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Speaker 2: the journeys that led them to that place. And that's
Speaker 2: just the beginning. Today, I'm bringing you the story of
Speaker 2: Eve Wiley from No Filter, another amazing podcast on the
Speaker 2: MMA mea network hosted by Mia Friedman. In this episode,
Speaker 2: Miya chats with Eve, who is the child of fertility fraud.
Speaker 2: She talks about how she discovered who her biological father was,
Speaker 2: a discovery that turned her world upside down and transformed
Speaker 2: her into a fearless fighter for the women and families
Speaker 2: who've been harmed by fraudulent and serial sperm donors. If
Speaker 2: you've seen the Netflix series The Man with One Thousand Kids,
Speaker 2: you'll be interested in this conversation. Here's the original episode.
Speaker 1: Take a listen 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: that he's already conceived. But Jonathan isn't the only guy
Speaker 1: who's trying to superminate the world. There are more serial
Speaker 1: sperm donors like him out there who For whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I obsessed with the idea of impregnating women under false
Speaker 1: pretenses for their own twisted reasons. And nobody knows that
Speaker 1: better 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 3: I was sixteen years old when I was going through
Speaker 3: my mom's emails. She was a school nurse at my school,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of had this little habit where
Speaker 3: I would go under her emails and I would find
Speaker 3: all the juicy gossip on my code words or if
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a teacher sent an email that like
Speaker 3: I had a bad grade or something.
Speaker 4: You know. It was management for myself, was what it was.
Speaker 3: And that's when I found the emails of my mom
Speaker 3: email in California, car a bank, and I saw my
Speaker 3: birth date on it, and my first thought was, you know,
Speaker 3: from a small town, my grandpa has cows that my
Speaker 3: mom was doing something for 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 3: It was very relevant. But as soon as I saw
Speaker 3: my birth date, I knew in that exact moment that
Speaker 3: I was the juicy gossip within the cowort.
Speaker 4: So that's when I found out that I was doing
Speaker 4: 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 4: It was late at night.
Speaker 3: What I did exactly was I ended up playing sims
Speaker 3: and creating a lot of babies in my sim's game.
Speaker 4: Interesting kind of playing it out there.
Speaker 3: But I went to bed and I woke up the
Speaker 3: next morning and my mom was in the bathroom getting ready,
Speaker 3: and I just barged in and I was like, Mom, I.
Speaker 4: Know that Doug isn't my dad.
Speaker 3: And I just remember her looking at me in the
Speaker 3: reflection of the mirror and just turning around.
Speaker 4: She's like, what are you talking about? And she starts bawling.
Speaker 3: And at the time at this like, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just a naive sixteen year old. I was excited, you know.
Speaker 3: For me, I didn't understand the complexities of donor conception,
Speaker 3: you know, in a social sense, but also in an
Speaker 3: ethical sense. For me, I was like, I still have
Speaker 3: you know a dad, I probably have half siblings, and
Speaker 3: so it was very like, you know, Pollyanna about this,
Speaker 3: and that's how I kind of confronted her. And she
Speaker 3: did a really good job of you know, Eve, you
Speaker 3: were seven when your dad died. They told us not
Speaker 3: to ever tell you and it wasn't going to be important.
Speaker 3: And she brought up this green folder and it was
Speaker 3: every print out from an email that she had ever
Speaker 3: spoken to anyone on like Yahoo messenger boards, not to
Speaker 3: like date myself. You know, it was before Facebook, and
Speaker 3: you know, her medical records and you know, all of
Speaker 3: the things to where she really was creating this breadcrumb
Speaker 3: troell for me. And for me that was really meaningful
Speaker 3: because I can actually see at that point that she
Speaker 3: really was going to tell me.
Speaker 4: 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 3: You don't know if at sixteen I could wrap my
Speaker 3: head around that part. You know, there definitely was a
Speaker 3: lot of grief, and there was a level of trauma
Speaker 3: of not having you know, that father figure growing up
Speaker 3: right eventually, But for me, I think it was just
Speaker 3: trying to look at it in more of a positive sense. Now,
Speaker 3: Remember at this time, I was not aware that the
Speaker 3: donor could be like, no, I don't want to have
Speaker 3: contact with you, because in my head was never a thing.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until later where I started to realize that,
Speaker 3: you know, the social constructs of this could be very different.
Speaker 3: With that new information. I think that there was, you know,
Speaker 3: a sense of hesitancy on my part and fear that
Speaker 3: I may be rejected, and so it did kind of
Speaker 3: like snowball into other types of feelings. But that morning,
Speaker 3: in that moment, I was excited, but completely naive and
Speaker 3: 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 3: And it is I think it's one of those times too,
Speaker 3: where you know I was having opposite feelings about something.
Speaker 3: You know, I was excited, but to your point, there
Speaker 3: was a level of grief. But then, you know, growing
Speaker 3: up in my nuclear family, I was this blonde hair,
Speaker 3: blue green eyed little girl. My little sister, who was
Speaker 3: fourteen months younger than me, had all of skin complexion,
Speaker 3: dark brown hair, dark brown eyes. I looked like no
Speaker 3: one in my family. There was no familiarity, and so
Speaker 3: I was constantly teased for being adopted. And so there
Speaker 3: is something called the thought unknown, where I always knew
Speaker 3: there was a secret. I just didn't know that I
Speaker 3: was the secret until then. So then being able to
Speaker 3: justify and everything makes sense to have an actual reason
Speaker 3: for it instead of wondering what it was.
Speaker 1: Was your sister the biological child of dog and your mom?
Speaker 3: She was When my parents initially went to their fertility doctor,
Speaker 3: my dad had Verico's fans around his testes, and so
Speaker 3: the recommendation was to get a surgery to get us
Speaker 3: taken care of. So he did that they still aren'
Speaker 3: getting pregnant. So then the next step was to do
Speaker 3: artificial insemination by an anonymous ferm donor. When I was
Speaker 3: born my parents were pregnant four months later, and so
Speaker 3: it could be that maybe there just wasn't enough time
Speaker 3: after the surgery of the reversal of the surge. So
Speaker 3: she 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, well, you were half sisters,
Speaker 1: you had different fathers.
Speaker 4: This one caught me by surprise.
Speaker 3: I didn't think that it would impact her, and that
Speaker 3: was just you know, me being shortsighted. But when we
Speaker 3: sat my sister down and we told her, she started
Speaker 3: crying and the only thing she said before she ran
Speaker 3: out of the room was well, least you have a dad,
Speaker 3: And that was it that hurt, because then it was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: now I feel guilt, and wow, this is getting really complicated.
