Baby God (2020) - full transcript

How did I get here?

How did that happen?

Was it something unholy,
something...

circumspect,
something that was evil?

You know,
I can't believe that...

we're the only ones.

Did you ever think we'd find out?

In those days, in the '60s,

it was get married...

have kids...

everything's gonna go nice
for the rest of your life.



Las Vegas was not nearly
as busy as it is now.

Not crowded.

It was nice.

I was 22.

All my friends
were having babies

right off the bat
and everything,

and we didn't have one.

People would ask,
"Well, when are you guys

going to start your family?"
You know?

But it wasn't easy
to get pregnant.

A lot of pressure.

It wasn't just the pressure.
I just wanted one.

I wanted kids.

Nobody had any solutions...



until I went to Dr. Fortier.

Dr. Fortier, he was listed
in the phone book

as a fertility specialist.

He just told us
to bring samples in

and that he would
do the insemination

with my husband's sperm samples.

I thought, "Well, it's worth
a try," you know?

And then over time I,
you know, I would look at Wendi

and I'd think, "Gee, you know,
it's really funny that

she doesn't really resemble...

her father's side of the family
at all."

As she grew up, I thought,

"Where'd she get
all these brains?"

She didn't get them from me,

and I didn't think her father
was all that smart.

I mean,
he was like I was, average.

I was a detective
for almost 13 years.

I retired from my job.

I needed some more things
to keep me busy,

and so I thought, "Well,
maybe I'll do some genealogy."

I think every person
thinks that when they retire.

So I bought
an ancestry dot com kit.

You know, you always see
the commercials

and people are having
these great results.

I had a bunch of matches,

which initially I thought
were first cousins.

But I don't have
any first cousins.

When I noticed that I had
half sibling matches,

I knew something wasn't right.

The only name that I kept seeing
was Fortier.

I knew I needed to talk
to my mother.

I said, "I did a DNA test,
and my dad's not my dad.

And my dad
was the fertility doctor

that you were seeing
in Las Vegas."

Do you think you
would've ever gone for a donor?

No, I didn't even know.

I didn't.
Never even thought about it.

Did you know that
people even did that?

No.

Hmm, yeah, I wondered if it...

I didn't.

You know, 'cause stuff like that
wasn't really talked about.

You know, it was probably
kind of a new thing, even.

But if it had been an option,

I'm pretty sure
we wouldn't have done it.

There's a normal ovary.

This is an abnormal ovary.

Yeah. That was really a...
As they say, a, uh...

monster.

Oh, there... there's a tumor.

Uh, but that's not
what I wanted to show you.

This is her again.
She was showing me shoes.

She's pretty cute.

That's a uterus
with the tubes in it.

Ah! A sunset...

on the Pacific, huh?
What do you think of that?

You know what she said?
She said...

"Thank you. You have...

changed my life."

I'm a gynecologist.

And a gynecology,
um, kind of specialty

was something... that, um...

was a door opener in Las Vegas

because I would say
that 70 to 75 percent

of the population were females.

And they needed
some kind of, um,

oversight by a female physician.

Not a female physician.
The female that treats...

or a male that treats females.
Okay?

This banana should soon,
any minute now,

pop a big flower...

that looks like
a hippopotamus's penis.

It's a huge thing. It's huge.

And the petals of it...

okay, are the banana fruits
that we eat. Okay?

So, once it does that, it dies.

So this plant then dies,
but it made a baby.

You have to understand,
I'm an obstetrician.

That's my job. To give life.

Come on, I'll show you
some working.

The number of OB-GYNs here,
which is my specialty,

well, you could count
on your hands.

And so Doctor Fortier said,

"To heck with all of you others.
We'll start our own place."

Quincy was the inceptor

of, uh, Women's Hospital.

We were delivering
thousands, thousands.

I would say I delivered...

probably in excess of
maybe close to 5,000 babies.

It was such a great
little center for females.

We treated
conditions associated with infertility,

not having any of the
modalities we have today...

especially genetics. We
didn't have any of that.

There was no sperm bank.

We had no way to know that
you could freeze sperm, okay?

Which meant we had
to use fresh sperm.

And in a medical
school or a hospital,

you could be a donor.

It was more or less informal.

You know, I was a donor.

When I was a medical student,

we would sell our... our goods

for 50 dollars a sample,

and they would pull the sperm
and then inseminate these women.

- How do you do it?
- A syringe.

You just use a syringe with a long,
uh, needle on it,

and you just put it into the cervix,
actually.

And it's one, two,
three. Nothing to it, really.

Quincy,
he was doing some fertility work,

uh,
but it was unbeknownst to the patients.

But in those days,

they didn't even
understand DNA then.

