Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mama Maya acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on from Mamma Maya. You're listening to No
Speaker 1: Filter and I'm mea Friedman. How many times can you
Speaker 1: find out life changing news about your dad? For Eve Wiley,
Speaker 1: the answer is three times, and it was about three
Speaker 1: different men. Eve Wiley has had three fathers in her lifetime.
Speaker 1: One of them sadly passed away when she was seven.
Speaker 1: One of them is a great guy, but he wasn't
Speaker 1: who she thought he was, And one of them was
Speaker 1: an egomaniacal monster. If you watch the Netflix series The
Speaker 1: Man with a Thousand Kids that told the story of
Speaker 1: cereal sperm donor Jonathan Meyer, you might recognize Eve's name.
Speaker 1: She wasn't impregnated by Jonathan, but she helped try and
Speaker 1: stop him from harming other women, more women, and from
Speaker 1: doing more damage to the hundreds, probably thousands of children
Speaker 1: he's already conceived. But Jonathan isn't the only guy who's
Speaker 1: trying to superminate the world. There are more serial sperm
Speaker 1: doners like him out there who, for whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: obsessed with the idea of impregnating women under false pretenses
Speaker 1: for their own twisted reasons, and nobody knows that better
Speaker 1: than eight. If you were seven when your father died,
Speaker 1: how old were you when you discovered that he wasn't
Speaker 1: actually your biological father.
Speaker 2: I was sixteen years old when I was going through
Speaker 2: my mom's emails. She was a school nurse at my school,
Speaker 2: and so I kind of had this little habit where
Speaker 2: I would go unto her emails and I would find
Speaker 2: all the juicy gossip on my code words or if
Speaker 2: you know, maybe a teacher sent an email that like
Speaker 2: I had a bad grade or something. You know. It
Speaker 2: was management for myself, was what it was. And that's
Speaker 2: when I found the emails of my mom email in California,
Speaker 2: Cara Bank, and I saw my birth date on it.
Speaker 2: My thought was, you know, from a small town, my
Speaker 2: grandpa has cows that my mom was doing something for
Speaker 2: like artificial insemination for the bulls.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't have been most people's first thought, but I
Speaker 1: see why that was relevant for you.
Speaker 2: It was very relevant. But as soon as I saw
Speaker 2: my birth date, I knew in that exact moment that
Speaker 2: I was the juicy gossip within the coport. So that's
Speaker 2: when I found out that I was doing or conceived.
Speaker 1: When someone finds something life changing via snooping, there is
Speaker 1: a dilemma because you've got to admit to the snooping
Speaker 1: to be able to confront the person about the thing
Speaker 1: you've discovered. What did you do next?
Speaker 2: It was late at night. What I did exactly was
Speaker 2: I ended up playing SIMS and creating a lot of
Speaker 2: babies in my son's game. Interesting kind of playing it
Speaker 2: out there. But I went to bed and I woke
Speaker 2: up the next morning and my mom was in the
Speaker 2: bathroom getting ready, and I dis barged in and I
Speaker 2: was like, mom, I know that Doug isn't my dad.
Speaker 2: And I just remember her looking at me in the
Speaker 2: reflection of the mirror, just turning around. She's like, what
Speaker 2: are you talking about? And she starts bawling. And at
Speaker 2: the time at this like, you know, it's just a
Speaker 2: naive sixteen year old. I was excited, you know. For me,
Speaker 2: I didn't understand the complexities of donor conception, you know,
Speaker 2: in a social sense, but also in an ethical sense.
Speaker 2: For me, I was like, I still have, you know,
Speaker 2: a dad. I probably have half siblings and so it
Speaker 2: was very like, you know, Pollyanna about this, and that's
Speaker 2: how I kind of confronted her, and she did a
Speaker 2: really good job of you know, Eve, you were seven
Speaker 2: when your dad died. They told us not to ever
Speaker 2: tell you and it wasn't going to be important. And
Speaker 2: she brought up this green folder and it was every
Speaker 2: print out from an email that she had ever spoken
Speaker 2: to anyone on like Yahoo messenger boards, not to like
Speaker 2: date myself. You know, it was before Facebook, and you know,
Speaker 2: her medical records and you know, all of the things
Speaker 2: to where she really was creating this breadcrumb trowel for me.
Speaker 2: And for me that was really meaningful because I could
Speaker 2: actually see it that that she really was going to
Speaker 2: tell me. She just didn't know how to tell me.
Speaker 1: I imagine there were lots of different feelings. You say you
Speaker 1: were quite Pollyanna about it, but I imagine you're losing Doug,
Speaker 1: who you thought was your father, essentially your stepfather at
Speaker 1: age seven. That must have been pretty traumatic for you
Speaker 1: at that age. Did it feel a little bit like
Speaker 1: a new phase of grief in terms of losing him
Speaker 1: again at sixteen?
Speaker 2: You don't know if at sixteen I could wrap my
Speaker 2: head around that part. You know, there definitely was a
Speaker 2: lot of grief and there was a level of trauma
Speaker 2: of not having you know, that father figure growing up
Speaker 2: right eventually, But for me, I think it was just
Speaker 2: trying to look at it in more of a positive sense. Now,
Speaker 2: Remember at this time, I was not aware that the
Speaker 2: donor could be like, no, I don't want to have
Speaker 2: contact with you, because in my head that was never
Speaker 2: a thing. It wasn't until later where I started to
Speaker 2: realize that, you know, the social constructs of this could
Speaker 2: be very different. With that new information. I think that
Speaker 2: there was, you know, a sense of hesitancy on my
Speaker 2: part and fear that I may be rejected, and so
Speaker 2: it did kind of like snowball into other types of feelings.
Speaker 2: But that morning, in that moment, I was excited, but
Speaker 2: completely naive and completely unaware of what it even meant.
Speaker 1: Because I guess in a way, you lost Doug again,
Speaker 1: but then also your father was alive again because you
Speaker 1: hadn't even met him and he was out there somewhere right.
Speaker 1: What a lot of emotions it is.
Speaker 2: And is I think it's one of those times too,
Speaker 2: where you know, I was having opposite feelings about something.
Speaker 2: You know. I was excited, but to your point, there
Speaker 2: was a level of grief. But then, you know, growing
Speaker 2: up in my nuclear family, I was this blonde hair,
Speaker 2: blue green eyed little girl. My little sister, who was
Speaker 2: fourteen months younger than me, had this olive skin complexion,
Speaker 2: dark brown hair, dark brown eyes. I looked like no
Speaker 2: one in my family. There was no familiarity, and so
Speaker 2: I was constantly teased for being adopted. And so there
Speaker 2: is something called the thought unknown, where I always knew
Speaker 2: there was a secret. I just didn't know that I
Speaker 2: was the secret until then. So then being able to
Speaker 2: justify and everything makes sense to have an actual reason
Speaker 2: for it instead of wondering what it was.
Speaker 1: Was your sister the biological child of Doug and your mom.
Speaker 2: She was When my parents initially went to their fertility doctor,
Speaker 2: my dad had Verico's fans around his testes, and so
Speaker 2: the recommendation was to get a surgery to get us
Speaker 2: taken care of. So he did that they still aren'
Speaker 2: getting pregnant. So then the next step was to do
Speaker 2: artificial insemination by an anonymous ferm donor. When I was born,
Speaker 2: my parents were pregnant four months later, and so it
Speaker 2: could be that maybe there just wasn't enough time after
Speaker 2: the surgery of the reversal of the surgery. So she
Speaker 2: is the biological child of my dad, Doug.
Speaker 1: So how did things feel between you and her? Learning
Speaker 1: that you were not actually sis, were you were half sisters?