Speaker 3: And you know, there wasn't a book for me to
Speaker 3: go read. There wasn't a blog yet. There wasn't anyone
Speaker 3: that I even knew that was donor conceived except for
Speaker 3: the cows at my grandpa's house, and so I didn't
Speaker 3: have a north star to be able to have some
Speaker 3: sort of expectations of how this should go and how
Speaker 3: this could go. Even when I called California Cryobank. At
Speaker 3: this time, no one had made a connection with their donor,
Speaker 3: so they didn't really have any good information for me
Speaker 3: either on how to proceed with this, so.
Speaker 4: It was very lonely.
Speaker 3: And then it became a thing of what, I don't
Speaker 3: want to talk about this in front of my sister
Speaker 3: because it all make her sad, which only 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 3: It was tricky because it is literally the wild wild
Speaker 3: West here in good old us of A.
Speaker 4: It's entirely left up to the donors in the clinics.
Speaker 3: And so at the time that I was conceived, the
Speaker 3: idea of an open donor versus a closed donor wasn't
Speaker 3: even a topic of conversation. The recommendation in the eighties
Speaker 3: was don't ask, don't tell, like they don't need to know.
Speaker 3: It's not important. You're the parent and that's it. So
Speaker 3: there wasn't a level of education to educate on the
Speaker 3: donor becacive experience, or about how important genetic identity is.
Speaker 3: And then even now I just feel like in the
Speaker 3: last you know, ten years, the sperm banks here in
Speaker 3: clinics are just now starting to realize, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: anonymous donation isn't great because here anonymity breeds fraud when
Speaker 3: you're able to exist under the cloak of anonymity. And
Speaker 3: it wasn't until the you know, invention of commercial dnate
Speaker 3: testing that is really blowing the lid off of those
Speaker 3: So as far as the being the laws here, there's
Speaker 3: just pure recommendations per the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.
Speaker 1: Will you be angradate your mum that she hadn't told
Speaker 1: you and that she had no intention of telling you?
Speaker 3: Yes, and no, I was angry that I was lied
Speaker 3: to you, But when she pulled out the green folder,
Speaker 3: all of that kind of melted away because I could
Speaker 3: see the amount of hours that she poured into this,
Speaker 3: and I believed her when she said I didn't know
Speaker 3: how to tell you. I didn't know when to tell you.
Speaker 3: But I knew that if I did all of this
Speaker 3: research and had all this information, that you would believe
Speaker 3: me that I have been doing this for a very
Speaker 3: long time. And so I think that that very much
Speaker 3: helped bridge the gap between those emotions for me, because
Speaker 3: I could very much empathize with not being able to
Speaker 3: tell a seven year old whose father just passed away, well,
Speaker 3: but that's not like your real dad, because let's go
Speaker 3: talk about.
Speaker 4: You know, how babies are made now. I mean, there's
Speaker 4: no way, like I totally.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of conversation, yeah.
Speaker 3: Being seven, being like I like, just understanding developmentally, you know,
Speaker 3: abstract thinking. And it didn't seem as appropriate at that
Speaker 3: 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 I know, what did you learn
Speaker 1: in that greenfielder?
Speaker 3: So in the green folder I had my mom's medical records,
Speaker 3: and in there it said the date that I was
Speaker 3: conceived with Donor one O six from California Crowd Bank
Speaker 3: and this was in the doctor's handwriting, so that was
Speaker 3: confirmation of my conception.
Speaker 4: And my mom had one sheet of paper and it.
Speaker 3: Had California crow Bank all the donors listed, and it
Speaker 3: was just one line.
Speaker 4: Donor number, physical characteristics.
Speaker 3: Level of education, and interest, like just very limited and
Speaker 3: you could see like not this one, not this one,
Speaker 3: maybe this one, and then she circled one in this one.
Speaker 3: And then there were letters to like Wendy or emails
Speaker 3: like Wendy Kramer Single Mothers by Choice Organization. I think
Speaker 3: at one point there was like maybe a Canadian donor
Speaker 3: Conception network, different professional organizations, and all of it was
Speaker 3: like I'm just trying to get more information. We knew
Speaker 3: his religion was of I Made Butcher, this the Bahai faith,
Speaker 3: and so my mom had all of these like communications
Speaker 3: with that religious organization.
Speaker 4: So that was kind of what was the bulk of
Speaker 4: the folder.
Speaker 3: There were also personal emails of personal stories where she
Speaker 3: was asking, how do I tell my daughter you're an
Speaker 3: adult now?
Speaker 4: What should I do? What should I not do? That
Speaker 4: type of stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, so she'd been trying to track down your donor
Speaker 1: secretly all these years.
Speaker 3: Kind of I think that in her very limited way,
Speaker 3: she was trying to understand, you know, what was the
Speaker 3: network in the landscape.
Speaker 4: Donor Sibling registery was.
Speaker 3: Not quite built yet, but that was the only pretty
Speaker 3: much formal platform where you could put it in your
Speaker 3: donor number and you would hope that the donor would
Speaker 3: register as 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 3: I found Steve Shoal and I contacted the craw Bank.
Speaker 3: Their roles at the time were we need the medical
Speaker 3: records from the doctor to confirm, and they also had
Speaker 3: their records that were purchasing records from the doctor, so
Speaker 3: those things matched up, and they sent kind of like
Speaker 3: a questionnaire that was like let's update your medical records,
Speaker 3: not saying like, hey, you have a daughter. And so
Speaker 3: that process took about a year because I think eventually
Speaker 3: Steve Doner one of six, who I also call Dad,
Speaker 3: he was like why do y'all need this? And they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: because you have a daughter, and he was like, I'm
Speaker 3: sorry what you know, he was surprised by it. I
Speaker 3: think in his head he was like, I'm just doing
Speaker 3: this for research.
Speaker 1: Well had he forgotten that he donated spam? Like why
Speaker 1: had he donated for money?
Speaker 4: He was in college, easy way to make a bug, like, you.
Speaker 1: Know, he'd sort of forgotten about it. He was probably stoned.
Speaker 1: It was college, he was high, he.
Speaker 3: Was exactly, he wasn't thinking about it. It's like Lodu's
Speaker 3: best life, Like I'm doing it anyway.
Speaker 1: It's like what, oh, yeah, 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 3: So he was a father of three children, and the
Speaker 3: youngest one was pretty small, and the oldest one was
Speaker 3: like maybe in middle school, So you know, he was
Speaker 3: in a phase of life that you know, also was complicated.
Speaker 3: He had every ability to be like, oh, he'll no,
Speaker 3: this is not going to work, and he didn't. And
Speaker 3: I had already written a letter and I had asked
Speaker 3: the sperm bank when he made contact to Ford. That
Speaker 3: letter I had in my mom's and her folder. I
Speaker 3: had read so many stories of people who were just
Speaker 3: outright rejected by their biological parent, and it ended up
Speaker 3: becoming a fear of mine, and I was like, if
Speaker 3: I only have one chance, like I want to be
Speaker 3: able to convey who I am through a letter, and
Speaker 3: if that's all he ever sees and reads.
