A former fertility doctor is being accused of impregnating at least two of his patients using his own sperm.
According to a lawsuit filed in Ontario, Canada, Dr Norman Barwin, from Ottawa allegedly used his own bodily fluids in the artificial inseminations without the patient’s knowledge or consent.
In 1989, Daniel and Davina Dixon, who were trying to start a family, sought help from Dr Barwin. 26 years on, their daughter Rebecca and her parents have filed a lawsuit against Dr Barwin after they found out that Daniel wasn’t Rebecca’s biological father.
Rebecca first had suspicions about her parents when she read an article about the unlikely chance of two people with brown eyes having a child with blue eyes. She also noted that she never felt she looked like her father Daniel.
She told CBC News,
“When I was younger, I was often asked if I was adopted. And we laughed about those situations. I don’t physically look a lot like my parents, but I look a little bit like my mother’s mom… I was never really concerned that there was any problem.”
According to The BBC, a paternity test revealed that Daniel was not her biological father and the family began to seek out the truth. Shockingly, their research revealed that Dr Barwin had been sanctioned in 2013 for artificially inseminating three patients with the wrong sperm and subsequently resigned a year later.
A few months later, Rebecca was contacted by a woman called Kathryn Palmer who had previously discovered in 2015 that Dr Barwin was her biological father. They did a DNA test which proved that the women were half sisters.
Dr Barwin’s lawyer, Karen Hamway, refused to comment on the new allegations, but said that they would be filing a legal statement of defence “in due course.”
