I know the title of this post reads like a National Enquirer headline, but it’s 100% true.
A 57-year old Cambridge man recently learned that he had not one, but two children with a woman he divorced over a decade ago.
How did this happen?
In 1999, the victim decided to freeze his sperm in case he became infertile from undergoing drug treatment for severe arthritis.
TheDailyMail writes:
He stored sperm at the Bourn Hall Clinic in Cambridge to ensure that he and his wife, who married in 1979, could have a child if the treatment left him infertile.
In June 2000 the couple decided to divorce and weeks later she visited the clinic and forged his signature, allowing doctors to create embryos from his frozen sperm and her egg.
She gave birth to a girl in June 2001, claiming it was the result of a one-night stand, and a boy in September 2003.
The ex-wife committed fraud and theft twice, which is bad enough and, not to mention illegal. She then knowingly and purposefully kept the victim in the dark about the existence of the two ill gotten children until the boy needed to have heart surgery a few years ago.
When the boy needed hospital treatment for a hole in the heart, his mother’s sister phoned the [victim] to reveal that both children were his.
The man, who had remarried in 2002, then had to tell his new wife that he already had a family.
‘The girl had been in my house when her mother visited my dad, who was dying,’ said the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons. ‘I didn’t even know she was mine. My dad died not knowing he had a granddaughter.
‘When the girl got older my ex-wife texted me saying she wanted to see her father. The children asked their mum where they came from and she told them, “The freezer”.’ In 2007 the ex-wife demanded he pay an extra £100,000 after she fell into debt.
Truth is very often stranger than fiction, but wait, it gets better.
A judge ruled that a settlement he made after the divorce, in which the woman kept the family home, was unfair because it did not take the two children into account and the man was forced to pay out the cash. He says he has also spent almost £200,000 in legal fees over the years.
The man now has two daughters aged eight and seven with his second wife. He sees his other two children for two days every fortnight.
‘My new wife has been amazing about it all,’ he said. ‘She speaks to my ex-wife to do the best for the children but it has put a strain on our relationship.
‘I love the children and spend money on taking them out and buying them clothes, but it is an expense I shouldn’t really have. The cost of this has been huge.’
A judge ruled that the 2000 divorce settlement was “unfair” because it didn’t take into account the two children who did not yet exist; two children who were conceived by a criminal act of fraud perpetrated by the ex-wife, unbeknownst to her ex-husband and without his consent. Apparently, some UK family court judges have their heads jammed as far up their “arses” as their US counterparts.
This man and his current wife deserve medals. Can you imagine this happening to you? Can you imagine having to tell your wife and your children, “I just discovered my ex-wife stole my sperm and as a result I have two kids who are your half-siblings and, by the way, we have to give my ex our life savings or I’ll go to jail?”
Wait, it gets even better.
His ex-wife, now 51, said: ‘I don’t believe I have done anything wrong. It was getting later and later for me and I wanted to have a child. If I had not done it then I would not be blessed with my children. I have no regrets.’
Just wow. Not only does this criminal have no remorse, she was rewarded by the UK judicial system for committing fraud, theft and, I would argue, rape.
Me, me, me. I, I, I. This woman doesn’t deserve these children; she deserves jail time. The victim is out close to $600,000 and this woman walks away scott free with $200,000 and retains primary custody of the children she conceived illegally.
Why isn’t she in jail? Why hasn’t the fertility clinic been sued? Why hasn’t this man been awarded sole custody of the children? He has demonstrated incredible integrity, decency and honor while his ex-wife is a forger, a thief and a rapist.
Women who have children without a man’s consent and without his knowledge shouldn’t be able to go after him later for cash rewards. In my opinion, allowing women to steal children and/or having the children against a man’s wishes is nothing more than legalized, state-sponsored extortion.
If a woman is so desperate to be a mother, why not go to a fertility clinic and purchase sperm from an anonymous donor? I’ll tell you why, because she wouldn’t be able to go after the father for child support and other financial goodies nor would she be able to hold the poor bastard hostage for 2 decades or more.
I’m outraged for the victim in this case, although, TheDailyMail doesn’t refer to this man as a victim in the article (that’s my edit). They refer to him by his profession, “haulier” (a truck driver/contractor). He is a victim. He was robbed of his sperm and he was robbed of the knowledge of the existence of the children. He lost their early years. The victim “is now demanding a change in the law to ensure no other parents go through his torment.” I hope he prevails.
This man is a victim. The perpetrator is a woman. Was she punished? No. She was rewarded with a $200,000 cash pay out and the children. Is anyone else outraged by this story?
Counseling with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD
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Hi Dr T,
Sadly the joke in the UK about divorce is a a fair and even split is him with the mortgage and her with the children and the house. The mysandry in the legal system here still beggars belief.