If someone was fertilized
out of that sperm sample,

they would never be able to
say who was the father of a baby.

I grew up in that hospital...

- -...chasing up
my father on his rounds. It was fun.

I had four older sisters
and a little brother.

My older sister was
my mother's daughter.

My mother had been married
before to somebody else.

My father was a brilliant,
brilliant man.

He could look at your toenails

and tell you your teeth were rotten,
and he'd be right.

He understood the human body.

Women got pregnant
when they went to him.

Other doctors couldn't
figure it out. He could.

He knew what to do

or whatever needed to be done...

which led him to
using his own sperm.

How do you know
that your father was doing this?

Because he told us.

But what did he say?

He just said that,
"I'm just helping out."

How many
siblings do you think you have?

Hundreds. Plural,
yeah. Lots and lots.

My father was real busy.

How many
siblings have you found?

Well, at least 14.

The first thing,
when I started contacting people,

was, "Can I see a picture?
What do you look like?"

If I'm looking at
all these features,

trying to say, "Well,
what is common?"

Yeah,
I think I'm probably the only sibling

that doesn't look
like the other siblings

that I've seen so far.

I think everybody else
has a pretty common nose.

You know,
I've seen some of my siblings

on their family trees have
listed him as their father.

I'm not ready to do that.

I have found half-siblings
that were born in the 1940s,

in the '70s, and in the '80s.

Two that are almost the
same age as my oldest son...

and some as old as 70.

I've emailed a
couple of the people

that I was matched to,

and I said, you know,

"Hello,
I just received a close DNA match to you.

Think I have figured it out,
but it is a bit of a story.

Would you be willing to
talk/message with me about it?"

He said, "I'm very willing to
talk about our close connection.

If your story involves infertility,
you are not alone.

I may be his oldest child."

He died in 2006
at the age of 93.

Everything I can find that
paints a picture of who he was

is important to me.

You know,
I'm putting it together like a case,

just like a case.

I'm... I'm a... I'm a digger.
I'm an investigator at heart.

I've been trained my whole
life to go into cop mode.

I started when I
was 19 years old.

I worked my way up
and retired as a captain.

I worked mostly major
crimes investigations,

lots of homicides
and cold cases.

What we do in a case like this,
if the...

If there is any inkling,
we are better safe than sorry.

We're gonna do
a full investigation.

We're gonna cover all our bases.

I'm one of those people that,
I wanna know.

I wanna solve the mystery,
and I wanna know.

And that's how I feel with this.

I've thought a lot about
whether or not he knew

he would be caught.

I think even he didn't foresee that for,
you know, 69 dollars,

you could send in a sample

and connect yourself with
people all over the world.

I just... I think he
didn't see that coming.

My name is Brad Gulko.

My PhD is in human
evolutionary genomics.

People tend to confuse

what is unknown with
what is unknowable.

And, so,
a lot of things like parentage

was ultimately unknowable,
right?

You could do a blood test,
maybe you could find out

a little bit of information,

but the idea that
you could pin down

with statistical certainty

who was your parent
was an unknowable.

It turns out it
wasn't unknowable,

it was just unknown.

So, these genetic tests

have now come to
produce scientific answers

on things that were previously
thought not just unknown,

but not fundamentally knowable.

And in that way,
they seem almost mystical.

Well, my first sense, I think,
was a sense of sinking.

I didn't know about Dr. Fortier
until about two months ago.

Fortier? Is that how
you pronounce it?

See, I actually don't know.

My mom, uh,
lives in Southern California,

and in her housing complex
randomly ran into somebody...

who, uh,
was talking about Las Vegas.

And it came up

that I was born at
a particular hospital,

and she heard about
him using his own sperm.

And my mom realized, "Wow,
I was a fertility patient...

at that practice at that time."

I later found out

he was a personal
friend of my father's.

They served together
in the Civil Air Patrol,

and my dad really liked
him and looked up to him.

And Dr. Fortier did
actually deliver me.

He's on my birth certificate.

So,
I decided to get my DNA sequenced,

and, uh, my sister's came back
99.5 percent Ashkenazi Jew,

and mine came back, uh, 51.2.

I always wondered about the blue eyes,
though.

Gosh,
it was a couple of years ago.

I was trying to find what tribe
my grandmother came from.

Most likely Native American.

And I get this information
back and look at it,

and,
"Who are these Fortier people?"

When I was born,
my mother still talks about

how her sisters were upset

that how did she come out

with a blonde-haired,
blue-eyed child?

Perhaps the doctors saw
that she was married to,

um, imperfect selection,
shall we say?

Part Native American,
he had olive skin, dark hair,

and he was going
to give her a gift.

Maybe I'm a gift.

I think there's a natural
human drive to reproduce...

and to reproduce as diversely
and as fruitfully as possible.