Speaker 4: Like, maybe that'll be enough.
Speaker 3: And we ended up connecting and then it turned into email.
Speaker 3: I would forward an email to the sperm bank, the
Speaker 3: sperm bank would forward him, and that was it. And
Speaker 3: then we cut them out and then ended up talking
Speaker 3: on the phone just like forever. And then I was
Speaker 3: living in Austin and college at this time, and he
Speaker 3: flew down.
Speaker 4: To meet me for the first time.
Speaker 1: What was that like?
Speaker 3: Oh, I was amazing. I mean I was. He came
Speaker 3: to my apartment and I just I opened the door
Speaker 3: and it was just like a huge hug and just
Speaker 3: we stayed for hours talking in my living room and
Speaker 3: then went to dinner and live music and it was
Speaker 3: just catching up on at this point nineteen years. I
Speaker 3: think because I didn't I didn't have any expectations. I
Speaker 3: didn't know how it was supposed to go. And because
Speaker 3: he is who he is, which is just this like
Speaker 3: amazing open person and I am who I am.
Speaker 4: Like it just worked.
Speaker 3: And it was that weekend, the first weekend of meeting him,
Speaker 3: we ran into a friend, one of my friends on
Speaker 3: the street, and just for social clarity, I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is my dad. And at the end of that
Speaker 3: he was like, if you call me that, I'm okay
Speaker 3: with that. And then from that moment on.
Speaker 1: He was dad, And you had three new little siblings.
Speaker 3: I did, but they didn't know yet. They didn't know
Speaker 3: until much later.
Speaker 1: Again, it's a tricky conversation with the little kids. So
Speaker 1: dad was high in college and he jumped off into
Speaker 1: a cop one day for twenty bucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but for him, you know, it's also he had
Speaker 3: to tell his wife and then I don't know if
Speaker 3: it ever really came up, like, you know, while they
Speaker 3: were dating, it never really came up. So he had
Speaker 3: to tell her. And I totally get this. You know,
Speaker 3: as a mother of three myself, I would be pretty
Speaker 3: protective too, so I really understood her desire to not
Speaker 3: want to tell the kids right away, and so it
Speaker 3: took multiple years for them to disclose me to them.
Speaker 3: I feel like, this is happens in donor conception a
Speaker 3: lot with parents that disclose when when they're older and
Speaker 3: everybody's nervous and like, oh my gosh, this is going
Speaker 3: to go so bad. They're going to like freak out
Speaker 3: and never talk to us again. And they told the kids,
Speaker 3: and my sister was like, oh my god, I have
Speaker 3: a sister. And then the two boys were like, that's cool.
Speaker 4: What's for dinner?
Speaker 3: And my dad's like, that's it and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, do we get to like meet her or
Speaker 3: something 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 3: I know, right, it's all our social construction 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, is it?
Speaker 3: You know? I think in this instance, like I could
Speaker 3: recognize the level of protectiveness and I was really leaning
Speaker 3: on dad to kind of facilitate that relationship because I
Speaker 3: didn't want obviously to push But I think that They
Speaker 3: did a really good job of keeping it separate. I
Speaker 3: didn't really get to have a lot of interaction with
Speaker 3: her until my wedding. I think that really kind of
Speaker 3: changed our relationship. We really didn't have a lot of interface.
Speaker 3: You know, geographically we lived in different parts of the country.
Speaker 3: It was always quite an effort to visit on either
Speaker 3: 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 3: So my oldest when he was a baby, he was
Speaker 3: vomiting a lot, and he wasn't eating real food, and
Speaker 3: there were all of these things that all of our
Speaker 3: doctors were like, you know, these allergies, and no one
Speaker 3: could really figure out what it is.
Speaker 4: At about three.
Speaker 3: Years of all of that, I was like, we got
Speaker 3: to do something different. They recommended looking in more into
Speaker 3: like genetics, and so I was working with this functional
Speaker 3: medicine doctor, and he was like, let's get some info
Speaker 3: on your DNA. The easiest way to do that at
Speaker 3: the time was the commercial DNA test twenty three and
Speaker 3: mean plus health and he'd get what was called raw data.
Speaker 3: So we did that and he called back and he said, hey, Eve,
Speaker 3: it's Celiac disease.
Speaker 4: And I was like what.
Speaker 3: I had no idea what Celiac disease was. I had
Speaker 3: no idea what an autoimmune disorder was. And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what it is, and it's coming from you. And
Speaker 3: I was like, what are you talking about. He's like,
Speaker 3: you need to go get better family history from you know,
Speaker 3: your biological father and biological mother. And so I'm in
Speaker 3: my family, like, who has these stomach issues in coeliac
Speaker 3: and allergies.
Speaker 1: No one because it's hereditary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's term serious. So the bigger thing at
Speaker 3: the time was like, Okay, now we know a diagnosis
Speaker 3: is a prognosis, right, And so I was so focused
Speaker 3: on just making my unhealthy. The second part of this
Speaker 3: is that there's an ancestry component to the commercial DNA testing.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if you're familiar with the platforms,
Speaker 3: but a lot of my DNA connections were saying things
Speaker 3: like close family to first cousins, and so I wasn't
Speaker 3: really thinking half sibling because I guess I just assumed
Speaker 3: it was a perfect science and would say 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.
Speaker 3: My bay, right, those who have also taken the test
Speaker 3: and at about you. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: And I knew from talking with California car Ibink that
Speaker 3: dad was a popular spirm downer, but they had told
Speaker 3: me that I was one of the older ones, you know.
Speaker 3: I was like, sure, I'm sure this will be happening,
Speaker 3: but it was still newer at this time. This was
Speaker 3: like two thousand and eighteen, and so you know, you
Speaker 3: just don't know what you don't know. So we go
Speaker 3: on vacation and my mom is actually with me and
Speaker 3: she's like, hey, Eve, I actually think those are your
Speaker 3: half siblings. Like, you know, look at like the degree
Speaker 3: in which you're related, and it could be like a
Speaker 3: different each number is for something different, and so then
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my gosh. So then I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know, on social media, and I'm sending the messages
Speaker 3: through the platform, and I connected with one and bless
Speaker 3: his sweet little heart. He is from my area where
Speaker 3: I grew up, and he was like, no, I know
Speaker 3: who you know our dad is and I was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: that's our mom's doctor that did the insemination, Steve Donner
Speaker 3: w I six from Oregon. He's our biological father. But
Speaker 3: I don't want to project my story onto you guys,
Speaker 3: So I'm going to have him do that DNA test
Speaker 3: and then you guys can figure out if y'all want
Speaker 3: a relationship.