I read this article and was unsurprised by it. I suspect he had to sign a hugely restrictive waver at a private fertility clinic preventing him suing them under any circumstances.
Also under English law ALL sperm and egg donors are now potentially identifiable i.e. there is no legally protected anonymous donoring, children can chose to get information on the identity of their donor parent(s) when they turn 18. Donoring has almost ceased to happen.
So while not excusing her…and I think I would slap her good and hard if I found out who she was, there are some context features that make this case slightly different than a similar thing happening in another judiciary.
I just hope she gets her comeupance and her daughters want to live with Daddy once they are 14…
KH
Hi KH,
I hope she gets her comeuppance, too.
I’m not surprised sperm donations have all but ceased. I wouldn’t want to be hunted down for CS by some woman who used my genetic material to have a child under the condition of anonymity. How it’s legal for women to do this is beyond me.
As for a restrictive waiver, it ought to be null and void since the clinic essentially aided and abetted this entitled ex-wife in committing theft by not contacting the man and vetting her documentation.
Infuriating.
Dr T
So the mother enjoys all the benefits and joys of raising these children, but when it is time to involve the father, it is only as a walking ATM?
He should only have to pay if he received benefits of fatherhood.
Further down the rabbithole we go.
Further down the rabbit hole, indeed.
This man is more than a walking ATM. No ATM I’m aware of dispenses cash in $200,000 increments. This is a state-sponsored stick-up job.
I never really thought of it in those terms and depth of depravity. The most I would imagine was a cunning lawyer who made this ‘fly under the legal radar’.
To imagine that judges and elected officials know of this and are complicit in its being carried out speaks of a MUCH larger problem. Chilling, Dr T.
Rest assured, however, that these people have to live with themselves and even though they may wish to dilute and distract from their deeds, they cannot escape their conscience.
You and Mr Elam are pioneers in bringing the mirror up to their faces.
The problem is, people like the women who stole the sperm don’t seem to have a conscience, which is why I believe some degree of sociopathy is at play.
This also shows the attitude of some women/ex-wives/ex-girlfriends who believe they are entitled to everything and everything, including DNA, from their ex-husbands/boyfriends. Once you’re with a woman like this, she believes she owns you forever. The only term that comes to mind is entitled, unscrupulous whackjob.
I can’t resist an opportunity to make a case for the MRM with this. As much criticism as I get for being an MRA by fellow men, this story cuts right to the core of just one of about a dozen reason why I am an activist.
This is nothing less than legally sanction child abuse, theft and other criminal conduct, and it is tolerated because the victim is male and the perpetrator is female.
I am not going to try to set up a soap box on Dr. T’s good site here, but this kind of thing is exactly why more men need to start looking at the systemic LEGAL problems that can take them down like this at any time.
There are men right now paying court ordered child support for children they didn’t even father.
You’re welcome to set up a satellite soapbox here anytime, Paul.
I wish more men (and women) would start to very loudly protest this kind of travesty and not stop protesting until our legislators right these social wrongs and blatant sexist discrimination.
What would happen if a man forged his ex-wife’s signature, stole her frozen eggs from a fertility clinic, paid a surrogate to carry the embryo, raised the children without the ex-wife knowing about it and then went after her for back CS? He’d be in jail, portrayed as some kind of depraved freak and his ex would have the option of taking the children or making them wards of the state if she didn’t want to be a mother. Enough already.
I just have to say this is completely horrifying. I can barely wrap my head around it.
It’s hard to believe it got that far. I would expect a rational person somewhere a long the line to have stopped and questioned what was happening.
And the “unfair settlement” B.S. is appalling. That jugge should be tested for drug use.
I got a call from a friend’s son the other night.
He tells me
1) The court ordered him to sign away his legal rights to his baby (???)
2) The social worker (a non-lawyer) told him, “I don’t care if you have to live in a box, or if you have no job, you still have to pay child support.”
3) Then the social worker gave him a cry-baby story about the mother of his baby not having her GED, so he had to pay her so that she can get her GED.
I told him he’d better look up our state’s family law online!!! He’s getting royally scr*wed. I was enraged.
Re: The story – I cannot believe this woman just got PAID for committing a number of crimes, TWICE!! I hope that The Universe really does serve up some justice….
Since it happened in the UK it does not surprise me as much. I work with many people from the UK and the stories they tell are as bad and in many cases worse than what goes on in Family Court here in the United States.