Speaker 1: You had different fathers.
Speaker 2: This one caught me by surprise. I didn't think that
Speaker 2: it would impact her, and that was just you know,
Speaker 2: me being shortsighted. But when we sat my sister down
Speaker 2: and we told her, she started crying. And the only
Speaker 2: thing she said before she ran out of the room
Speaker 2: was well, least you have a dad, And that was
Speaker 2: it that hurt, because then it was like, yeah, now
Speaker 2: I feel guilt, and wow, this is getting really complicated.
Speaker 2: And you know, there wasn't a book for me to
Speaker 2: go read. There wasn't a blog yet. There wasn't anyone
Speaker 2: that I even knew that was donor conceived except for
Speaker 2: the cows at my grandma's house, And so I didn't
Speaker 2: have a north star to be able to have some
Speaker 2: sort of expectations of how this should go and how
Speaker 2: this could go. Even when I called California Cryobank. At
Speaker 2: this time, no one had made a connection with their donor,
Speaker 2: so they didn't really have any good information for me
Speaker 2: either on how to proceed with this, so it was
Speaker 2: very lonely, and then it became a thing of what,
Speaker 2: I don't want to talk about this in front of
Speaker 2: my sister because it all make her sad, which only
Speaker 2: reinforced that loneliness.
Speaker 1: In Australia, there are laws that came in a few
Speaker 1: decades ago. I think that sperm donors could only be
Speaker 1: anonymous up until the age of any donor children that
Speaker 1: had been conceived were eighteen, and then those children had
Speaker 1: a legal right to find them. What are the laws,
Speaker 1: I imagine it probably differs state by state. But did
Speaker 1: you know that you would be able to find your
Speaker 1: the identity of your donor or? Was that tricky?
Speaker 2: It was tricky because it is literally the wild wild
Speaker 2: West here in good old us of A. It's entirely
Speaker 2: left up to the donors in the clinics, And so
Speaker 2: at the time that I was conceived, the idea of
Speaker 2: an open donor versus a closed donor wasn't even a
Speaker 2: topic of conversation. The recommendation in the eighties was don't ask,
Speaker 2: don't tell, like they don't need to know, it's not important.
Speaker 2: You're the parent and that's it. So there wasn't a
Speaker 2: level of education to educate on the donor be canceive
Speaker 2: experience or about how important genetic identity is. And then
Speaker 2: even now I just feel like in the last you know,
Speaker 2: ten years, the sperm banks here in clinics are just
Speaker 2: now starting to realize, you know, maybe anonymous donation isn't
Speaker 2: great because here anonymity breaths fraud when you're able to
Speaker 2: exist under the cloak of anonymity. And it wasn't until
Speaker 2: the you know, invention of commercial dnate testing that is
Speaker 2: really blowing the lid off of those So as far
Speaker 2: as the being the laws here, there's just pure recommendations
Speaker 2: per the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
Speaker 1: Will you angradate your mom that she hadn't told you
Speaker 1: and that she had no intention of telling you?
Speaker 2: Yes and no. I was angry that I was live
Speaker 2: to you, But when she pulled out the green folder,
Speaker 2: all of that kind of melted away because I could
Speaker 2: see the amount of hours that she poured into this,
Speaker 2: and I believed her when she said I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to tell you, I didn't when to tell you.
Speaker 2: But I knew that if I did all of this
Speaker 2: research and had all this information, that you would believe
Speaker 2: me that I have been doing this for a very
Speaker 2: long time. And so I think that that very much
Speaker 2: helped bridge the gap between those emotions for me, because
Speaker 2: I could very much empathize with not being able to
Speaker 2: tell a seven year old whose father just passed away, well,
Speaker 2: but that's not like your real dad, because let's go
Speaker 2: talk about, you know, how babies are made now. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's no way, like I totally.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of conversation, yeah.
Speaker 2: Being seven, being like like just understanding developmentally, you know,
Speaker 2: abstract thinking. And it didn't seem as appropriate at that
Speaker 2: time to explain grief, death and artificial insamination.
Speaker 1: And your mom must have felt protective of Doug and
Speaker 1: his relationship with you, and I can say that I
Speaker 1: can understand why she did it. How did you find
Speaker 1: the identity of your Dina? What did you learn in
Speaker 1: that green folder?
Speaker 2: So in the green folder I had my mom's medical records,
Speaker 2: and in there it said the date that I was
Speaker 2: conceived with Donor one oh six from California Crowdbank. And
Speaker 2: this was in the doctor's handwriting. So that was confirmation
Speaker 2: of my conception. And my mom had one sheet of
Speaker 2: paper and it had California Crow Bank all the donors listed,
Speaker 2: and it was just one line donor number, physical characteristics,
Speaker 2: level of education, and interest, like just very limited, and
Speaker 2: you could see like not this one, not this one,
Speaker 2: maybe this one, and then she circled one and this one,
Speaker 2: and then there were letters to like Wendy or emails
Speaker 2: like Wendy Kramer Single Mothers by Choice organization. I think
Speaker 2: at one point there was like maybe a Canadian donor
Speaker 2: conception network, different professional organizations, and all of it was like,
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to get more information. We knew his
Speaker 2: religion was of I Made Butcher, this the Bahai faith,
Speaker 2: and so my mom had all of these like communications
Speaker 2: with that religious organization. So that was kind of what
Speaker 2: was the bulk of the folder. There were also personal
Speaker 2: emails and personal stories where she was asked, how do
Speaker 2: I tell my daughter you're an adult?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: What should I do? What should I not do? That
Speaker 2: type of stuff.
Speaker 1: So she'd been trying to track down your donor secretly
Speaker 1: all these years.
Speaker 2: Kind of I think that in her very limited way,
Speaker 2: she was trying to understand you know what was the
Speaker 2: network in the landscape. Donor Sibling registery was not quite
Speaker 2: built yet, but that was the only pretty much formal
Speaker 2: platform where you could put it in your donor number
Speaker 2: and you would hope that the donor would register as
Speaker 2: well as other half siblings.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, when she was choosing her donor, she chose
Speaker 1: number one hundred and six because he had certain qualities.
Speaker 1: He had an interest in film and politics, which she
Speaker 1: thought was similar to her and to her husband. And
Speaker 1: you tracked him down, you said about making contact with
Speaker 1: number one hundred and six, Who did you find?
Speaker 2: I found Steve Shoal and I contacted the Crow Bank.
Speaker 2: Their rules at the time were we need the medical
Speaker 2: records from the doctor or to confirm, and they also
Speaker 2: had their records that were purchasing records from the doctor,
Speaker 2: so those things matched up, and they sent kind of
Speaker 2: like a questionnaire that was like, let's update your medical records,
Speaker 2: not saying like, hey, you have a daughter. And so
Speaker 2: that process took about a year because I think eventually
Speaker 2: Steve don one of six, who I also call Dad,
Speaker 2: he was like, why do y'all need this? And they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: because you have a daughter and he was like, I'm
Speaker 2: sorry what you know, he was surprised by it. I
Speaker 2: think in his head he was like, I'm just doing
Speaker 2: this for research.
Speaker 1: Well, had he forgotten that he donated spam? Like why
Speaker 1: had he donated for money?
Speaker 2: He was in college, easy way to make a bug, like,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: He'd sort of forgotten about it. He was probably stoned.
Speaker 1: It was college, he was high.
Speaker 2: He wasn't exactly, he wasn't bad about it. He's like
Speaker 2: Lodu's best life, Like I'm doing it anyways, Like what, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember that vaguely, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: And where was he in his life when he found
Speaker 1: out that you existed.