Speaker 4: And honestly, I just thought he.
Speaker 3: Was love you, Andrew, but a redneck that just wasn't
Speaker 3: very smart. And so that was that one. And then
Speaker 3: I kept going down, you know, the list of connecting
Speaker 3: other siblings, and then I came up with one who
Speaker 3: wasn't on social media, but I found him on LinkedIn
Speaker 3: and it was late at night. I messaged him and
Speaker 3: was like, hey, are you the Adam on twenty three
Speaker 3: and me? And he's like yes. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: I need to talk to you and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I think it'd be kind of hard to explain to
Speaker 3: my wife, why I need to get out of bed
Speaker 3: to call another woman.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, to totally get that. I just think.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you're half sibling, so just call me tomorrow
Speaker 3: and my phone immediately rain and he's like, okay, you
Speaker 3: have my attention. Yeah, impulsivity was not my future of
Speaker 3: that night, but yeah, he is the one that I
Speaker 3: talked to you, and I thought that you know so
Speaker 3: much of when you're donor conceived or your non parent
Speaker 3: expected result, there's always someone that is delivering that news
Speaker 3: right or putting the pieces together when it comes out
Speaker 3: of these platforms. I was like, we're donor conceived and
Speaker 3: he's like, no, there's no way.
Speaker 4: I look like my dad. That's our white story. I
Speaker 4: have a brother. Okay, so we got this whole thing,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, all right.
Speaker 1: And you just thought he was in denial.
Speaker 4: I thought he was in denial.
Speaker 3: I mean, and most suppose people are right like this
Speaker 3: stream on the internet and like this is weird. So
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, so if you are my first cousin,
Speaker 3: then that means that your uncle is my biological father.
Speaker 3: Is your uncle Steve Shoul And he said, no, my
Speaker 3: uncle is Kim mcmaury's and my world stopped because Kim
Speaker 3: mcmaury's is doctor Kim mcmoury's and was my mom's fertility doctor.
Speaker 4: And at that time I knew it was like everything
Speaker 4: just kind of made.
Speaker 3: Sense, even like the little red flags that I've been
Speaker 3: seeing before, like the timeline's not matching up. And then
Speaker 3: it was wow, like I know that people lie and
Speaker 3: DNA doesn't lie, and it was just starting all over again,
Speaker 3: and it was the truth.
Speaker 1: After you hung up the phone, what was going through
Speaker 1: your head?
Speaker 3: A little bit like when I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 3: of that moment of I am onto something very big
Speaker 3: that is going to impact more than just myself. I
Speaker 3: remember literally downing my glass of wine and deciding all
Speaker 3: over again because my mom was upstairs watching a movie
Speaker 3: with my in laws, and my choice was to pretend
Speaker 3: like I never discovered this and continue to live a
Speaker 3: fairy tale life with my dad and my mom and
Speaker 3: just pretend like it never.
Speaker 1: Happened, your second dad, stave.
Speaker 3: Yep, my second dad, or to go right upstairs, which
Speaker 3: is what I did, like I was sixteen years old,
Speaker 3: and tell her again that my real biological father was
Speaker 3: 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 deceit.
Speaker 4: Straight Away I knew.
Speaker 3: How did you know one of the half siblings I
Speaker 3: connected with was thirteen years older and that was kind
Speaker 3: of my big indicator. The one that I had just
Speaker 3: spoken to was older. And so it's kind of like
Speaker 3: piecing these things together of you know that timeline didn't work.
Speaker 3: And again, I mean people lie, DNA doesn't lie. It's
Speaker 3: hard to have a level of cognitive dissonance whenever the
Speaker 3: DNA is staring straight at you.
Speaker 1: Your mom must have fain devastated. How did Dave react
Speaker 1: because you had to break then you see him?
Speaker 3: So actually I didn't tell him until weeks later because
Speaker 3: I think there was a small part of me that
Speaker 3: was really hoping that it wasn't true. There was also
Speaker 3: that I knew there was not going to be the
Speaker 3: fairy tale, There was not going to be the relationship
Speaker 3: because I was the one that was protecting the secret,
Speaker 3: and without truth and transparency, there was never going to
Speaker 3: be an authentic relationship with my real biological father if
Speaker 3: I was keeping a secret. I waited until I knew
Speaker 3: that that DNA test the result to Ron was there
Speaker 3: the commercial DNA test. And then I called him and
Speaker 3: I told him, and it was the hardest part of
Speaker 3: this entire process. But it was like a daddy wound
Speaker 3: just being like ripped open again. I was so afraid
Speaker 3: of rejection. And even though I knew that nothing would
Speaker 3: undo the thirteen years of his build in this relationship,
Speaker 3: I was still so worried because so much, you know,
Speaker 3: I initiated this relationship and it was wrong. There was
Speaker 3: so much guilt. And I told him and we.
Speaker 4: Just cried and cried and cried.
Speaker 3: And at the very end of it, he said, you know,
Speaker 3: it changes some things, but it doesn't change.
Speaker 4: The fact that you're my daughter. And it's all I
Speaker 4: needed to do, you know.
Speaker 3: That was he was like, and I support you know,
Speaker 3: whatever you do, but I think that you know, for me,
Speaker 3: I was so shocked by it. But was more shocking
Speaker 3: is that you know, in talking to my attorneys that
Speaker 3: it wasn't a crime, and so how is it that
Speaker 3: we know that this is morally wrong, but this is
Speaker 3: not legally wrong. And so when morality doesn't equal legality,
Speaker 3: what do you 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 mastivating
Speaker 1: a cop, come back and put the DNA of someone
Speaker 1: she hasn't consented to being in some with into your
Speaker 1: mother's body without ever telling her or getting her consent.
Speaker 3: Correct, there was no civil cause of action and there
Speaker 3: was no criminal cause of action for this. Remember earlier
Speaker 3: when I talked about anonymity breeds fraud. He can hide
Speaker 3: behind an anonymous sperm donor, even though the informed consent
Speaker 3: was for donor one oh six from California Crybank. And
Speaker 3: the answer is because, quite frankly, we do not have
Speaker 3: laws against it.
Speaker 1: So did you confront this doctor? What did you do? It?
Speaker 4: Did?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 3: I've also known this man of pretty much my entire life.
Speaker 3: You know, he has a pillar in our community. People
Speaker 3: love him. You know, he's one of the very few
Speaker 3: doctors in East Texas there was an ov you know,
Speaker 3: everybody loves him. And I did everything by writing told
Speaker 3: him that I am his through commercial study testing, I
Speaker 3: am his daughter, and he wrote me back.
Speaker 4: Just the smoke and mirror show.
Speaker 3: You know, it appears that you would have inherited some
Speaker 3: of my genetics, and I was like, yeah, dumb ass
Speaker 3: fifty percent of them, like kind of know that works.
Speaker 3: And then he went in this whole thing of like, oh,
Speaker 3: I used a mylex cup in this syringe, and in
Speaker 3: my donor program, you know, there were five successful pregnancies,
Speaker 3: three ended with you know, spontaneous miscarriage, and two offspring.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, that's funny because I'm looking
Speaker 3: at commercial DNA testing and I can see that I
Speaker 3: have five half siblings.
Speaker 4: So immediately I knew he was lying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then I was like, Okay, well you want
Speaker 3: to play, let's go. So it just became more correspondence
Speaker 3: where he would say something and then I would poke
Speaker 3: a hole in it.
Speaker 1: He fucked with the wrong woman.
Speaker 3: He fucked with the wrong woman. He did, and he
Speaker 3: knows that now and it was a hard lesson for
Speaker 3: him to learn, but by god, did he learn it.
Speaker 3: And I really think that he thought I would just
Speaker 3: buy as bullshit, and like maybe I wasn't smart enough,
Speaker 3: or you know, I think he so used to being
Speaker 3: the authority and where he lives that you know, my god,
Speaker 3: no woman would challenge him.
Speaker 4: Oh there was one line that was so cringe, you know, it.
Speaker 3: It was a pleasure to be able to deliver a
Speaker 3: baby girl to my mother and my father, and you
Speaker 3: know I should just be grateful.
Speaker 4: Well then I'm like, okay, well I want medical.
Speaker 3: Information because now, like, not only did you fuck with me,
Speaker 3: but it's now it's my kid. Now Mama Bear is mad.
Speaker 3: There's medical information. I would have made different medical decisions
Speaker 3: on my child. He didn't need all of those exploratory
Speaker 3: surgeries had we have known what it was in the
Speaker 3: first place. So then he sends me this response of like,
Speaker 3: my I call him social kids. He says his kids,
Speaker 3: his known kids. You know, they're all iron men and
Speaker 3: they're doctors.
Speaker 4: And it was just a brag list.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, you forgot the fact that
Speaker 3: you had cancer like melanoma, or that my brother had
Speaker 3: a brain tumor, like it was nothing a substance. So
Speaker 3: we just kind of kept going, and I'm pissed, right,
Speaker 3: but there was still a part of me like I
Speaker 3: still wanted to know him. I still Pollyanna was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, we could totally work.
Speaker 4: Through this, and your dad the doctor, the doctor.
Speaker 3: I was like, we could totally work through this, and
Speaker 3: the only way to do that was to level the
Speaker 3: playing field. So I told him, I said, I am
Speaker 3: going to be going to the Texas legislature and I'm
Speaker 3: going to be lobbying to make this a crime because
Speaker 3: if this is the thinking at the time, it was
Speaker 3: wrong and it needs to be criminalized. So let's make
Speaker 3: this bigger than ourselves. What a beautiful way for us
Speaker 3: to do this together and to be able to share
Speaker 3: that message. And we could and we could do it
Speaker 3: like if you really cared. And then, of course I
Speaker 3: 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 3: So he said that he was mixing it. And he
Speaker 3: said that he was a sperm donor when he was
Speaker 3: in college, so that would have been about twelve thirteen
Speaker 3: years before I was conceived. And so he went to
Speaker 3: his former medical school and he got his old dusty
Speaker 3: s sperm viials, drove them to his clinic in East Texas,
Speaker 3: and that is what he used because donor one of
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: The truth is, we don't know. I currently have fourteen
Speaker 3: half siblings. Three of those are his social children.
Speaker 1: When you say social children, you mean children that he
Speaker 1: consaved with his partner.
Speaker 4: 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 3: Same way commercial DNA testing. Several of them saw me
Speaker 3: on TV and saw his picture and saw me and
Speaker 3: was like, whoa, I kind of look like that. The
Speaker 3: mcmory's features are pretty defining. I am like kind of
Speaker 3: outlier in the sense that I'm not over six feet tall,
Speaker 3: but all of my siblings are between like six feet
Speaker 3: and like six six even the women are like six
Speaker 3: to six two, very tall. I'm just like the little,
Speaker 3: like five seven short chihuahua. I'm just really loud.
Speaker 1: You were the rumpt.
Speaker 3: The only literally like you have those like this and
Speaker 3: pictures and there's.
Speaker 1: Seven is not that small. But if everyone else is
Speaker 1: six foot two, then it's all in a.
Speaker 3: Few we actually found So I connected with some former
Speaker 3: people that worked with him during the time, and I
Speaker 3: was able to get a pretty accurate historical context of
Speaker 3: just how large his program was. So he was seeing
Speaker 3: between fifty to sixty women a day, and they couldn't
Speaker 3: determine the percentage of those that were infertility patients, but
Speaker 3: they said that it was a lot. One of them
Speaker 3: found out what he was doing and quit, So yeah,
Speaker 3: they kind of pieced together a lot of it. I
Speaker 3: went through yearbooks in the area and like I said,
Speaker 3: defining features, and then people would send me names like hey,
Speaker 3: this person kind of looks like you. And that's how
Speaker 3: we found several of them, is me reaching out to
Speaker 3: them saying, this is kind of weird, but I think
Speaker 3: maybe my sibling, can I send you a DNA test?
Speaker 3: And so that's what I ultimately did.
Speaker 1: When you were in public, you did an interview with
Speaker 1: the Karnifs program twenty twenty. What was the reaction in
Speaker 1: your community where he was this pillar of the community.
Speaker 1: He's a religious man, I believe very religious. Did he
Speaker 1: stop practicing? Was he shunned? What happened?
Speaker 3: His preacher called me that was the first thing that happened. Wow, No,
Speaker 3: he wasn't. There was a big service where you know,
Speaker 3: he was just doing the Lord's work and I should
Speaker 3: just be grateful because I have his wonderful genetics and
Speaker 3: I have a duty to honor my mother and my father,
Speaker 3: except that only fits in that context because also you said,
Speaker 3: you're not my father, and I was the devil. I
Speaker 3: was the one that was spitting in the eye of
Speaker 3: the proverbial monster, and his tribe circled around him to
Speaker 3: protect him, and he was just doing the lord's work,
Speaker 3: and that was it. And it was honestly the most
Speaker 3: disappointing thing. Do you see my commune come out and
Speaker 3: support this man in that capacity when not only do
Speaker 3: you have evidence of it, I am the evidence, but
Speaker 3: for people to actually tell me that I should just
Speaker 3: be grateful to be alive, and me to continuously say
Speaker 3: over and over again, I am not talking about being
Speaker 3: grateful to be alive. I am talking about the deception
Speaker 3: around my conception. And that's what happens so much is
Speaker 3: people just immediately go to the end result, you know,
Speaker 3: they want that silver lining and that projection of their
Speaker 3: uncomfortableness back on to me. Most of the community, I
Speaker 3: would say ninety percent was behind him. He did not retire.
Speaker 3: He continued to practice very successfully. With my half brother.
Speaker 3: I ended up filing a medical board complaint and it
Speaker 3: took the Texas Medical Board years to even hear this complaint,
Speaker 3: and they ultimately, and of course abrad Blane's COVID for everything,
Speaker 3: they ultimately ended up voting to take his license. He
Speaker 3: immediately followed a restraining order again to the Medical Board
Speaker 3: and a lawsuit, and the lawsuit stated they did not
Speaker 3: have jurisdiction to revoke his license because of a statute
Speaker 3: of limitation under standard level of care. The Medical Board
Speaker 3: and the Attorney General were saying that this is not
Speaker 3: standard level of care. This is unethical conduct and behavior
Speaker 3: which does not carry a seven year statute of limitations,
Speaker 3: and so the judge is not going to hear details
Speaker 3: of the case. All they are deciding is whether the
Speaker 3: Medical Board has jurisdiction to do this or not. It
Speaker 3: is still in the court system. He has lost twice,
Speaker 3: but he keeps appealing it. So it will go up
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court of Texas. They will send it
Speaker 3: back down to the Thirteenth Court of Appeal, and that
Speaker 3: judge has already told him from day one that her
Speaker 3: ruling still stands and it is a very expensive and
Speaker 3: long journey for him to get his license revoked. So
Speaker 3: at this point, his only accountability as attorney fees.
Speaker 1: So he's still practicing.
Speaker 3: He has since retired within the last year, but it's
Speaker 3: a forced early retirement for a seventy something year old man.
Speaker 4: His license is intact.
Speaker 1: Well, of your other siblings and their mothers who were
Speaker 1: all deceived, were they as pissed as you or did
Speaker 1: they want you to let it go?
Speaker 3: Both? So it's interesting. In my sibling pod, I feel
Speaker 3: like we kind of have this difference between the females
Speaker 3: and the males.
Speaker 4: Most of the males.
Speaker 3: Are like whatever, Like you know, it could have been
Speaker 3: so rude, like could have been like the janitor or
Speaker 3: someone off the street. The women are not okay with it.
Speaker 3: But also he was some of their doctor, and so
Speaker 3: he delivered their kids. Oh, he did their passengers, he
Speaker 3: did their breast exams. One of our sisters we sent
Speaker 3: a DNA test to she had an emergency surgery that
Speaker 3: our brother did on her. She woke up to the
Speaker 3: email confirming the DNA results. She was our sister, and
Speaker 3: then she had to when our brother came in for
Speaker 3: the follow up, tell him, hey, you know what, you
Speaker 3: have to transfer my care because you're my brother.
Speaker 1: So one of your brothers is a doctor.
Speaker 4: With my biological father. He took over the.
Speaker 1: Practice, is that one of his social kids.
Speaker 4: That's one of his social kids.
Speaker 3: For them, they obviously feel very strongly about it. But
Speaker 3: then also they are living in that community that supports him,
Speaker 3: so they are not known because of the social implications
Speaker 3: that it has, and to have that level of feedback
Speaker 3: all of the time is difficult for them.
Speaker 4: But then you also.
Speaker 3: Have the different dynamics that's in their nuclear family. For them,
Speaker 3: they have the infertile recipient parent who is still alive,
Speaker 3: so they are also protective of that relationship. So they
Speaker 3: don't want to socially come out and say that not
Speaker 3: only their donor deceived, but to reveal the secret of
Speaker 3: infertility 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: of understanding and acceptance. I like that you just went
Speaker 1: straight to rage such a mood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yes, no, it was like you now fucket.
Speaker 1: After this short break, you'll discover how Eve intersected with
Speaker 1: cereal sperm donor Jonathan Meyer from the Netflix series The
Speaker 1: Man with a Thousand Kids. The place that I obviously
Speaker 1: learned about you and even this idea of fertility fraud
Speaker 1: is 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 3: So, I guess I should preface it with how they
Speaker 3: found me. I have been a part of changing eleven
Speaker 3: of the thirteen state laws in the United States that
Speaker 3: criminalize and offers civil causes of actions for fertility fraud.
Speaker 3: And so there was this lovely Australian couple who read
Speaker 3: an article about me, and so they connected with me
Speaker 3: and then got me connected with the other moms. And
Speaker 3: that was I believe at the end of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: maybe early twenty twenty, and they just wanted information of
Speaker 3: you know, what can we do? What is the legal landscape?
Speaker 3: Is there something we can do?
Speaker 1: Because they had also been desaved, They.
Speaker 3: Had also been deceived by cereal sperm donor and so
Speaker 3: Jonathan had infiltrated one of the largest sperm banks and
Speaker 3: eleven of the sperm banks, and he was also donating
Speaker 3: on the private market and doing freelance, and so you know,
Speaker 3: they were having hundreds of house siblings and they just
Speaker 3: 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?
Speaker 3: What's the danger for them in particular is the biodiversity concern.
Speaker 3: What happens when you don't know that your donor conceived,
Speaker 3: you hook up with a half and the level of
Speaker 3: accidental incest that is the concern, especially when you're working
Speaker 3: in a demographic like mainly the Netherlands where it's smaller
Speaker 3: and you're more populous with his children and they don't know.
Speaker 1: And how many children Haddie fathered in the Netherlands for example,
Speaker 1: I don't remember.
Speaker 4: Exactly what it was in the Netherlands, but.
Speaker 1: It was like one hundred. It was like close to
Speaker 1: hundreds up to one thousand all over the world, maybe
Speaker 1: more right, because you know.
Speaker 3: I mean the math with it, which I feel like
Speaker 3: is what a lot of the media is like really
Speaker 3: latched onto you. We can look at just cryos alone,
Speaker 3: where he's going to Copenhagen once a month for four days.
Speaker 1: Is a sperm bank in the sperm Yeah, in demark.
Speaker 3: So that's roughly two hundred donations. And for him, as
Speaker 3: he is brags, you know, fifteen strawls of sperm per ejaculation,
Speaker 3: and if every straw makes a baby, that's the potential
Speaker 3: three thousand. Now he has also come out and said
Speaker 3: that he has spent fifty thousand hours donating. So like
Speaker 3: the math Aine math in here, because if he spent
Speaker 3: fifty thousand hours donating, then is it potentially fifty thousand
Speaker 3: children and not every single one is going to make
Speaker 3: a baby? The math aint math and either way, so
Speaker 3: when he says, you know, I only have five hundred
Speaker 3: 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 4: Per the banks.
