Episode 7: Right In His Own Eyes
Dianna Kiesler in her home in New Palestine, Indiana. Dianna saw Dr. Donald Cline in 1979. She thought he would be inseminating her with her husband’s sperm. Photo by Jake Harper.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Donald Cline: Your honor I am asking for mercy and compassion for myself. I have learned from scripture that the way of the fool is right in his own eyes. But a wise man listens to advice. I was foolish in my actions.
Lauren Bavis: On Dec. 14, 2017, Dr. Donald Cline appeared in a court of law. The courtroom in Indianapolis was packed. His attorneys were there. His wife and kids were there. Also in the gallery that day was a group of women. Women who were forever connected to Cline, because decades ago he had deceived them and used his own semen to impregnate them.
Many of their children, the siblings, were there, too. The number of siblings had grown in the 15 months since prosecutors filed charges. And many in this group had been waiting, patiently and impatiently, for this day to finally come.
Cline: I have a wonderful, supporting and forgiving family, and to them I want to say I am very sorry for the pain my actions have caused. I also want to ask and tell my wife that I am very sorry that those events ever happened. To those who feel deceived and hurt by my actions, Jacoba and Kristy, I also want to say that I am very sorry for the pain my actions caused you.
Bavis: To the mothers and siblings in the room that day, the apology wasn’t nearly enough.
Dianna Kiesler: I mean, he destroyed a lot of lives. Not just the kids, the parents, too, that are involved.
Bavis: This is Sick, a podcast about what goes wrong in the places meant to keep us healthy. I’m Lauren Bavis.
Jake Harper: And I’m Jake Harper. This season, we’re looking at fertility treatment, and one Indiana doctor’s abuse of power.
On this episode – Donald Cline’s reckoning.
Jacoba Ballard: I want him to look me in the eye and tell me the truth.
Liz White: Why did you take that choice away from me?
Heather Woock: Where did my eyes come from? Where did my hair color come from?
Matt White: I am who I am, sometimes, because of him?
Heather: The siblings were there with their moms. And I don’t even know how to put into words what it was like seeing Cline for the first time.
Harper: Hey Dianna, nice to meet you.
Dianna: Nice meeting you. Come on in.
Harper: Dianna Kiesler was one of the mothers in the courtroom that day. I sat down with her at her house in New Palestine, Indiana, about a half hour east of Indianapolis. And while we talked in her living room, something caught my eye.
Harper: I have a question about this chicken. What’s going on with this chicken?
Dianna: I love chickens. I don’t know how I got started on chickens in the kitchen, but I did.
Harper: Oh I see – I didn’t realize how many there were, now I’m seeing them.
Dianna: Oh yeah, there’s a gob.
Harper: Her kitchen is just chicken crazy. Figurines, wall decorations, a calendar, a pillow. People bring Dianna chicken stuff from all over the world.
Dianna: And then …
Harper: This a chicken – oh my god. I didn’t even ...
Dianna: It’s a chicken purse.
Harper: What?! That is great.
Dianna: And then this chicken ... and look how old, it’s even cracking. But it makes a noise.
Harper: Oh, yeah.
Harper: As we work away around the kitchen and back into the living room, there’s more typical stuff on the walls. Family photos, including of her daughter, Julie, and Julie’s husband and kids.
Bavis: The story of Dianna’s family may sound familiar. In the late ‘70s, Dianna and her husband really wanted kids, but they were having trouble conceiving.
Harper: Had his sperm been checked?
Dianna: It had. And he had a low level of sperm, but it wasn’t to the point where he couldn’t have gotten me pregnant.
Bavis: Dianna saw Cline in 1979. She remembers those baby pictures hanging on the wall in Cline’s office. But her story is different than what you’ve heard so far on this podcast. For one, she already had a kid. She and her husband had adopted.
Dianna: He's six years older than my daughter. The reason I named my son Brian was I loved the movie “Brian’s Song.”
Bavis: Cline has said that one of the reasons he used his own sperm was because his patients didn’t want to adopt. But Dianna was ready to adopt again if Cline’s treatment didn’t work.
