Netflix’s 90-minute documentary by Lucie Jourdan Our Father is a true crime documentary about fertility doctor Donald Cline, who spent 30 years surreptitiously using his own sperm to impregnate the women who came to him for treatment. The first trailer for Our Father has been released.
Jacoba Ballard had known since she was a teenager that she was conceived with donor sperm and assumed she would have one or two half-siblings. She joined an internet group for adoptees and donor-conceived children when she was 33 years old, and it wasn’t long before she met another woman whose mother had also received reproductive therapy from Dr Cline. But what began as a curiosity about her own ancestors quickly turned into a tragic journey that lead her to uncover one man’s dark secret—and 94 of her own half-siblings. Our Father recounts how DNA testing exposed Donald Cline’s usage of his own sperm in dozens of his own patients during the 1970s and 1980s.
Ballard’s DNA test sparked her interest, and her online family tree, which she was compiling from the results, kept pointing back to Cline. She quickly realises that she had not been using donor samples. Instead, he had been infertilizing a large number of women with his own sperm. However, when Ballard reported this alarming revelation to the authorities, she was mostly ignored. The siblings then came together to submit a complaint about Cline’s behaviour with Indiana’s attorney general, which resulted in a criminal investigation. However, there were no particular criminal charges against him that could be brought against him.
Cline took advantage of the taboos that existed at the time and advised patients to keep the fact that they utilised a sperm donor a secret and never inform their children how they were created. Lucie Jourdan, the director of Our Father, remarked in an interview with The Guardian: “It was a very specific directive that you never ever tell your children you had fertility issues or insemination. This was part of the dialogue he had with his patients. They were trusting their doctor to give them the right advice.” Because DNA testing was not invented until 1984, Cline must have assumed that he would never be caught for his crimes in the 1970s. He certainly wouldn’t have predicted the widespread use of DNA testing as part of internet genealogy records, which is what finally caught him off guard.
He was only condemned of two charges at the end of 2018, obstructing the inquiry and lying about using his own sperm. He only received a $500 fine and lost his medical licence, but he had been retired since 2009. Cline is still alive, in his 80s, and has never been sentenced to prison for his crimes. He also appears to have no regrets about his actions and has never explained why he did them.
Have a look at the trailer of Our Father:
