remain sealed, the court added, until another judge rules on whether or not the doctor’s DNA profile can be compared to the DNA of the children born through IVF.

 

“There is currently not enough hard evidence to prove that the doctor actually used his own sperm. The claim by plaintiffs will have to be further substantiated in subsequent proceedings,” the court said in a statement.

 

Karbaat’s patients allege that the fertility expert bragged about his own superior genetics and admitted he used his own seed to impregnate them.

 

“He saw it as something noble. He had no concept of ethics,” Monique Wassensaar, a plaintiff in the case said, The Telegraph reported.

 

Karbaat reportedly admitted to fathering 60 children through IVF treatment, the group’s lawyer, Tim Bueters, told the court.

 

Police seized Karbaat’s personal belongings, including a toothbrush, from his home on May 2nd.

 

The Karbaat family lawyer has argued that DNA testing should not be performed on the objects, out of respect for the privacy of his family.

 

Karbaat reportedly stipulated in his will that he did not want DNA tests performed on him post-mortem.

 

Karbaat’s Bijdorp Medical Center closed eight years ago amid reports that he falsified administrative records.

 

ALSO SEE: https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/dutch-doctor-fathered-at-least-49-children-through-his-fertility-clinic.147987/#post-1706951

Edited November 28, 2020 by samhexum

[samhexum]

An Indiana fertility doctor who used his own sperm on dozens of patients without their consent won't face jail time as part of a plea deal.

 

Dr. Donald Cline, 77, is accused of fathering at least eight children with different women who came to his office in the 1970s and '80s for fertility treatment.

 

It's believed that he could have more than 20 children, Fox 59 reports.

 

Cline, who is now retired, appeared in court on Thursday to plead guilty to lying to investigators. He wasn't charged with impregnating the women with his sperm because there is no state law against it.

 

Suspicion into the former practitioner began in 2015 when one of the children found eight DNA matches after taking a test through the genetics company, 23AndMe, which referred the person to Cline's Indianapolis clinic.

 

Because "live" sperm was being used at that time - instead of frozen samples - questions were raised about who would have been around each time to father that many kids.

 

When the disgraced doctor was first approached by investigators, he denied using his own samples.

 

DNA evidence, however, proved otherwise and Cline admitted to using his sperm whenever the donor was unavailable.

 

Prosecutors said he used his sample up to 50 times.

 

Cline pleaded guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 365 days in jail, all of which was

 

suspended, meaning he won't serve time behind bars.

 

Cline not only avoided jail time, but won't be on probation either.

[samhexum]

Celebrated doctor secretly fathered dozens of patients’ kids

 

When Wendi Babst sees her face in the mirror, she sometimes feels troubled enough by her distinctive features to consider plastic surgery.

 

The pain started as the result of an on-sale DNA test she decided, on a whim, to take in 2018. That’s when the former cop realized she doesn’t actually look like the caring military man she always thought was her dad — and instead resembles her mother’s unwanted “sperm donor.”

 

Her biological father is Dr. Quincy Fortier, the late fertility specialist and accused child molester who made headlines for impregnating unwitting patients — including Babst’s mother — with his own seed over the course of four decades.

 

Airing her disgust for the Nevada physician in “Baby God,” a documentary about the scandal airing Wednesday on HBO, Babst declares: “I want to change my nose [because] there is this monster who is living within me.”

 

The 54-year-old told The Post she is “contemplating” going under the knife, explaining that her feelings toward Fortier are “complicated.”

 

“I can’t really hate him because I wouldn’t exist without him,” she said. “But I’ve studied nature versus nurture so it’s scary.”

 

For better or worse, Babst, who lives in Portland, Ore., is a member of a society of Fortier half-siblings that seems to grow larger every month.

 

“[sibling] matches tend to come out after Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Black Friday when they do big promos for genealogy kits,” said Babst.

 

The current roster totals 24 men and women from across the US, ranging in age from 30something to septuagenarians. Nearly all were shocked to discover the truth about their paternity after investing in biotechnology services such as those offered by 23andme and Ancestry.com.

 

The mind-blowing information has also unearthed secrets about the sinister machinations of the OB-GYN, once lauded as a miracle worker for his ability to help women conceive. The film also reveals a shocking history in Fortier’s own nuclear family.

 

“Baby God” director Hannah Olson told The Post that Fortier was an “extreme” example of a “widespread phenomenon” in the fertility industry that likely continued into the 1980s.