Speaker 2: So he was a father of three children, and the
Speaker 2: youngest one was pretty small, and the oldest one was
Speaker 2: like maybe in middle school, So you know, he was
Speaker 2: in a phase of life that you know, also was complicated.
Speaker 2: He had every ability to be like, oh, he'll no,
Speaker 2: this is not going to work, and he didn't. And
Speaker 2: I had already written a letter, and I had asked
Speaker 2: the sperm bank when he made contact to forward that letter.
Speaker 2: I had in my mom's and her folder. I had
Speaker 2: read so many stories of people who were just outright
Speaker 2: rejected by their biological parent, and it ended up becoming
Speaker 2: a fear of mine and I was like, if I
Speaker 2: only have one chance, like I want to be able
Speaker 2: to convey who I am through a letter, and if
Speaker 2: that's all he ever sees and reads, like, maybe that'll
Speaker 2: be enough. And we ended up connecting and then it
Speaker 2: turned to email. I would forward an email to the
Speaker 2: sperm bank, the sperm bank would forward him, and that
Speaker 2: was it, and then we cut them out and then
Speaker 2: ended up talking on the just like forever. And then
Speaker 2: I was living in Austin and college at this time,
Speaker 2: and he flew down to meet me for the first time.
Speaker 2: What was that Like, Oh, I was amazing. I mean
Speaker 2: I was. He came to my apartment and I just
Speaker 2: I opened the door and it was just like a
Speaker 2: huge hug and just we stayed for hours talking in
Speaker 2: my living room and then went to dinner and live
Speaker 2: music and it was just catching up on at this
Speaker 2: point nineteen years. I think because I didn't I didn't
Speaker 2: have any expectations. I didn't know how it was supposed
Speaker 2: to go. And because he is who he is, which
Speaker 2: is just this like amazing open person and I am
Speaker 2: who I am, Like it just worked and it was
Speaker 2: that weekend, the first weekend of meeting him, we ran
Speaker 2: into a friend, one of my friends on the street,
Speaker 2: and just for social clarity, I was like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is my dad. And at the end of that he
Speaker 2: was like, if you will call me that, I'm okay
Speaker 2: with that. And then from that moment one.
Speaker 1: He was dad, and you had three new little siblings.
Speaker 2: I did, but they didn't know yet. They didn't know
Speaker 2: until much later.
Speaker 1: Again, it's a tricky conversation with the little kids. So
Speaker 1: her dad was high in college and he jumped off
Speaker 1: into a cop one day for twenty bucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but for him, you know, it's also he had
Speaker 2: to tell his wife and then I don't know if
Speaker 2: it ever really came up, like you know, while they
Speaker 2: were dating, it never really came up. So he had
Speaker 2: to tell her. And I totally get this. You know,
Speaker 2: as a mother of three myself, I would be pretty
Speaker 2: protective too, So I really understood her desire to not
Speaker 2: want to tell the kids right away, and so it
Speaker 2: took multiple years for them to disclose me to them.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is happens in donor conception a
Speaker 2: lot with parents that disclose when when they're older and
Speaker 2: everybody's nervous and like, oh my gosh, this is going
Speaker 2: to go so bad. They're gonna like freak out and
Speaker 2: never talk to us again. And they told the kids,
Speaker 2: and my sister was like, oh my god, I have
Speaker 2: a sister. And then the two boys were like, that's cool.
Speaker 2: What's for dinner?
Speaker 1: Yea?
Speaker 2: And my dad's like that's it and they're like yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean do we get to like meter or something
Speaker 2: like that? Sounds cool? And they're like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: It never ceases to delight me how disinterested kids are
Speaker 1: in their parents' lives.
Speaker 2: I know, right, it's all our social construct in projection.
Speaker 1: What was your relationship like with your dad's wife, Like,
Speaker 1: and I imagine you have this experience as well with
Speaker 1: the work that you do meeting a lot of donor kids.
Speaker 1: The relationship with the partner of the donum must be
Speaker 1: often fraud.
Speaker 2: Is it? You know? I think in this instance, like
Speaker 2: I could recognize the level of protectiveness, and I was
Speaker 2: really leaning on dad to kind of facilitate that relationship
Speaker 2: because I didn't want obviously to push. But I think
Speaker 2: that they did a really good job of keeping it separate.
Speaker 2: I didn't really get to have a lot of interaction
Speaker 2: with her until my wedding. I think that really kind
Speaker 2: of changed our relationship. We really didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of interface, you know, geograph. We lived in different parts
Speaker 2: of the country. It was always quite an effort to
Speaker 2: visit on either one of our parts.
Speaker 1: After this short break, Eve makes another unsettling discovery that
Speaker 1: will change her life forever. Your relationship with your dad progressed.
Speaker 1: As you say, he officiated at your wedding. He did,
Speaker 1: so you stayed in touch over the next few years.
Speaker 1: The next installment of this story, and the plot twist
Speaker 1: comes when you go on to have children of your
Speaker 1: own and your son becomes sick. What happened to him?
Speaker 2: So my oldest when he was a baby, he was
Speaker 2: vomiting a lot, and he wasn't eating real food, and
Speaker 2: there were all of these things that all of our
Speaker 2: doctors were like, you know, these allergies, and no one
Speaker 2: could really figure out what it is. And about three
Speaker 2: years of all of that, I was like, we got
Speaker 2: to do something different. They recommended looking in more into
Speaker 2: like genetics, and so I was working with this functional
Speaker 2: in doctor and he was like, let's get some info
Speaker 2: on your DNA. The easiest way to do that at
Speaker 2: the time was the commercial DNA test twenty three and
Speaker 2: ME plus health and he'd get what was called raw data.
Speaker 2: So we did that and he called back and he said, hey, Eve,
Speaker 2: it's Celiac disease. And I was like what. I had
Speaker 2: no idea what Celiac disease was. I had no idea
Speaker 2: what an autoimmune disorder was. And he's like, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: what it is, and it's coming from you. And I
Speaker 2: was like, what are you talking about. He's like, you
Speaker 2: need to go get better family history from you know,
Speaker 2: your biological father and biological mother. And so I'm in
Speaker 2: my family, like, who has these stomach issues in coeliac
Speaker 2: and allergies.
Speaker 1: No one, because it's hereditary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's turn serious. So the bigger thing at
Speaker 2: the time was like, Okay, now we know a diagnosis
Speaker 2: is a prognosis, right, And so I was so focused
Speaker 2: on just making my son healthy. The second part of
Speaker 2: this is that there's an ancestry component to the commercial
Speaker 2: DNA testing. And I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 2: the platform, but a lot of my DNA connections were
Speaker 2: saying things like close family to first cousins, and so
Speaker 2: I wasn't really thinking half sibling because I guess I
Speaker 2: just assumed it was a perfect science and would say
Speaker 2: half sibling.
Speaker 1: So it was one of those like twenty three and
Speaker 1: Me or ancestry dot Com that you do the test
Speaker 1: and then they show you who all your relatives my bay.
Speaker 2: Right, those who have also taken the test and at
Speaker 2: about you. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And I
Speaker 2: knew from talking with California cr ibink that dad was
Speaker 2: a popular spirm downer, but they had told me that
Speaker 2: I was one of the older ones, you know. I
Speaker 2: was like, sure, I'm sure this will be happening, but
Speaker 2: it was still newer at this time. This was like
Speaker 2: two thousand and eighteen, and so you know, you just
Speaker 2: don't know what you don't know. So we go on
Speaker 2: vacation and my mom is actually with me and she's like, hey, Eve,
Speaker 2: I actually think those are your half siblings. Like, you know,
Speaker 2: look at like the degree in which you're related, and
Speaker 2: it could be like a different each number is for
Speaker 2: something different, and so then I was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: So then I'm like, you know, on social media, and
Speaker 2: I'm sending the messages through the platform and I connected
Speaker 2: with one and bless his sweet little heart. He is
Speaker 2: from my area where I grew up, and he was like, no,
Speaker 2: I know who you know our dad is and I
Speaker 2: was like, no, no, no, that's our mom's doctor that
Speaker 2: did the insemination, Steve Donner when I six from Oregon.