Harper: Dianna’s story is different in another way — a big way. She didn’t go to Cline for anonymous donor sperm. Dianna and some of the other mothers, they were supposed to get their husband’s sperm.
Harper: How many times did you go in for the artificial insemination?
Dianna: Three times.
Harper: OK. And your husband went with you at this point?
Dianna: No, I just took his sperm in.
Harper: Explain how that worked.
Dianna: He would just put it into, like, a tube and I would just take it in.
Bavis: Cline had told her to keep the test tube in her bra.
Dianna: Yeah, because you had to keep it warm. So I went through that three times thinking it was my husband’s, but it wasn’t. I don’t even know whether he did his sperm the whole three times or whether he used my husband’s sperm the first two. I have no idea.
Bavis: Julie, Dianna’s daughter, always knew her mother went to Cline to help her get pregnant. So when Julie saw Cline’s name in the news, she called her mom.
Dianna: And I said, what did he do? OK, that was my exact words, what did he do. And she said, ‘Well he used his own sperm to (im)pregnate his patients. Well do you think I should get tested?’ And I said well no, I don’t really think so, but if you want to go ahead. Because I know how my daughter is. She would go off and do it whatever she wanted to do.
Four weeks later after she did it – because I knew she would – she called me at work one day, and she's crying. And I said honey, what’s wrong? And she said, ‘Mom, I'm not dad's child.’ And she says, ‘I'm Dr. Cline’s.’ Well that just ... we both broke out crying.
It was all I could do to just even think that day. Because all I kept thinking about was what he did to me. I was just numb.
Well then I’m thinking, oh god how am I going to tell my husband this?
Harper: Yeah, I mean, were you freaking out before you told your husband?
Dianna: Oh god, yes. I kept telling Julie, I said I’ve got to find a time to tell your dad. And, you know, I waited as long as I could, but I was afraid it was going to come out on the news and Julie would be on there. So I had to get to him and tell him before all that came out.
Harper: When that actually happened, were you guys in this room?
Dianna: Yeah, we were in the room I was sitting right there and he was sitting here.
Harper: Were you watching TV or something?
Dianna: Yeah, I think we were because that’s our thing we do at night together.
I think I just, you know, TV was stopped for a moment or something and said, I need to tell you something.
Well, he sat there for a moment and then he started crying. And he said to me that ‘This has taken everything away from me.’
Bavis: For her dad, Julie has always been special. When she was little, he braided her hair before school. And he’s still really involved in her life, and her kids’ lives. Dianna said they were nervous to see each other after they got the DNA results.
Dianna: We went to Julie’s house that week. And she told her dad that, ‘Hey, you’re my dad. I will always love you.’ I said, yeah you should. He does everything for you.
Harper: Do you ever wish that you had never found out?
Dianna: Well, probably yes. Because it's, it's just been a roller coaster ride. My daughter has had a lot of ups and downs. She's gone through a lot of emotions. It's caused her a lot of stress. And you know, it's just … really, she's been through a lot. And I've tried to be there for her to help her. I've tried to be the strong one, OK? But I have my moments too. And I've tried to be strong for my husband and I try not to say a lot here at home and I keep it inside me. So it's been hard on all of us.
Harper: Since we’ve been working on the Cline story, a lot of people have brought up the same concern. What problems could arise from having so many half siblings living in the Indianapolis area? What if they get together, or their kids get together? What if they have kids? What would be the genetic implications of that?
Bavis: It’s a fair question. Two of the siblings happen to be neighbors. Some of their kids go to the same schools. So we wanted to talk with someone who could explain the risk here. Someone who’s taken a special interest in the Cline case.
Todd Foster: I have a PhD in biological anthropology with a little bit of medical science sprinkled in there.
Bavis: Todd Foster is a research scientist. He works in a hospital. And not just any hospital.
Todd: I came a year and a half away from probably interacting in my job with Donald Cline.
Bavis: Todd works at St. Vincent. The hospital across the street from Cline’s old office, where he told investigators he collected his own sperm.
When Todd talks about the Cline case, he does see a potential problem: inbreeding. The scientific term for that is consanguinity.