 

“With or without the patients’ knowledge or consent, doctors would use their own sperm to ‘help’ a woman conceive,” she said. “They couldn’t predict the future and the ease with which people are now able to analyze their DNA.”

 

Some specialists, particularly in the 1940s and 1950s, would combine their own semen with samples from a woman’s husband in a practice known as “sperm-mixing.” The idea, apparently: If the end result was a happy, healthy baby, who would even care?

 

Babst’s mom, Cathy Holm, now 77, was flabbergasted when Wendi revealed Holm’s husband was not her dad. Still, when Wendi was growing up, Holm was struck by her daughter’s lack of resemblance to “her father’s side of the family at all.”

 

As someone who married young rather than go to college, she said she couldn’t understand where Wendi got her intelligence from. “We were average,” she states in the documentary.

 

Holm was 22 in 1966, when she saw the then 54-year-old Fortier at his Women’s Hospital in Pioche, Nev. She trusted he had done what she paid him to do: use a syringe to inseminate her with sperm from her husband.

 

Holm recalls the procedure in the documentary. “[The doctor] was in and out of the exam room two or three times. [i thought] why does he keep going in and out?” she says.

 

As Olson explained, in those days, only fresh sperm was used for the procedure. It wasn’t until the AIDS crisis in the mid-1980s that samples began to be screened and frozen.

Fortier, who fathered infants into his 70s, practiced his warped technique as early as 1948. That’s when he used his sperm on Dorothy Otis, a newlywed who consulted him about a suspected infection — not in an effort to conceive.

 

She left his office unknowingly pregnant with her son Mike, now 71 and a retired tech writer from Maricopa, Ariz. Mike was investigating his supposed Native American Indian roots when he received the unsettling results of his Ancestry.com test in 2017.

 

Otis told The Post he grieves the loss of “part of his identity.” Moreover, he is outraged for his mom, now 94, who admitted she wasn’t ready to bear a child in her early twenties and had to forgo her education.

 

In a heartbreaking scene in “Baby God,” Dorothy feels the need to tell Mike she didn’t have sex with Fortier, before asking: “Was he trying to see how many people he could [put] on this earth before he died?”

 

For Babst, the answer is a resounding yes. She calls it a reflection of his superiority complex — and the patriarchy in general.

 

“It bothers me to think that these doctors thought they were smarter than their patients,” she said. “It was a case of: ‘Don’t look behind the curtain, little lady, while I make a baby for you.’ My mother wanted a family with the man she loved.”

Otis has learned to embrace the notion that Fortier gave him life. “My view of the whole thing changed a little bit when I looked at my grandchild, and the love that my daughter has in her marriage, and I thought: ‘It has to be okay.’”

 

The film takes a darker turn with the introduction of Jonathan Stensland, 55, a builder living in Minnesota. The adopted son of a Lutheran pastor and a nurse, he enjoyed a happy childhood. But at age 17, he decided to track down his birth mother. Her name was Connie Fortier and she was just 18 years his senior.

 

“She called me just before Valentine’s Day in 1992 and came to visit,” Stensland told The Post. “Even at that early stage, I got the sense there was some kind of dark shadow over who my father was.”

 

He found out the “donor” was Fortier, Connie’s adopted dad, through a series of letters in which she explained she had never had intercourse ahead of her pregnancy.

 

“There was some crazy tale about Quincy giving her an examination and getting some swabs mixed up,” recalled Stensland. “He tried to say there was a possibility that it was a virgin birth.”

 

Overcome by curiosity, Stensland went to meet Fortier in Las Vegas. “He had muscles like mine — like Popeye — and it was very clear we shared the same DNA,” he said. “He was whistling and, if I didn’t know better, I probably would have quite liked the guy.”

 

Eight years later, Quincy E. Fortier Jr. filed a lawsuit against his father, then 87. He claimed he had been sexually abused by his namesake between the ages of three and 14 and had also watched his dad abuse his siblings and other kids.

 

In 2002, a jury rejected the son’s claims. The verdict came a year after Fortier settled a lawsuit with a woman named Mary Craddock, who sued him for allegedly covertly inseminating her twice with his sperm, leading to her giving birth to a girl and a boy in the 1970s. Craddock was given a gag order.

 

Interviewed in “Baby God,” Quincy Jr., now 67, labels his dad “crazy” and “a pervert” and says he would not be surprised if there are “hundreds” of half-siblings.

 

He also stands by his former claims of abuse. “[My father] molested everyone. The happiest he ever made me was lying in his coffin dead. That’s when I knew I was safe.”