Speaker 2: He's our biological father. But I don't want to project
Speaker 2: my story onto you guys, so I'm going to have
Speaker 2: him do that DNA test and then you guys can
Speaker 2: figure out if y'all want a relationship. And honestly, I
Speaker 2: just thought he was love you, Andrew, but a redneck
Speaker 2: that just wasn't very smart. And so that was that one.
Speaker 2: And then I kept going down, you know, the list
Speaker 2: of connecting others siblings, and then I came up with
Speaker 2: one who wasn't on social media, but I found him
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn and it was late at night. I messaged
Speaker 2: him and was like, hey, are you the Adam on
Speaker 2: twenty three and me? And he's like yes. I was like,
Speaker 2: I need to talk to you, and he's like, well,
Speaker 2: I think it'd be kind of hard to explain to
Speaker 2: my wife why I need to get out of bed
Speaker 2: to call another woman. I was like, oh, to totally
Speaker 2: get that. I just think I'm like, you're half sibling,
Speaker 2: so just call me tomorrow and my phone immediately rain
Speaker 2: and he's like, okay, you have my attention. Yeah, impulsivity
Speaker 2: was not my future of that night, but yeah, he
Speaker 2: is the one that I talked to you, and I
Speaker 2: thought that you know so much of when you're donor
Speaker 2: conceived or you're non parent expected result, there's always someone
Speaker 2: that is delivering that news right or putting the pieces
Speaker 2: together when it comes out of these platforms. I was like,
Speaker 2: we're donor conceived and he's like, no, there's no way.
Speaker 2: I look like my dad. That's our white story. I
Speaker 2: have a brother. Okay, so we go this whole thing
Speaker 2: and I'm like, all right, and you.
Speaker 1: Just thought he was in denial.
Speaker 2: I thought he was in denial. I mean, and most
Speaker 2: suppose people are right like this stream on the internet
Speaker 2: and like this is weird. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: so if you are my first cousin, and that means
Speaker 2: that your uncle is my biological father, is your uncle
Speaker 2: Steve Shoul And he said no, my uncle is Kim mcmaury's.
Speaker 2: And my world stopped because Kim mcmaury's is doctor Kim
Speaker 2: mcmoury's and was my mom's fertility doctor. And at that
Speaker 2: time I knew it was like everything just kind of
Speaker 2: made sense, even like the little red flags that I've
Speaker 2: been seeing before, like the timeline's not matching up. And
Speaker 2: then it was wow, like I know that people lie
Speaker 2: and DNA doesn't lie, and it was just starting all
Speaker 2: over again, and it was the truth.
Speaker 1: After you hung up the phone, What was going through
Speaker 1: your head.
Speaker 2: A little bit like when I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 2: of that moment of I am onto something very big
Speaker 2: that is going to impact more than just myself. I
Speaker 2: remember literally downing my glass of wine and deciding all
Speaker 2: over again because my mom was upstairs watching a movie
Speaker 2: with my in laws. And my choice was to pretend
Speaker 2: like I never discovered this and continue to live a
Speaker 2: fairy tale life with my dad and my mom and
Speaker 2: just pretend like it never.
Speaker 1: Happens, your second dad stave yep, my.
Speaker 2: Second dad, or to go right upstairs, which is what
Speaker 2: I did, like I was sixteen years old, and tell
Speaker 2: her again that my real biological father was her fertility doctor.
Speaker 1: In that moment, did you think, oh, maybe there was
Speaker 1: a mistake or straight away you knew that it had
Speaker 1: been a deliberate.
Speaker 2: Deceit straight away. I knew, how did you know one
Speaker 2: of the half siblings I connected with was thirteen years older,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of my big indicator. The one
Speaker 2: that I had just spoken to was older. And so
Speaker 2: it's kind of like piecing these things together of you know,
Speaker 2: that timeline didn't work. And again, I mean people lie,
Speaker 2: DNA doesn't lie. It's hard to have a level of
Speaker 2: cognitive dissonance. Whenever the DNA is staring straight at you.
Speaker 1: Your mom must have fained. I have stated, how did
Speaker 1: Stave react? Because you had to break then you see him?
Speaker 2: So actually I didn't tell him until weeks later because
Speaker 2: I think there was a small part of me that
Speaker 2: was really hoping that it wasn't true. There was also
Speaker 2: that I knew there was not going to be the
Speaker 2: fairy tale, There was not going to be the relationship
Speaker 2: because I was the one that was protecting the secret,
Speaker 2: and without truth and transparency, there was never going to
Speaker 2: be an authentic relationship with my real biological father if
Speaker 2: I was keeping a secret. I waited until I knew
Speaker 2: that that DNA test the result to ron was there
Speaker 2: the commercial DNA test and then I called him and
Speaker 2: I told him, and it was the hardest part of
Speaker 2: this entire process. But it was like a daddy wound
Speaker 2: just being like ripped open again. I was so afraid
Speaker 2: of rejection. And even though I knew that nothing would
Speaker 2: undo the thirteen years of his building this relationship, I
Speaker 2: was still so worried because so much, you know, I
Speaker 2: initiated this relationship and it was wrong. There was so
Speaker 2: much guilt. And I told him and we just cried
Speaker 2: and cried and cried, and at the very end of it,
Speaker 2: he said, you know, it changes some things, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't change the fact that you're my daughter, and it's
Speaker 2: all I need to do, you know. That was it
Speaker 2: was like, and I support you know, whatever you do,
Speaker 2: but I think that you know, for me, I was
Speaker 2: so shocked by it. But was more shocking is that
Speaker 2: you know, in talking to my attorneys that it wasn't
Speaker 2: a crime. And so how is it that we know
Speaker 2: that this is morally wrong, but this is not legally wrong.
Speaker 2: And so when morality doesn't equal legality, what do you
Speaker 2: do with it?
Speaker 1: So hold on one second, it wasn't legally wrong for
Speaker 1: your mother's fertility doctor to go into another room masturvating
Speaker 1: a cup, come back and put the DNA of someone
Speaker 1: she hasn't consented to being inseminated with into your mother's
Speaker 1: body without ever telling her or getting her consent.
Speaker 2: Correct, there was no civil laws of it, and there
Speaker 2: was no criminal cause of action for this. Remember earlier
Speaker 2: when I talked about anonymity breeds fraud. He can hide
Speaker 2: behind an anonymous sperm donor, even though the informed consent
Speaker 2: was for donor one oh six from California Crybank. And
Speaker 2: the answer is because, quite frankly, we do not have
Speaker 2: laws against it.
Speaker 1: So did you confront this doctor? What did you do?
Speaker 2: It? Did? So? I've also known this man of pretty
Speaker 2: much my entire life. You know, he is a pillar
Speaker 2: in our community. People love him, you know, he's one
Speaker 2: of the very few doctors in East Texas that was
Speaker 2: an OV. You know. Everybody loves him. And I did
Speaker 2: everything by writing told him that I am his through
Speaker 2: commercial study testing, I am his daughter, and he wrote
Speaker 2: me back, just the smoke and mirror show. You know,
Speaker 2: it appears that you would have inherited some of my genetics.