Recently one guy I have known for years was telling of his most recent run-in where a secretary in his office discovered that because the company had lost revenue he was going to have to lay her off to keep the company running. So what did she do, why she declared that he had been forcing her to have an affair with him and that it was against her will. At the same time his wife decided she wanted a divorce, coincidentally. So after a year and a half the court decided the secretary was owed 5 years pay because he was going to lay her off only because she said she refused to have sex with him any longer even though she had never had sex with him because there was no affair. And his wife got full custody of their kids, the house, and maintenance for another 10 years. He is now stuck living in Canada, in an apartment he can barely afford, working on a long term contract where he is doing his best to pick up every hour he can to send back to these two women and the court. He told me that for some reason it didn’t matter what evidence he had since as long as there was the least possible doubt of his innocence than he was automatically guilty.
Unless he could account for every hour during times when his secretary claimed things occurred than her story was accepted as fact. The wife’s case was built on the secretary’s case claiming infidelity. And so the two women are sitting pretty back in the UK while he works as their slave overseas and out of sight.
At first blush I thought maybe there was more to the story that he didn’t tell me, but after talking to others who know him it seems that there is suspicion of collusion between the secretary and wife. Unfortunately for him it would take more money than he can raise to continue to fight and the Court’s award to the two women preclude that from happening since he is barely surviving. It really seems that like here as a man you are usually at the mercy of the presiding Judge and if he doesn’t believe you or like you than you are toast.
I debated about a second comment, but thought this was worth mentioning.
Other than the huge difference of it being another human life or even two additional human lives, what is the moral or ethical difference for these PD women when it comes to rationalizing these actions between the results of this story or committing fraud to obtain cash or property that far exceeds what is fair in a divorce settlement?
What is the moral or ethical difference between what happened here and what happens when a PD mother isolates the kids from the father and does not allow contact for weeks or months all while delaying things in court and then ultimately demanding enormous sums of money in child support and maintenance for the father to see the kids even for a very brief visit each month?
It seems to me that this PD woman simply took the already existing rationalization to the next logical level and as usual received full blessings to do so from a court system that is far from just.
Wow… that is outrageous!
This is a frightening precedent for any court to set.
It’s difficult enough trying to get over the prior effects of Crazy. It takes time to get over the trust issues, just for starters.
The thought that they can still reach out and stick the claws into someone five, ten, fifteen years later – extract another gallon of anguish and the cash-sweat of their supposedly-free life, and their new partner’s life as well – and get away with it.
This makes me shudder.
As a minimum, the court should take those children away from her and lock her away. If nothing else, telling a kid that they’re the results of a one-night-stand should have been one heck of a warning sign for anyone with sense.
Telling that to any kid is messed up to the maximum.
go after the judge. i mean this. please post the judge’s name. please post the woman’s legal representation. tell us the court district, give us the appropriate email addresses and fax numbers.
exposure, for the most part, leads to shame. and shame, whether it is possible for the perpetrators to feel shame at all, can be bestowed and will be bestowed by those who cultivate consistent kindness and honesty. and a shamed judge can be guided to reform, or, simply: deposed.
i wonder how quickly one could gather a minimum of 50% of the email addresses of people within 25 miles of this judges home, same with his/her workplace. i wonder if it is possible to have the judge shunned at places where he/she eats, at grocery stores. even just a local paper-based poster campaign with the judge’s face oughta help.
nothing but pure facts in the campaign. not one judgement.
is it really true that she forged his signature?
if so, nothing will continue unless the father presses charges.
please, take this case public.
for that matter, who are his lawyers?
umm…has he even pressed charges for, i’m going to make this up “unlawful/fraudulent misuse of genetic material?” or maybe Dr. T. phrases it better “theft of genetic material.”
right…fraud and theft.
when’s the mother going to trial? has he even pressed charges?
Sad to say it doesn’t really shock me. In a matter of no time this will be in U.S. Courts.I have been just waiting for some anonomous sperm donor to get sued for child support. It will happen. In many states (especially CA) the child support collection people have gone to extremes. I am not saying if you are the father you shouldn’t pay child support. But in CA you don’t even have to be the father.
Under their divorce laws if a step dad has raised children as his own he has to pay. If a woman had an affair & the husband was unaware that the child isn’t his he STILL has to pay.
A friend of mine was military and stationed there. He met & married what he thought was his “dream girl”. Only his “dream girl” didn’t know how to keep her legs closed. Every time he would deploy she had MULTIPLE affairs he was unaware of.
He did find out & divorced her. He had paternity test done on his the kids. NEITHER was his biologically. STILL the court ordered him to pay 35% of his income in child support (the law says 25% but too bad). Since he is in the Air Force she immediatly moved to have it directly deducted from his pay & won. The court stated that even though the children weren’t his he had to pay because he had raised them as his.
What about making the real father pay? If she even knows who they are which is doubtful. This poor guy now has another 15years he has to pay for kids that his wife had as a result of HER bad behavior. Oh & yes she did get custody. Wake up people. It may not be the law yet in your state but it will be.
Ron 🙁