Fertility doctor who impregnated women with his own sperms says he wouldn’t have done it if he knew he would be caught.
Dr Donald J Cline, 77, is facing fraud charges in Indiana, USA, following changing his story on whether or not he used his own sperm to impregnate his patients without them knowing.
The accusations of Cline using his own sperm in his clinic arose after one woman discovered via a DNA test that she was related to at least 8 other people whose parents had used Dr Cline’s services.
When confronted with the accusations, the doctor denied them completely. ’I can emphatically say that at no time did I ever use my own sample for insemination,’ Cline wrote in a legally binding statement in 2009.
However in later conversations with accusers in early 2016 he said he had in fact donated his own sperm, but only 8 times. Yet three months later he amended his story again – saying he had used his own donations around 50 times.
In his defence Cline explained that he felt under pressure because the women ‘really wanted a baby’ and that “if he would have known that DNA (testing) would have come this far and this would have come out, he would not have done it.’
DNA tests have confirmed he is related to at least 2 of the accusing siblings, but it is unclear why the others have not been tested.
Dr Cline is now facing felony charges of presenting false documents with the intent of misleading authorities during an official investigation.