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, dumb ass, fifty percent of
Speaker 2: them like kind of know that works, and then he
Speaker 2: went on this whole thing of like, oh, I used
Speaker 2: a mylex cup in this syringe, and in my donor program,
Speaker 2: you know, there were five successful pregnancies, three ended with
Speaker 2: you know, spontaneous miscarriage, and two offspring. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: that's funny because I'm looking at commercial DNA testing and
Speaker 2: I can see that I have five half siblings. So
Speaker 2: immediately I knew he was lying yeah. And then I
Speaker 2: was like, okay, well you want to play, let's go.
Speaker 2: So it just became more correspondence where he would say
Speaker 2: something and then I would poke a hole in it.
Speaker 1: He fucked with the wrong woman.
Speaker 2: He fucked with the wrong woman. He did, and he
Speaker 2: knows that now and it was a hard lesson for
Speaker 2: him to learn, but by god, did he learn it.
Speaker 2: And I really think that he thought I would just
Speaker 2: buy as bullshit, and like maybe I wasn't smart enough,
Speaker 2: or you know, I think he so used to being
Speaker 2: the authority and where he lives that you know, my god,
Speaker 2: no woman would challenge him.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: There was one line that was so cringe, you know,
Speaker 2: it was it was a pleasure to be able to
Speaker 2: deliver a baby girl to my mother and my father,
Speaker 2: and you know I should just be grateful. Well then
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, well I want medical information because now, like,
Speaker 2: not only did you fuck with me, but it's now
Speaker 2: it's my kid. Now Mama Bear is mad. There's medical information.
Speaker 2: I would have made different medical decisions on my child.
Speaker 2: He didn't need all of those exploratory surgeries had we
Speaker 2: have known what it was in the first place. So
Speaker 2: then he sends me this response of like, my I
Speaker 2: call him social kids. He says, his kids, his known kids.
Speaker 2: You know, they're all iron men and they're doctors. And
Speaker 2: it was just a brag list. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: you forgot the fact that you had cancer like melanoma,
Speaker 2: or that my brother had a brain tumor, like it
Speaker 2: was nothing a substance. So we just kind of kept going,
Speaker 2: and I'm pissed, right, but there was still part of me,
Speaker 2: like I still wanted to know him. I still Pollyanna
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, we could totally work through this,
Speaker 2: and your dad the doctor the doctor. I was like,
Speaker 2: we could totally work through this, and the only way
Speaker 2: to do that was to level the playing field. So
Speaker 2: I told him, I said, I am going to be
Speaker 2: going to the Texas Legislature and I'm going to be
Speaker 2: lobbying to make this a crime because if this is
Speaker 2: the thinking at the time, it was wrong and it
Speaker 2: needs to be criminalized. So let's make this bigger than ourselves.
Speaker 2: What a beautiful way for us to do this together
Speaker 2: and to be able to share that message. And we
Speaker 2: could and we could do it like if you really cared.
Speaker 2: And then, of course I never heard from them.
Speaker 1: So did he try to claim that your mom knew
Speaker 1: about it and that it was his sperm? Or he
Speaker 1: admitted that, yeah, I just used mine, Because why did
Speaker 1: he ever tell you why?
Speaker 2: So he said that he was mixing it. And he
Speaker 2: said that he was a sperm donor when he was
Speaker 2: in college, so that would have been about twelve thirteen
Speaker 2: years before I was conceived. And so he went to
Speaker 2: his former medical school and he got his old Dustys
Speaker 2: sperm vials, drove them to his clinic in East Texas,
Speaker 2: and that is what he used because Donor one oh
Speaker 2: six wasn't performing like it should have been.
Speaker 1: How many children did he father this way? Or you
Speaker 1: don't know the.
Speaker 2: Truth is we don't know. I currently have fourteen half siblings,
Speaker 2: three of those are his social children.
Speaker 1: When you say social children, you mean children that he
Speaker 1: can saved with his partner.
Speaker 2: Correct, that are known socially as.
Speaker 1: His And how did the rest feel about it? How
Speaker 1: did they all find out.
Speaker 2: Same way commercial DNA testing. Several of them saw me
Speaker 2: on TV and saw his picture and saw me, and
Speaker 2: I was like, whoa, I kind of look like that.
Speaker 2: The mcmory's features are pretty defining. I am like kind
Speaker 2: of outlier in the sense that I'm not over six
Speaker 2: feet tall, but all of my siblings are between like
Speaker 2: six feet and like six six even the women are
Speaker 2: like six to six two, very tall. I'm just like
Speaker 2: the little, like five seven short chihuahua. I'm just really loud.
Speaker 1: You were the rumpt.
Speaker 2: It literally like you have those like this and pictures
Speaker 2: and there's I'm.
Speaker 1: Seven is not that small, but if everyone else is
Speaker 1: six foot two, then it's see.
Speaker 2: Us hall in a few we actually found So I
Speaker 2: connected with some former people that worked with him during
Speaker 2: the time, and I was able to get a pretty
Speaker 2: accurate historical context of just how large his program was.
Speaker 2: So he was seeing between fifty to sixty women a day,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't determine the percentage of those that were
Speaker 2: infertility patients, but they said that it was a lot.
Speaker 2: One of them found out what he was doing and quit.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they kind of pieced together a lot of it.
Speaker 2: I went through yearbooks in the area and, like I said,
Speaker 2: defining features, and then people would send me names like hey,
Speaker 2: this person kind of looks like you. And that's how
Speaker 2: we found several of them, is me reaching out to
Speaker 2: them saying, this is kind of weird, but I think
Speaker 2: maybe my sibling, can I send you a DNA test?
Speaker 2: And so that's what I ultimately did.
Speaker 1: When you were in public, you did an interview with
Speaker 1: the Kinnifas Program twenty twenty. What was the reaction in
Speaker 1: your community? Where was this pillar of the community. He's
Speaker 1: a religious man, I.
Speaker 2: Believe very religious.
Speaker 1: Did he stop practicing? Was he shunned? What happened?
Speaker 2: His preacher called me that was the first thing that happened. Wow, No,
Speaker 2: he wasn't. There was a big service where you know,
Speaker 2: he was just doing the Lord's work. And I should
Speaker 2: just be grateful because I have his wonderful genetics, and
Speaker 2: I have a duty to honor my mother and my father.
Speaker 2: Except that only fits in that context. Because also you said,
Speaker 2: you're not my father, and I was the devil. I
Speaker 2: was the one that was spitting in the eye of
Speaker 2: the proverbial monster, and his tribe circled around him to
Speaker 2: protect him, and he was just doing the lord's work
Speaker 2: and that was it. And it was honestly the most
Speaker 2: disappointing thing to see my community come out and support
Speaker 2: this man in that capacity when not only do you
Speaker 2: have evidence of it, I am the evidence that for
Speaker 2: people to actually tell me that I should just be
Speaker 2: grateful to be alive, and me to continuously say over
Speaker 2: and over again, I am not talking about being grateful
Speaker 2: to be alive. I am talking about the deception around
Speaker 2: my conception. And that's what happens so much is people
Speaker 2: just immediately go to the end result, you know, they
Speaker 2: want that silver lining and that projection of their uncomfortableness
Speaker 2: back on to me. Most of the community, I would
Speaker 2: say ninety percent was behind him. He did not retire,
Speaker 2: he continued to practice very successfully. With my half brother.
Speaker 2: I ended up filing a medical board complaint and it
Speaker 2: took the Texas Medical Board years to even hear this complaint,
Speaker 2: and they ultimately and of course Abrad Blank's COVID for everything.