Todd: Con – mixing, or with. Sanguinity – sanguine, blood. It’s just a term meaning how much inbreeding is occurring in a certain population.
Bavis: Consanguinity increases the risk of genetic disorders. And anonymous sperm donation may make consanguinity more likely. A single donor could be used many times. For instance, Follas Labs, the company Cline used in his later years for donor sperm. They recruited men to donate one or two times per week for up to two years.
Even today, there’s no regulation that sperm banks have to follow. But there are guidelines. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine came up with a number.
Todd: I think the most recent suggestion is no more than 25 per male among I think it’s 800,000 population.
Bavis: Twenty-five babies from the same donor for every 800,000 people. And the guidelines have changed over the years. In 1986, when Cline was still using his own sperm, donors were supposed to be used only 10 times — regardless of population. Cline blew way past that. Right now, there are more than 60 known siblings, but we still don’t know how many children Cline fathered. So Todd says the risk of consanguinity in this case is unknown.
Todd: Getting back to my concern is that he clearly knew … why would he state he would never use a donated sample more than three to five times if he didn't know that was a problem, right? And I think that’s one of the things that people don’t … they’re not hitting on.
Harper: Todd says despite his education, he’s not an expert on consanguinity. And he hasn’t always been interested in the Cline case. He started looking into it because of what happened around Christmas 2018.
Todd: We don't really buy gifts among family members in my family. Generally the kids, we buy ourselves something and mom asks us what’d you get yourself for Christmas this year. This past year it was either going to be a Victor Oladipo jersey or the 23andMe test and now I sometimes joke that I wish I would've bought that damn jersey.
Harper: A few weeks later, in January 2019, Todd and his girlfriend opened a bottle of wine and sat down to go over his DNA results.
Todd: She was like, ‘Wow, you've got over 1,000 family connections on here. Let’s click it and check it and open it up.’ The first person pops up and I see that I share a little over 23 percent DNA. We both automatically went, holy shit, I have a brother. We knew automatically.
So at this point I’m grabbing for my phone and I’m going to start calling my dad. I’m calling him up. He used to brag about being such a whore back in the day and so I’m like you got kids! Either that or you cheated on mom, you bastard. And right when I was in this hand, dialed, and that’s when my girlfriend reached and grabbed my arm and went, ‘Wait, hang up.’
Harper: Todd saw on 23andme that he had dozens of half siblings. He called his mom.
Todd: Hey, I got my DNA results back. ‘Stop. Stop right there, Todd. You’ve got to come to me. Now.’
Harper: He went to his mom’s at 10:30 at night, and they sat at the kitchen table until four in the morning. Todd’s parents had never told him he was donor conceived. So that was the first thing they had to talk about. Todd’s connection to Cline – that was news to both of them. They found out by Googling some of the names from Todd’s DNA results.
Todd: It was like this gut punch. Someone just cut the tether to who I am. Because we’re all taught our identity resides in our blood, right? That’s why I took the damn DNA test. But yeah, this complete feeling like my whole identity, is that gone? Am I no longer a Foster? I literally had to just rest my hand and kind of sit there for a minute. Just like, woah. The weight of it.
I woke up the next morning and, again, excuse my language but just kind of like, what the fuck?! This cannot be real. This is … what? And I think it was that way for a couple of weeks.
Harper: So basically, you didn’t know, really, anything about the Cline story at all until you found out about it in relation to yourself.
Todd: Yeah. I mean, I’m such an asshole man.
Harper: What?
Todd: Because the summer before the story came on, on the news. I was sitting at home. I was doing something academic, I was reading an article or something. It was just background noise. And that caught my attention and I heard the story and my reaction was HA! And then so, that night when I was talking with my mom, my stepdad and my girlfriend, I was pulled back to that moment and went, you got what you deserved, you asshole.
Bavis: Todd is able to joke about his situation sometimes. And his education seems to make it easier to cope.
Todd: He's just DNA content. He gave us the biological blueprint for what we could become. But it’s our experience, our lived environment, that's what made us. So those people who raised us, they are the ones who … he might have provided the blueprint but they built the building.