 

Quincy Jr.’s words are especially painful for Babst, who spent much of her 31-year career in law enforcement protecting vulnerable people from predators. It led her to wonder out loud in “Baby God:” “Do you want to say your father was a monster? And what does that say about you?”

 

In another scene, the mother of five boys points out: “He has propagated himself through me and my family. It’s a chain reaction that I can’t really stop.”

 

Fortier died in 2006, 15 years after being named the 1991 “Nevada Doctor of the Year.” His deferential obituary acknowledged his eight children, 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

 

The list did not include Stensland who, together with the other half-siblings, can only take guesses on the motivation and mindset of the man who fathered him.

 

“I did sense that there was a little bit of a pleasure in pulling it off,” he says in the film. “These forbidden fruits shouldn’t even exist. But somehow he is the reason we exist.”

[samhexum]

Life imitated art on a Brooklyn street Tuesday morning when a gunman executed a 31-year-old man who was apparently enforcing a no-parking zone for an upcoming “Law & Order: Organized Crime” shoot, it was reported.

Police said the deadly shooting happened at about 5:23 a.m. on July 19 in front of an apartment house on North Henry Street off Norman Avenue in Greenpoint.

According to WABC-TV, the victim — Johnny Pizarro, 31, a production assistant from Palmetto Street in Ridgewood, Queens — was gunned down while holding parking spots on North Henry Street in preparation for filming.

Officers from the 94th Precinct, in responding to reports of the shooting, found Pizarro shot in the face and neck.

Following a preliminary investigation, authorities said, detectives determined that Pizarro had been sitting inside a parked vehicle when the unidentified shooter walked up, opened the driver’s side door to the vehicle and began firing.

The motive for the shooting remains unknown and under investigation, police sources said. It’s believed that Pizarro was the shooter’s intended target, a source familiar with the case said.

EMS rushed Pizarro to Woodhull Hospital the hospital that was built on the site of my (twin) uncles’ liquor store, where one died when he fell off a ladder and hit his head, ironically being taken to the closest hospital because there wasn’t one in the neighborhood, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Detectives are continuing to seek the shooter, who was described as a man with a medium complexion and a thin build, standing about 5 feet, 4 inches tall, who wore a black hooded sweatshirt and black pants.

Throughout the day Tuesday, real-life detectives canvassed North Henry Street, looking for evidence and possible witnesses to the murder.

One neighborhood resident said local drivers constantly have beefs with film and television production companies that frequent the area and wind up closing off blocks to park vehicles and related equipment.

“It is a battle between production companies and trying to find parking,” the resident said. “They put up signs all the time, the production companies put them up all the time. I am upset that this happened to a production assistant.”

NBC and Universal Television released a statement Tuesday mourning the lost crew member: “We were terribly saddened and shocked to hear that one of our crew members was the victim of a crime early this morning and has died as a result. We are working with local law enforcement as they continue to investigate. Our hearts go out to his family and friends, and we ask that you respect their privacy during this time.”

I guess Mr. Meloni’s gonna have to put on some pants and investigate.

[samhexum]

The 3rd-from-last episode of the original LAW & ORDER:

Immortal

A fatal stabbing leads to the discovery that a bio-research firm has been exploiting the cells of an African American man who died 50 years ago for medical research, but has never compensated his dirt-poor descendants.

Today:

Family of Henrietta Lacks celebrates settlement of HeLa cell lawsuit against biotech giant

“The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment about the settlement,” said Crump, who was hired in 2021 by Lacks’ family to explore litigation against biotech companies that profit from HeLa cells — an immortal cell line derived from a sample taken from the Turner Station resident over 70 years ago at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

[samhexum]

Charlie Sheen's Neighbor Arrested After Attempted Break-in...

Uh, didn't we see this for 8 years on TWO AND a half MEN? 

You know, the actress married to John Ritter's son lives next to Charlie...

[soloyo215]

I actually remember I read a book about the cases that the Espisodes of Law and Order are based on. Many episodes are inspired by true cases. My surprise is how many men have fathered children that way.

[samhexum]

 

Life imitating art: Mariska Hargitay mistaken for real-life cop by lost child

She’s a hero on and off screen.

[CuriousByNature]

39 minutes ago, samhexum said:

 

Life imitating art: Mariska Hargitay mistaken for real-life cop by lost child

She’s a hero on and off screen.

She's amazing.  I hope she carries on with the show for many more years, at least until Olivia Benson enters a care home. lol