Speaker 3: But that's not including freelance, private market, or different countries
Speaker 3: or different countries, because what ultimately ends up happening is
Speaker 3: let's you know, he hits his limit in one country,
Speaker 3: they export it to another country and the number goes
Speaker 3: to zero. And so that is not something that is
Speaker 3: transparent in this process because that may change how you
Speaker 3: think about this. Right, Like my assumption would be when
Speaker 3: I have a sperm donor and you say that it's
Speaker 3: twenty five is the limit? I would think twenty five worldwide.
Speaker 3: It's like read the fine print part, except there's no
Speaker 3: fine print, but every time is to zero. So when
Speaker 3: he does that and he does it as an alias,
Speaker 3: or he's doing it on the private market, they're not
Speaker 3: counting those. It's just deidentified sperm. It's just you know,
Speaker 3: going to clinic to clinic to clinic to clinic.
Speaker 1: And why Eve, why do these men do it?
Speaker 3: Million dollar question. I'm going to put my therapist Haat
Speaker 3: on for a second, and you know, like I do
Speaker 3: psycho educational evaluations, and if we look at these group
Speaker 3: of men as a whole, I definitely think that, you know,
Speaker 3: we could consider a personality disorder on the DSM somewhere
Speaker 3: in access to you. Is it narcissism? This desire is
Speaker 3: an addiction? You know, the way that they talk about
Speaker 3: their successes and it's a number and it's a competition,
Speaker 3: and the way that they just work in general, like
Speaker 3: making the fake profiles look really bad, so their real
Speaker 3: profiles with an alias look really really good.
Speaker 4: Like it's very manipulative.
Speaker 1: Wait, explain that. What the documentary discovered is that there's
Speaker 1: a group of Jonathan was part of these group of
Speaker 1: men who were almost gamifi. Oh they were. They were
Speaker 1: gamifying this idea of who can make the most babies
Speaker 1: in the world. Yes, and so they would compete with
Speaker 1: each other. They would keep score and what do you
Speaker 1: mean about they would make fake profiles.
Speaker 3: So there's lots of different platforms when we're talking about
Speaker 3: the private market or freelance known donors, you know, there's
Speaker 3: lots of different names for it. These men would make
Speaker 3: a Facebook group and they were the admin and the moderators.
Speaker 3: They'll let recipients in, but they won't let competition in,
Speaker 3: and so the other ones like make a baby now
Speaker 3: or you know, every country has.
Speaker 4: Kind of like a different platform.
Speaker 3: Think of it as like Craigslist, backpage ads, kind of
Speaker 3: like that type of thing, and it's like it's for this,
Speaker 3: and so they would make profiles that would be all aliases,
Speaker 3: but one profile would be like, you know, their best
Speaker 3: that picture of Jonathan, you know, looking cute.
Speaker 1: As a baby or as an adult.
Speaker 4: Yet, yeah, that one.
Speaker 3: But then they would make fake ones that are really
Speaker 3: really bad, like you know, miss Feld and all the characteristics,
Speaker 3: so that they knew that they weren't looking for it.
Speaker 3: Because when you are going through these profiles and you
Speaker 3: go through twenty really bad ones and then you see Jonathan,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, oh my gosh, all.
Speaker 1: Right, and that's why so many women would choose him.
Speaker 3: But all of them did this, and so you know,
Speaker 3: I think of like Simon Watson, Joe Doner, these aren't
Speaker 3: even these guys.
Speaker 4: Real names, except well Jonathan obviously.
Speaker 3: Then they compete, then they have their moderators of the group,
Speaker 3: and then it's just successes. They post pregnancy tests and
Speaker 3: they brag about someone that they got pregnant, and then
Speaker 3: they create their own little mom group. But they don't
Speaker 3: have any of the responsibilities of being you know, a
Speaker 3: father figure. Very few of them had donor contracts, and
Speaker 3: if anybody would speak out of turn, all they do
Speaker 3: is threaten and say, well, I'm just going to sue
Speaker 3: you for custody and then you use your kid happy time.
Speaker 3: So women, you know, are like, well, okay, I definitely
Speaker 3: don't want you to now, you know, be co parenting
Speaker 3: with me, and so it's it's really manipulative in that sense,
Speaker 3: but it's dangerous.
Speaker 1: How do you stop him?
Speaker 3: It was hard in the Netherlands. The moms were very
Speaker 3: much feeling was what I felt, the duty to inform,
Speaker 3: because how can you possibly consent or assent and if
Speaker 3: there is information that would change the way in which
Speaker 3: you made an informed decision, you need to know about it.
Speaker 3: So this duty to warn and inform, how can you
Speaker 3: do that when in the Netherlands you can't name him?
Speaker 3: It was just Dutch donor, Dutch done or Dutch donor.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't he be named.
Speaker 3: Because that's part of some policy, like you can't out
Speaker 3: them in the media for some reason.
Speaker 1: So how can anyone avoid using him again if they
Speaker 1: don't know he's not And.
Speaker 3: Wow, you cannot make an informed decision because no one's
Speaker 3: going to think, oh, let me google Dutch donor, Well,
Speaker 3: which Dutch donor?
Speaker 1: And also, how do you make a lure in one
Speaker 1: country that applies to every country.
Speaker 3: And the answer is you don't. So for us, the
Speaker 3: very first thing was, and this was my experience with everything,
Speaker 3: what do you do when you are existing in a
Speaker 3: legal landscape that has literally nothing. You don't have sperm
Speaker 3: banks that are required to talk to each other. Every
Speaker 3: country is so different. You have some countries that really
Speaker 3: have this buttoned up, but because of their stricter laws,
Speaker 3: it actually pushes people to go underground to these known
Speaker 3: donors and makes them, you know, more susceptible to the
Speaker 3: predatory behavior of these serial donors just out of necessity.
Speaker 3: Right then you have the wild wild West like us
Speaker 3: in America, where it's like what laws. My first thing
Speaker 3: was we got to start really small, and the first
Speaker 3: thing that we can do to meet the first goal
Speaker 3: is to get his name out there. That was, let's
Speaker 3: talk to the New York Times and you guys come forward,
Speaker 3: because in America you can name him. And that's what
Speaker 3: we did. As soon as he was named, then he
Speaker 3: was linked with all of you know, Dutch donor and
Speaker 3: it was all put together and then notifying Cryos International
Speaker 3: and hoping that they could somehow remove all of his
Speaker 3: straws that they had sent all over the world. So
Speaker 3: that was the first part. The second part was the
Speaker 3: moms had been working with donor kind in the Netherlands
Speaker 3: since like twenty seventeen, which is an organization there, and
Speaker 3: the moms ended up coming up with this group called
Speaker 3: Moms on a Mission and that was kind of like
Speaker 3: you know, our mission and you know, having all of
Speaker 3: these pieces fit together to figure out how to stop him.