Bavis: Some of the siblings say the one bright spot in all of this is that they have new people to bond with. They’ll point to their similarities and say, hey, we must get that from Cline.
Todd: Sometimes I hear, ‘All of us like hot sauce.’ Is it really all of us? One of my brothers, my biological brother, is really into comics. Well I’m really into comic books and stuff. So it’s like, ‘See?’ And I’m like yeah, but that’s two of us out of what, 60? Sometimes we look for connections that we think are inherent, but they're not really. We're wanting to see more than what's really there.
Harper: Have you said this basic thing to the other siblings?
Todd: Some. But it ruins the mystique. Again, we’re looking for connections because of blood. And I’m not sure that those things really exist.
Bavis: The siblings have meetups, barbecues and potlucks, things like that. And Todd says he sometimes feels like he’s in a sea of strangers. It’s awkward. They’re very different people. Different career paths, different political views. But he hasn’t given up on bonding with siblings.
Todd: Maybe 20 years down the road I’m walking into a sibling reunion and high fiving all my taller-ass brothers. I’m mad. I'm the shortest of all of them, and most of them have hair. And high fiving and I know every one of their kids’' names and we’ve got shared experience with one another. I personally am choosing to be open to that.
Harper: Even though DNA is less important to Todd, he does have one thing in common with his siblings – their feeling that Cline violated their parents’ trust. So he wants certain things from Cline.
Todd: What’s our medical history? What do we need to be worried about? Rather than having us all of us sit there and go, ‘I got that problem, too.’ ‘Oh, so do I.’ Don’t just let us just sit here and speculate.
Harper: Do you know anything about the medical history?
Todd: Nope.
Harper: Nothing?
Todd: Nothing. I know nothing.
Harper: Todd also wants to know how many times Cline used his own sperm. Without that number, it’s hard to know how worried he should be about the risks for his daughter.
Todd: When my daughter comes of age and she’s sexually active, not only am I going to teach her sex education because unfortunately our public schools will not, but I also am going to have to have the conversation with her about, you’ve got to know who you’re getting involved with. And that’s going to have to happen for a couple of generations, especially if we stay in this area.
Harper: Ultimately, Todd wants Cline to acknowledge that what he did was wrong. Todd’s not religious himself, but he says it’s the Christian thing to do.
Todd: I’m going to be a dick here, but if you’re so holy, be kind. Stop with the reasons why you did it, the justification of it and recognize that what you’ve done, your actions, did hurt not only our parents, but also the kids you helped conceive. I think I'd have a lot more respect for him if he was just like, ‘I did this thing. It probably wasn’t right. How can I make it right?’
Marion Superior Court Judge Helen Marchal: Ladies and gentlemen, we are here this afternoon, State of Indiana v. Donald Cline, cause number ending in 5461. Mr. Cline is here with counsel. Good afternoon, all.
Bavis: Cline was never charged for using his own sperm. That wasn’t a crime. Nor was he charged for anything related to deceiving his patients. He wasn’t charged for fraud, for theft. He wasn’t charged with rape or sexual assault.
Instead, Cline showed up to court that day in 2017 to enter a plea on the charge of obstruction of justice.
Judge Helen Marchal: And it’s my understanding that we are set for a guilty plea today. Is that correct?
Tracy Betz, Donald Cline’s attorney: That’s correct, Your Honor, yes.
Judge Marchal: All right, and Dr. Cline if you would please raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm under the penalties of perjury the testimony you’re about to give will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Harper: Before Jacoba Ballard met with Cline’s son and daughter, before she sat down with Cline at the Greencastle dinner, before Cline called to ask her to keep quiet – before all that, you may remember Jacoba and three other siblings sent letters, consumer complaints about Cline, to the Indiana Attorney General’s office.
The Attorney General’s office mailed letters to Cline asking him to respond to those complaints.
Bavis: Cline wrote back with his story. The same one he told his patients. The one where he used sperm from medical residents. “I did nothing legally or morally wrong,” he wrote. And he doubled down. “If this woman is saying this” he wrote, “I believe she is guilty of slander and/or libel.”