Speaker 2: They ultimately ended up voting to take his license. He
Speaker 2: immediately filed a restraining order against the Medical Board and
Speaker 2: a lawsuit, and the lawsuit stated they did not have
Speaker 2: jurisdiction to revoke his license because of a statute of
Speaker 2: limitation understandard level of care. The Medical Board and the
Speaker 2: Attorney General were saying that this is not standard level
Speaker 2: of care, this is unethical conduct and behavior which does
Speaker 2: not carry a seven year statute of limitations, and so
Speaker 2: the judge is not going to hear details of the case.
Speaker 2: All they are deciding is whether the Medical Board has
Speaker 2: jurisdiction to do this or not. It is still in
Speaker 2: the court system. He has lost twice, but he keeps
Speaker 2: appealing it. So it will go up to the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court of Texas. They will send it back down to
Speaker 2: the Thirteenth Court of Appeal, and that judge has already
Speaker 2: told him from day one that her ruling still stands
Speaker 2: and it is a very expensive and long journey for
Speaker 2: him to get his license revoked. So at this point,
Speaker 2: his only accountability as attorney fees.
Speaker 1: So he's still practicing.
Speaker 2: He has since retired within the last year, but has
Speaker 2: a forced early retirement for a seventy something year old man.
Speaker 2: His license is intact.
Speaker 1: Well, of your other siblings and their mothers who were
Speaker 1: all de saved, were they as pissed as you or
Speaker 1: did they want you to let it go?
Speaker 2: Both? So it's interesting. In my sibling pod, I feel
Speaker 2: like we kind of have this difference between the females
Speaker 2: and the males. Most of the males are like whatever,
Speaker 2: Like you know, it could have been so rude, like
Speaker 2: could have been like the janitor or someone off the street.
Speaker 2: The women are not okay with it. But also he
Speaker 2: was some of their doctor, and so he delivered their kids. Oh,
Speaker 2: he did their passengers, he did their breast exams. One
Speaker 2: of our sisters we sent a DNA test to she
Speaker 2: had an emergency surgery that our brother did on her.
Speaker 2: She woke up to the email confirming the DNA results.
Speaker 2: She was our sister, and then she had to when
Speaker 2: our brother came in for the follow up, tell him, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, you have to transfer my care because
Speaker 2: you're my brother.
Speaker 1: So one of your brothers is a door.
Speaker 2: With my biological father. He took over the practice.
Speaker 1: Is that one of his social kids, that's.
Speaker 2: One of the social kids. For them, they obviously feel
Speaker 2: very strongly about it. But then also they are living
Speaker 2: in that community that supports him, so they are not
Speaker 2: known because of the social implications that it has, and
Speaker 2: to have that level of feedback all of the time
Speaker 2: is difficult for them. But then you also have the
Speaker 2: different dynamics that's in their nuclear family. For them, they
Speaker 2: have the infertile recipient parent who is still alive, so
Speaker 2: they are also protective of that relationship. So they don't
Speaker 2: want to socially come out and say that not only
Speaker 2: their donor deceived, but to reveal the secret of infertility
Speaker 2: of their fathers.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, it's a real spectrum of different
Speaker 1: situations and different emotions and different probably points on that
Speaker 1: journey of understanding and acceptance. I like that you just
Speaker 1: went straight to rage such a mood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yes, no, it was you a fucket.
Speaker 1: After this shortbreak, you'll discover how Eve intersected with cereal
Speaker 1: sperm donor Jonathan Meyer from the Netflix series The Man
Speaker 1: with a Thousand Kids. The place that I obviously learned
Speaker 1: about you, and even this idea of fertility fraud is
Speaker 1: from the Netflix documentary The Man with a Thousand Children
Speaker 1: can you briefly for people who haven't seen that, because
Speaker 1: when things changed for another group of women who'd been
Speaker 1: the victim of fertility fraud, they found you and you
Speaker 1: really helped them bring this person to justice. Can you
Speaker 1: tell the story of Jonathan Mayer?
Speaker 2: So, I guess I should preface it with how they
Speaker 2: found me. I have been a part of changing eleven
Speaker 2: of the thirteen state laws in the United States that
Speaker 2: criminalize and offers civil causes of actions for fertility fraud.
Speaker 2: And so there was this lovely Australian couple who read
Speaker 2: an article about me, and so they connected with me
Speaker 2: and then got me connected with the other moms, and
Speaker 2: that was I believe at the end of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: maybe early twenty twenty, and they just wanted information of
Speaker 2: you know, what can we do, what is the legal landscape?
Speaker 2: Is there something we can do?
Speaker 1: Because they had also been desaved, They.
Speaker 2: Had also been deceived by serial sperm donor, and so
Speaker 2: Jonathan had infiltrated one of the largest sperm banks and
Speaker 2: eleven of the sperm banks, and he was also donating
Speaker 2: on the private market and doing freelance, and so you know,
Speaker 2: they were having hundreds of house siblings and they just
Speaker 2: wanted him to stop.
Speaker 1: And why did they want him to stop? Can you
Speaker 1: explain the danger with unregulation and fertility fraud? What's the
Speaker 1: danger for them?
Speaker 2: In particular is the biodiversity concern. What happens when you
Speaker 2: don't know that your donor conceived, you hook up with
Speaker 2: a half sibling, and the level of accidental incest that
Speaker 2: is the concern, especially when you're working in a demographic
Speaker 2: like Maingley the Netherlands where it's smaller and you're more
Speaker 2: populous with his children and they don't know.
Speaker 1: And how many children Haddie fathered and in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: for example, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Exactly what it was in the Netherlands, but.
Speaker 1: It was like one hundred. It was like close to hundreds,
Speaker 1: up to one thousand all over the world, maybe more right.
Speaker 2: Because you know, I mean the math with it, which
Speaker 2: I feel like is what a lot of the media
Speaker 2: is like really latched onto you. We can look at
Speaker 2: just Cryo salone where he's going to Copenhagen once a
Speaker 2: month for four.
Speaker 1: Days is a sperm bank in the sperm Yeah in demok.
Speaker 2: So that's roughly two hundred donations and for him as
Speaker 2: he is brags, you know, fifteen strawls of sperm per ejaculation,
Speaker 2: and if every straw makes a baby, that's the potential
Speaker 2: three thousand. Now, he has also come out and said
Speaker 2: that he has spent fifty thousand hours donating. So like
Speaker 2: the math, ain't math in here, because if he spent
Speaker 2: fifty thousand hours donating, then is it potentially fifty thousand
Speaker 2: children and not every single one's going to make a baby?
Speaker 2: The math and math and I either way. So when
Speaker 2: he says, you know, I only have five hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: Children, there are laws about this right to prevent accidental
Speaker 1: incest and birth defects that could result from that, as
Speaker 1: well as the moral implications of accidentally hooking up with
Speaker 1: a half sibling. And I think in the Netherlands there's
Speaker 1: a limit on you're only allowed twenty five and then
Speaker 1: you can't donate anymore.
Speaker 2: Per the banks. But that's not including freelance.
Speaker 1: Private market, or different countries or.
Speaker 2: Different countries, because what ultimately ends up happening is, let's
Speaker 2: you know, he hits his limit in one country, they
Speaker 2: export it to another country and the number goes to zero.
Speaker 2: And so that is not something that is transparent in
Speaker 2: this process, because that may change how you think about this. Right,
Speaker 2: Like my assumption would be when I have a sperm
Speaker 2: donor and you say that it's twenty five is the limit?
Speaker 2: I would think twenty five worldwide. It's like, yeah, read
Speaker 2: the fine print part, except there's no fine print. But
Speaker 2: every time it is to zero. So when he does that,
Speaker 2: and he does it as an alias, or he's doing
Speaker 2: it on the private market, they're not counting those. It's
Speaker 2: just deidentified sperm. It's just you know, going to clinic
Speaker 2: to clinic to clinic to clinic.
