After one woman discovered eight unknown siblings following a commercial DNA test, she investigated and learned that her biological father was her mother's fertility doctor, according to court documents from Marion County, Indiana. Dr. Donald Cline had told his patients he was inseminating them with "fresh sperm" from a medical student or resident.
"It was unethical, what he did. He was telling his patients one thing and doing another," the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said
"This kind of thing happens very rarely, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine doesn't keep numbers on it," said Eleanor Nicoll, a spokeswoman for the society.
The Cline case began with one woman and quickly led to her half-sisters.
Jacoba Ballard's investigation into her identity began when she became curious about her history, the court documents explain.
Similarly, Kristy Killion became interested in her roots when she reached adulthood. She knew that her parents had used a fertility clinic, so she called Cline's office directly. The doctor told her that although he recognized her parents' names, he had shredded the medical records, and so he could not help her find her sperm donor. Accepting what he told her, she listed herself on a website that connects donor children.
After Killion was matched to Ballard, the two half-sisters talked, and then both took a DNA test. At this point, they found more siblings -- nine people total -- and then became suspicious "because there were only supposed to be three successful pregnancies using the same sperm donor," the court documents state.
Eventually, they discovered a genetic link to Doug Cline, the doctor's son. When contacted on Facebook, Doug told them his father had admitted donating sperm samples to different laboratories over the years. Surprised, confused and wanting to know more, Ballard arranged to speak with Doug's father: the doctor himself.
During a face-to-face meeting with Ballard, Killion and four other siblings, Cline confessed he'd donated his sperm, not through a bank, about 50 times and "admitted to doing wrong by inseminating the women with his own semen, but felt that he was helping women because they really wanted a baby," the court documents say. He also said he felt pressured into doing what he'd done because he didn't always have access to fresh sperm.
In 2014, Killion and Ballard sent complaints to the Indiana attorney general's office, Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Tim DeLaney told WXIN. During a subsequent legal investigation, Cline allegedly lied about his medical practices in a letter to the office; the falsehood became obvious when "the result from the DNA analysis test factually state that Dr. Donald Cline is the biological father of Kristy Killion and Jacoba Ballard," the court documents state.
Cline retired from his medical practice at Reproductive Endocrinology Associates in 2009. Now, he faces up to five years in prison if convicted of both counts of obstruction of justice, said Peg McLeish, a spokeswoman for the Marion County Prosecutor's Office. Cline's next court hearing is a pretrial conference October 17.
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