Speaker 3: So the Brave Moms took him to court and he
Speaker 3: represented himself. The argument was like, listen, he's it's kind
Speaker 3: of like danger to society at this point, Like he
Speaker 3: has this amount of kids that we know of. Our
Speaker 3: kids go to school together, they live right, we're neighbors
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 4: Like this is wild.
Speaker 3: So he comes in and like you see the documentary
Speaker 3: with the story, like it's a oh judge, you don't understand.
Speaker 3: It's a new concept, Like they just need a special
Speaker 3: symbol to be branded next to their name, and like
Speaker 3: my children are so smart, like they won't.
Speaker 4: Hook up with each other. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Yep, that it would be like this pride like verification. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: 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 4: It is terrifying.
Speaker 3: And then he has years of these YouTube videos of
Speaker 3: like him basically seems like he's like 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. Brainwashing cool, like.
Speaker 3: Right, the judge was he was selling bullshit, but she
Speaker 3: wasn't buying, and so she was like, you know, you
Speaker 3: do this again and you're going to get fined one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand euro.
Speaker 1: It's what it was, per donation.
Speaker 4: Yes, you know.
Speaker 3: My favorite part was when you know, he's like, what,
Speaker 3: I'm a good father, Like I show up at birthdays,
Speaker 3: I show up at this and she's like, it's not
Speaker 3: possible for you to attend every graduation and every birthday
Speaker 3: and every life Like when you have this many children.
Speaker 1: You have hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands of children.
Speaker 3: I mean, the reality is like he's only going to
Speaker 3: admit to what we know, right, And it's just like
Speaker 3: my biological father, he only admitted to what I said.
Speaker 3: And so it's like every time anyone comes up, it's
Speaker 3: going to keep going and keep climbing and keep climbing,
Speaker 3: keep climbing. And we saw this with the Netflix documentary
Speaker 3: Our Father, where the number of those have siblings from
Speaker 3: Donald Climb kept climbing, climbing after the duty to inform
Speaker 3: and warn had been out there and people recognize, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, I think that I may have been victimized
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 4: 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: can't imagine he'd just go, oh okay, I'll stop.
Speaker 4: Who knows well?
Speaker 3: He has been giving me some shout outs on his
Speaker 3: YouTube channel. He thinks I am the mastermind, so you know,
Speaker 3: I'll put on my best Taylor.
Speaker 4: Swift, I'll take that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that crown.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: He's threatening a lawsuit for slander and just he's spiraling,
Speaker 3: is what. I think. He had an opportunity to participate
Speaker 3: and to you know, give his side of the story,
Speaker 3: but he didn't. So I think he's just sitting in
Speaker 3: the woods making YouTube videos right now.
Speaker 4: That's all from what I can see.
Speaker 1: Camer Is my boyfriend, Yeah, exactly, that's right. Eve, you
Speaker 1: are a warrior for women. I wanted to ask you
Speaker 1: one more question when I was watching you and the
Speaker 1: other donor deceived people fighting going to Capitol Hill trying
Speaker 1: to get national legislation, trying to get people to understand
Speaker 1: what this medical rape is. Essentially women being impregnated with
Speaker 1: sperm without they can see, or being defrauded. You are
Speaker 1: essentially arguing against your own existence, and I imagine a
Speaker 1: lot of people use that as a way to try
Speaker 1: and shut you up, like the preacher did and those
Speaker 1: people in your community. How do you feel about that?
Speaker 1: How do you reconcile that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Usually what I say is I am not talking about
Speaker 3: being grateful to be alive or my existence in general.
Speaker 1: Oh, wishing you'd never been born?
Speaker 4: I whish I would never be born.
Speaker 3: I'm not debating the facts of that. I am talking
Speaker 3: about the deception around conception, the lack of enforcing informed consent,
Speaker 3: and how in this particular instance, morality does not equate legality.
Speaker 3: And so separating those two things I think are very
Speaker 3: important because it is very easy to conflate those two things.
Speaker 3: What is it like, the end to the means means
Speaker 3: to the end? Yeah, right, Yeah, it's hard to not
Speaker 3: be able to look at that and say, but you're here,
Speaker 3: and I am so grateful to be alive. But I
Speaker 3: can have opposite feelings about this and hold space for that.
Speaker 3: I'm grateful to be alive, but I am very upset
Speaker 3: about the deception around my conception. And if I truly
Speaker 3: believe that we need to leave this world better than
Speaker 3: we found it, I need to find the purpose in
Speaker 3: my pain, and I need to do it not only
Speaker 3: for the rest of the people and the women who
Speaker 3: have been deceived, but also, you know, at a very
Speaker 3: basic level, just to be an example from my girls,
Speaker 3: that it's not always the tragedy that happens to you,
Speaker 3: it's what you do with it, and 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: when her son became ill and she found out that
Speaker 1: he actually wasn't her father. It reminded me of that
Speaker 1: story about Tony Abbot. It came out that an old
Speaker 1: girlfriend of his had had a son and had adopted
Speaker 1: him out and had never told Tony Abbott that she
Speaker 1: was pregnant. And then this guy who turned out to
Speaker 1: be a cameraman at Parliament House who'd filmed Tony Abbot
Speaker 1: many times in his political career, turned out to be
Speaker 1: this child, and he tracked down his biological mother, who
Speaker 1: explained who his biological father was, and it was in
Speaker 1: the press at the time. You know, Tony Abbot handled
Speaker 1: it really well, and it was quite a beautiful story
Speaker 1: and everyone loved, you know, the coincidence of the fact
Speaker 1: that they'd been working in the same workplace without even
Speaker 1: realizing they were father and son. And then a little
Speaker 1: while later it turned out that actually Tony Abbot wasn't
Speaker 1: the father. There was a different biological father, and the
Speaker 1: mother had actually just got it wrong. I really remember
Speaker 1: feeling how poignant that situation was, because they'd done interviews
Speaker 1: and spoken about how they were sort of forging this relationship,
Speaker 1: and Tony Abbot had three daughters and then he had
Speaker 1: this son, and it was just a really interesting, quite
Speaker 1: beautiful story at a time when Tony Abbott was not
Speaker 1: a very popular guy. And then I remember wondering, how
Speaker 1: do you unpack that? How do you even find a
Speaker 1: place to file that in your heart when you thought
Speaker 1: 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. 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'm Meya Friedman. Be safe,
Speaker 1: out their friends and watch out for each other. Okay.
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