Speaker 1: And why Eve, why do these men do it?
Speaker 2: Million dollar question. I'm going to put my therapist Haat
Speaker 2: on for a second, and you know, like I do
Speaker 2: psycho educational evaluations, and if we look at these group
Speaker 2: of men as a whole, I definitely think that, you know,
Speaker 2: we could consider a personality disorder on the DSM somewhere
Speaker 2: in access to you. Isn't narcissism. This desire is an addiction.
Speaker 2: You know, the way that they talk about their successes
Speaker 2: and it's a number and it's a competition, and the
Speaker 2: way that they just work in general, like making the
Speaker 2: fake profiles look really bad. So their real profiles with
Speaker 2: an alias look really really good. Like it's very manipulative.
Speaker 1: Wait, explain. What the documentary discovered is that there's a
Speaker 1: group of Jonathan was part of these group of men
Speaker 1: who were almost gamified. Oh they were. They were gamifying
Speaker 1: this idea of who can make the most babies in
Speaker 1: the world. Yes, and so they would compete with each other.
Speaker 1: They would keep score and what do you mean about
Speaker 1: they would make fake profiles.
Speaker 2: So there's lots of different platforms when we're talking about
Speaker 2: the private market or freelance, known donors, you know, there's
Speaker 2: lots of different names for it. These men would make
Speaker 2: a Facebook group and they were the admin and the moderators.
Speaker 2: They'll let recipients in, but they won't let competition in,
Speaker 2: and so the other ones like make a baby now
Speaker 2: or you know, every country has kind of like a
Speaker 2: different platform. Think of it as like Craigslist, backpage ads,
Speaker 2: kind of like that type of thing, and it's like
Speaker 2: it's for this, and so they would make profiles that
Speaker 2: would be all aliases, but one profile would be like,
Speaker 2: you know, their best that picture of Jonathan, you know,
Speaker 2: looking cute as.
Speaker 1: A baby or as an adult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one, but then they would make fake ones
Speaker 2: that are really really bad, like you know, misspelled and
Speaker 2: all the characteristics, so that they knew that they weren't
Speaker 2: looking for it. Because when you are going through these
Speaker 2: profiles and you go through twenty really bad ones and
Speaker 2: then you see Jonathan, you're like.
Speaker 1: Oh, oh my gosh, all right, and that's why so
Speaker 1: many women would choose him.
Speaker 2: But all of them did this, and so you know,
Speaker 2: I think of like Simon Watson, Joe Donor, these aren't
Speaker 2: even these guys real names, except well Jonathan obviously. Then
Speaker 2: they compete, then they have their moderators of the group,
Speaker 2: and then it's just successes. They post pregnancy tests and
Speaker 2: they brag about someone that they got pregnant, and then
Speaker 2: they create their own little mom group. But they don't
Speaker 2: have any of the responsibilities of being, you know, a
Speaker 2: father figure. Very few of them had donor contracts, and
Speaker 2: if anybody would speak out of turn, all they do
Speaker 2: is threaten and say, well, I'm just going to sue
Speaker 2: you for custody and then you use your kid happy time.
Speaker 2: So women, you know, are like, well, okay, I I
Speaker 2: definitely don't want you to now, you know, be co
Speaker 2: parenting with me, and so it's it's really manipulative in
Speaker 2: that sense, but it's dangerous.
Speaker 1: How do you stop him?
Speaker 2: It was hard in the Netherlands. The moms were very
Speaker 2: much feeling was what I felt, the duty to inform,
Speaker 2: because how can you possibly consent or assent and if
Speaker 2: there's information that would change the way in which you
Speaker 2: made an informed decision, you need to know about it.
Speaker 2: So this duty to warn and inform, how can you
Speaker 2: do that when in the Netherlands you can't name him?
Speaker 2: It was just Dutch donor, Dutch done or Dutch donor.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't he be named.
Speaker 2: Because that's part of some policy, like you can't out
Speaker 2: them in the media for some reason.
Speaker 1: So how can anyone avoid using him again if they
Speaker 1: don't know his name?
Speaker 2: And wow, you cannot make an informed decision because no
Speaker 2: one's going to think, oh, let me google Dutch donor? Well,
Speaker 2: which Dutch donor?
Speaker 1: And also, how do you make a lure in one
Speaker 1: country that applies to every country.
Speaker 2: And the answer is you don't. So for us, the
Speaker 2: very first thing was, and this was my experience with everything,
Speaker 2: what do you do when you are existing in a
Speaker 2: legal landscape that has literally nothing. You don't have sperm
Speaker 2: banks that are required to talk to each other. Every
Speaker 2: country is so different. You have some countries that really
Speaker 2: have this buttoned up, but because of their stricter laws,
Speaker 2: it actually pushes people to go underground to these known
Speaker 2: donors and makes them more susceptible to the predatory behavior
Speaker 2: of these serial donors just out of necessity. Right then
Speaker 2: you have the wild wild West like us in America,
Speaker 2: where it's like what laws. My first thing was we
Speaker 2: got to start really small, and the first thing that
Speaker 2: we can do to meet the first goal is to
Speaker 2: get his name out there. That was, let's talk to
Speaker 2: the New York Times and you guys come forward, because
Speaker 2: in America you can name him. And that's what we did.
Speaker 2: As soon as he was named, than he was linked
Speaker 2: with all of you know, Dutch donor and it was
Speaker 2: all put together and then notifying Cryos International and hoping
Speaker 2: that they could somehow remove all of his straws that
Speaker 2: they had sent all over the world. So that was
Speaker 2: the first part. The second part was the moms had
Speaker 2: been working with Donor Kind in the Netherlands since like
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, which is an organization there, and the moms
Speaker 2: ended up coming up with this group called Moms on
Speaker 2: a Mission, and that was kind of like you know,
Speaker 2: our mission and you know, having all of these pieces
Speaker 2: fit together to figure out how to stop him. So
Speaker 2: the Brave Moms took him to court and he represented himself.
Speaker 2: The argument was like listen, he's it's kind of like
Speaker 2: a danger to society at this point, like he has
Speaker 2: this amount of kids that we know of. Our kids
Speaker 2: go to school together, they live, right, we're neighbors all
Speaker 2: the time. Like this is wild. So he comes in
Speaker 2: and like you seeing the documentary with the story, like
Speaker 2: it's a oh judge, you don't understand. It's a new concepts,
Speaker 2: like they just need a special symbol to be branded
Speaker 2: stood their name, and like my children are so smart,
Speaker 2: like they won't hook up with each other, blah blah.
Speaker 2: But me, he just ran his mouth like an idiot.
Speaker 1: That was chilling when he said they should be marked
Speaker 1: on social media.
Speaker 2: Yep, that it would be like this pride like verification. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: it's a new concept.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. So he's like a cult leader, but
Speaker 1: it's also eugenics. It's terrifying.
Speaker 2: It is terrifying. And then he has years of these
Speaker 2: YouTube videos of like him basically seems like he's like
Speaker 2: parenting his children.
Speaker 1: Talking about his philosophies on everything from politics to the environment,
Speaker 1: to being anti woke, to listening to your ancestors and
Speaker 1: being grateful to your biological parents.
Speaker 2: Brainwashing cool like right, the judge was he was selling bullshit,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't buying, and so she was like, you know,
Speaker 2: you do this again and you're going to get fined
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand euro.
Speaker 1: It's what it was per donation.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know. My favorite part was when you know
Speaker 2: his like what, I'm a good father, Like I show
Speaker 2: up at birthdays, I show up at this and she's like,
Speaker 2: it's not possible for you to attend every graduation and
Speaker 2: every birthday and every life Like when you have this many.
