It is a 2022 Netflix Documentary which tells the story of half -siblings who united to fight for justice against an Indian Fertility Doctor, Dr Donald Cline, who inseminated mothers with his sperms without their consent.
It is a true-life story which contains recreated scenes with both actors and victims
At the beginning of the movie, it gives scary view of Dr. Cline’s medical office and the masturbation process he usually undergo before the release of sperm which he uses on his patients.
After many decades, the secret of Donald Cline gets revealed when one of his offspring, Jacoba Ballard, who felts she didn’t look like her parents especially with having blonde hair and blue eyes, decided to enquire more and later, conducts a DNA test, thereby, tracing her ancestry tree to many other siblings.
As for Jacoba, she was the only child and has always had this longing for siblings and relatives. As a way to unravel many secrets behind her birth, she finds more shocking, horrific, traumatizing and disturbing information surrounding her birth.
Netflix gathered more information about Dr. Cline from the inseminated mothers, colleagues, family members and nurse to Dr. Cline. For example, Dorcas Pierce saying, ‘The doctor said he would match us with a donor that looked like my husband and that he was going to use medical students’ sperm’. In reality, these mothers were deceived by Dr Cline.
After Jacoba discovered from the ancestry tree that she had 7 half siblings, they all started to do their own investigation since they confirmed it was ideal that a donor sperm cannot be used more than three times.
After filing a complaint to the Attorney General Office in Indiana and receiving no feedback within a long while, Jacoba decided to reach out to many news outlets, yet, no one was willing to pick up the story.
So one day, she decided to message a Fox 59 Reporter, Angela Ganote, on Facebook with a long message and proof of deception by the Doctor. Angela’s report became the messiah to these half siblings.
Later on, one of the half siblings messaged all Dr Cline’s children and grandchildren to enquire if they donated their sperm. One of his sons, Douglas, admitted he donated once when there was no donor. He then promised to arrange that they meet with Dr Cline.
Children with Dr. Cline
When Angela first aired the story about Dr Cline (without mentioning his name in the report), Julie Harmon decided to do a DNA test because her husband who saw Jacoba on Tv, said that they both looked alike.
Dr Cline was known in his community as a philanthropist, and an elder in the church. Angela received a mail from Dr. Cline, stating that he was protected under HIPPA laws and that she could be sued alongside with Fox 59. To her, this was form of intimidation.
Other scenes in this documentary were mainly scenes of siblings’ alert and how they all connected and shared their individual traumatizing stories.
It got so bad that the siblings alert grew each day as people living within the radius of Indianapolis were advised to take DNA test especially those who had met with Dr Cline.
As more siblings’ alert began to spike, more scary parts of their stories began to unfold. For example, Jacoba’s lug nuts of her car were missing and the Google folder where Julie saved Cline works/ investigations /emails were hacked and gone.
At some point during the investigation, they came up with the word, Quiversful, a cult aimed at having many children as possible. It sounds funny that quiversful favorite verse is Jeremiah 1 vs 5 which was the same favorite verse of Dr Cline.
Later on, the Attorney General office began the investigation after 2 years of Jacoba filling a statement. They took the first step by taking Dr Cline’s sample to conduct a DNA. It was confirmed that he was their father and was charged to court to answer criminal charges.
He was charged with two felony counts of obstruction of justice which turned dozens of people’s lives upside down. He got the two level 6 felonies and was asked to pay 500 dollars fine with no jail sentence.
According to Netflix, in 2018, the mothers and siblings successfully passed legislations in Indiana making illicit donor inseminations illegal. But currently, there is no federal law to that effect.
Netflix gathered that 44 additional doctors have been found to have used their own sperm to inseminate fertility patients.
As of this production of Netflix documentary, there are currently 94 Cline siblings and counting
Director: Lucie Jourdan
Producer: Jason Blum, Lucie Jourdan, Michael Petrella and Amanda Spain