What Cline did, lying to investigators, that’s a felony known as obstruction of justice. His legal team put up a fight, exhausted all the options. The case took months to get here, and then it was over in an hour and a half.
Judge Marchal: Are you thinking with a clear mind today?
Cline: Yes, your honor.
Judge Marchal: Has anybody forced you to resolve your case in this manner?
Cline: No.
Judge Marchal: You’ve chosen to do so voluntarily?
Cline: Yes.
Harper: Cline pleaded guilty, so no jury. And after he admitted to the obstruction, Jacoba was allowed to give a statement.
Jacoba: My mother was 20 years old when she went to see Dr. Cline back in the fall of 1979.
Harper: She wanted to describe how Cline had deceived her mother. To talk about the pain he had caused her and her siblings. But Cline was in court for obstruction, and his attorney shut her down.
Jacoba: For 30 years, my half-sister Julie believed her dad was her biological dad –
Tracy Betz, Donald Cline’s attorney: Objection, Your Honor. She’s going into the past period again that we discussed yesterday and facts that have nothing to do with the charges that are pending before you.
Harper: Jacoba couldn’t say everything she wanted, but she asked the judge to consider what she and her siblings were going through.
Jacoba: Although this case is about two counts of obstruction of justice, you are aware it is deeper than just those two charges. Thank you for your time in allowing me to address the court. May wisdom guide your decision.
Bavis: Before he was sentenced, Cline got his change to address the court.
Cline: I have tried to live my life showing honesty and care to others, and I will continue to do so. As a 79-year-old man, I have experienced much change in our society. And I have grown to have a different understanding of what it means to show compassion and care to others.
Bavis: The judge had some words for Cline. She told him he had taken an oath to protect his patients.
Judge Marchal: Placing your selfish interests first is, I am sure, against every tenant, every principle that a physician subscribes to. And these actions quite frankly, it’s an embarrassment to your profession.
Bavis: Often, first time offenders can have their charges reduced. The judge opted not to do that in this case.
Judge Marchal: I know that this is your first offense. But Dr. Cline, I do believe the facts support going ahead and sentencing you as a Level 6 felon. Many first time offenders they deserve a break. But I believe in this particular situation you do not.
Bavis: Cline is a felon now. He got a year-long sentence. But the court suspended that sentence. He paid a $500 fine. $185 in court fees. And he never spent a single night in jail.
Harper: If you saw the TV coverage that day, you would have seen that Cline left the courtroom quickly.
TV news reporter: Dr. Cline what would you change now, if you could change anything?
Harper: He stepped onto an elevator and ducked behind his attorney.
Then came the mothers and siblings. Jacoba Ballard. Matt and Liz White. Heather Woock, Diana Kiesler – people you’ve heard on this podcast. And several others. None of them looked happy.
Jacoba: When he read his letter today and said that he had apologized and that he was remorseful? He was not remorseful. And he sit there and said that he was. And he still, at that time, could not admit to us how many times he had done it or anything else.
Jacoba’s mother: And I think he’s a liar. And I think he will always be a liar. And his church family, they need to know that he’s a liar. He lied to all of us.
Matt White: He violated women’s reproductive rights for close to a decade. There’s no remorse. He knew what he was doing. He was habitually violating women’s rights.
Harper: This wasn’t the end of the story though.
Matt: First off, I want to thank you all for coming today and continuing to listen to our story. The number of children and the number of families continues to grow. Currently there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
Harper: That’s next time on Sick.
Sick is a production of WFYI, Side Effects Public Media and PRX. With support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
Bavis: This episode was reported and written by Jake Harper and me, Lauren Bavis.
Our editors are Curtis Fox and Dave Rosenthal. Original music by Jordan Munson. Sound design by Story Yard.
Harper: Visit our website, sickpodcast.org. And find us on Facebook and Twitter @sickpodcast.
You can subscribe to Sick on every podcast platform, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you liked this episode, please rate us on Apple Podcasts or share it with a friend. It really helps.
I’m Jake Harper.
Bavis: And I’m Lauren Bavis. Thanks for listening.