Speaker 1: Children, you have hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of children.
Speaker 2: I mean, the reality is like he's only gonna admit
Speaker 2: to what we know, right, And it's just like my
Speaker 2: biological father, he only admitted to what I said. And
Speaker 2: so it's like every time anyone comes up, it's going
Speaker 2: to keep going and keep climbing and keep climbing, keep climbing,
Speaker 2: and we saw this with the Netflix documentary Our Father,
Speaker 2: where the number of those half siblings from Donald Climb
Speaker 2: kept climbing climbing after the duty to inform and warn
Speaker 2: had been out there and people recognize, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I think that I may have been victimized to you.
Speaker 2: And that is exactly what we will be seeing.
Speaker 1: What's Jonathan doing now? What's happened since the documentary came out?
Speaker 1: Do you know is he still trying to donate? I
Speaker 1: kind of imagine he'd just go, oh okay, I'll stop.
Speaker 2: Who knows well, he has been giving me some shout
Speaker 2: outs on his YouTube channel. He thinks I am the mastermind,
Speaker 2: so you know, I'll put on my best Taylor Swift,
Speaker 2: I'll take that. Yeah, that crown. You know, he's threatening
Speaker 2: a lawsuit for slander and just he's spiraling, is what.
Speaker 2: I think. He had an opportunity to participate and to
Speaker 2: you know, give his side of the story, but he didn't.
Speaker 2: So I think he's just sitting in the woods making
Speaker 2: YouTube videos right now. That's all from what I can see.
Speaker 1: Kamer is my boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's right.
Speaker 1: Eve. You are a warrior for women. I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you one more question when I was watching you
Speaker 1: and the other donor deceived people fighting going to Capitol Hill,
Speaker 1: trying to get national legislation, trying to get people to
Speaker 1: understand what this medical rape is. Essentially women being impregnated
Speaker 1: with sperm without their consent or being defrauded. You're essentially
Speaker 1: arguing against your own existence, and I imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of people use that as a way to try and
Speaker 1: shut you up, like the preacher did and those people
Speaker 1: in your community. How do you feel about that? How
Speaker 1: do you reconcile that?
Speaker 2: Well? Usually what I say is I am not talking
Speaker 2: about being grateful to be alive or my existence in general.
Speaker 1: Life, Oh, wishing you'd never been born.
Speaker 2: Which I would never be born. I'm not debating the
Speaker 2: facts of that. I am talking about the deception around conception,
Speaker 2: the lack of enforcing informed consent, and how in this
Speaker 2: particular instance, morality does not equate legality, And so separating
Speaker 2: those two things I think are very important because it
Speaker 2: is very easy to conflate those two things. What is
Speaker 2: it like, the end to the means means to the end, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's hard to not be able to look at that
Speaker 2: and say, but you're here and I am so grateful
Speaker 2: to be alive, but I can have opposite feelings about
Speaker 2: this and hold space for that. I'm grateful to be alive,
Speaker 2: but I am very upset about the deception around my conception.
Speaker 2: And if I truly believe that we need to leave
Speaker 2: this world better than we found it, I need to
Speaker 2: find the purpose in my pain, and I need to
Speaker 2: do it not only for the rest of the people
Speaker 2: and the women who have been deceived, but also, you know,
Speaker 2: at a very basic level, just to be an example
Speaker 2: from my girls, that it's not always the tragedy that
Speaker 2: happens to you, it's what you do with it, and
Speaker 2: that is empowerment.
Speaker 1: What a note to end on. You're amazing. It is
Speaker 1: amazing to me that Eve might have got her whole
Speaker 1: life not knowing the truth about her conception if she
Speaker 1: hadn't done that thing that teenagers do, which is snoop.
Speaker 1: I guess she probably would have found out when she
Speaker 1: did some of those DNA tests after her son got sick.
Speaker 1: But the fact that that snooping led her to Steve,
Speaker 1: who for years she believed was her birth father, only
Speaker 1: to have another grenade launched into her life and her
Speaker 1: heart when her son became ill and she found out
Speaker 1: that he actually wasn't her father. It reminded me of
Speaker 1: that story about Tony Abbott. It came out that an
Speaker 1: old girlfriend of his had had a son and had
Speaker 1: adopted him out and had never told Tony Abbott that
Speaker 1: she was pregnant. And then this guy who turned out
Speaker 1: to be a cameraman at Parliament House who'd filmed Tony
Speaker 1: Abbot many times in his political career, turned out to
Speaker 1: be this child, and he tracked down his biological mother,
Speaker 1: who explained who his biological father was, and it was
Speaker 1: in the press at the time. You know, Tony Abbot
Speaker 1: handled it really well, and it was quite a beautiful
Speaker 1: story and everyone loved, you know, the coincidence of the
Speaker 1: fact that they'd been working in the same workplace without
Speaker 1: even realizing they were father and son. And then a
Speaker 1: little while later it turned out that actually Tony Abbot
Speaker 1: wasn't the father. There was a different biological father, and
Speaker 1: the mother had actually just got it wrong. I really
Speaker 1: remember feeling how poignant that situation was, because they'd done
Speaker 1: interviews and spoken about how they were sort of forging
Speaker 1: this relationship, and Tony Abbott had three daughters and then
Speaker 1: he had this son, and it was just a really interesting,
Speaker 1: quite beautiful story at a time when Tony Abbott was
Speaker 1: not a very popular guy. And then I remember wondering,
Speaker 1: how do you unpack that? How do you even find
Speaker 1: a place to file that in your heart when you
Speaker 1: thought someone was maybe your biological parent and then they weren't.
Speaker 1: I was so relieved that Eve has stayed friends with Steve,
Speaker 1: but then what do you do about the fact that
Speaker 1: your actual biological father is an asshole. I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I've never really thought about fertility fraud before the Netflix series,
Speaker 1: but now I cannot look away. I'm thinking about it
Speaker 1: a lot, and it turns out there are a lot
Speaker 1: of men out there who were, I don't know, narcissistic psychopaths,
Speaker 1: men who are doing this to women and families every day,
Speaker 1: and it's really struck a nerve. I think that's why
Speaker 1: this show on Netflix became number one all over the world,
Speaker 1: because there's this idea about bodily autonomy, the fact that
Speaker 1: someone can either give you their sperm under false pretenses
Speaker 1: or put their sperm in your body without you consenting
Speaker 1: to it, and it's not even a crime in many
Speaker 1: states in America. It's just wild. You know. MoMA MIA's
Speaker 1: entire core purpose as a business and as a media
Speaker 1: company is to make the world a better place for
Speaker 1: women and girls, and we're going to look into fertility
Speaker 1: fraud some more so. If you have a story about
Speaker 1: fertility fraud or conception deception, please reach out and let
Speaker 1: us know. We'll put a link in the show notes
Speaker 1: to an email address that you can reach out, either
Speaker 1: anonymously if you want to tell us your story under
Speaker 1: a pseudonym, or under your own name. We want to
Speaker 1: continue shining a light and exploring this crime. We'll also
Speaker 1: put a link to Eve's website where you can learn
Speaker 1: more about her and all the amazing work she does.
Speaker 1: I love her. I know she's a therapist. I think
Speaker 1: I want her to be my therapist. Is that unethical?
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit obsessed with her. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: No Filter's executive producer is niam A Brown, another woman
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with, and our audio producer is Leah Porges,
Speaker 1: who you know I'm obsessed with. I may have Friedman.
Speaker 1: Be safe out their friends and watch out for each other. Okay,