I can understand why somebody
would have a primary motivation

to use their own sperm

and to see somebody
who you feel like is attractive

carrying your child.

Simple, uh, straightforward.

And most people at a
civilized society realize,

well, you can't just do that.

I feel like...

uh, Dr. Fortier...

found a way to
justify in his own mind,

I imagine,
found a way to justify in his own mind

doing what he wanted to do,

um, that didn't violate his
ethical norms too much,

even if it pushed
them pretty hard...

As being the result of
that kind of a decision...

I don't know. I think I'm
still struggling with that.

I don't know where I'll end up.

Height five foot, ten inches.

Weight, one... maybe sixty-five.

Blue eyes.

The physician and his wife
had five other children together

before they
divorced in the 1960s.

He later adopted
two more daughters.

Hmm.

He's just saying that he mixed
his sperm with her husband's

and that, you know,
would help with the, quote, "swim-up."

And that he'd done it before.

He was impregnating
people into his 70s.

He never lost his license.

He died in good standing.

You know, he just was able to
kinda get away with doing this,

just paid the people off,

and now they're not
allowed to talk about it.

I think they gave him
the benefit of the doubt

and just let him
continue to practice.

You know,
I know that there's gotta be

some influence from
his genetics in me.

I just want to
know what that is.

I struggle with whether or not
I think he was a good person.

Do you wanna say
that your father was a monster?

And what does
that say about you?

Dr. Quincy Fortier is a legend

in Las Vegas medical circles.

His private practice
began in 1945.

Fortier continued
his fertility practice

from a small office
behind his home

even after passing
his 90th birthday.

In 1991, he was honored

as Nevada's
physician of the year,

but the good doctor
harbored dark secrets.

Mary Craddock
wanted one of these, a baby.

She and her husband
tried and tried.

Then,
with the help of an infertility specialist,

Mary says she finally
got what she wanted,

or so she thought.

DNA tests show the
doctor is actually the father.

Mary Craddock
suing for at least 14 million dollars.

Fortier, now 93 years old,

finally closed his practice,

put his multi-million-dollar
estate into a trust,

and counted on his lawyers
to keep a lid on the lawsuit.

There's a confidentiality
agreement.

It's reciprocal to both sides,
all parties and all lawyers.

Briefs
written by Fortier's lawyer

argue there is no Nevada law

to prevent a doctor from
doing something like this.

Lawyers for the doctor
are trying to settle the case

and seal it,
and for an obvious reason.

They worry how many other
cases might be lurking out there.

He was an old man

who had dedicated his
entire life to helping people

because he loved people.

And to have one of his
patients try to vilify him

in the public light,
it... it hurt him.

Back in those days,
often any kind of agreement

between a patient and himself
was just a verbal agreement.

You sealed a deal
with a handshake.

I learned a different
way of thinking

about the press that time,

and it has colored
my thinking ever since.

So, this is difficult...

but if you love somebody,
you stand up for them.

It's the very,
very least I could do for my dad.

What was your dad like as a dad?

He said that we... We saved him.

He was going through
a divorce at that time,

um, and was facing the
loss of his six other children.

We were two babies.

He delivered us,
took us home from the hospital.

And the rest is history.

He adopted you at what age?

Um,
I think he would have been 55.

Many times, we were asked,
"Was that your grandpa?"

"No, it's our dad."

I love that one.

Oh, this is a good one.

It's high school graduation.

You wanna see?

Oh, my God.

Look,
it's the American Institute of Hypnosis.

He used to hypnotize himself

instead of taking anesthesia for,
like...

Yeah,
he didn't like pain medication

because it fogged his mind.

He circumcised himself.

How many men do you
know can do that? Um...

You know, but let's...

See,
he donated a lot of money to

a lot of different
organizations and of course,

as soon as he did that,
then he would become a member.

He would see patients
on a Sunday or a Saturday.

Sometimes he'd see them
at five or six in the morning.

He moved the practice,
uh, into our home,

which I know some people
who think that that's odd,

but everybody's home life is...

different.

Oh, my...

My dad had a
great love of music,

and he had us
take piano lessons,

and sometimes,
we'd come home from school

and there would be
patients in the living room

and we had to practice with
an audience.

And obviously,
some people might think it would be weird

for an OB-GYN to be
treating his own daughters.

But I was so grateful,

not only because he was
such a phenomenal doctor,

but loved me, too.

You can't ask for
anything better.

I knew how much
people needed him.

Did they need an
emergency appendectomy?

He was there for them.

Needed a tooth pulled?
He could do that.

If you wanted to have a baby,
you'd come to him.

Did you know
that he was doing this?

- Doing what?
- Using his own semen.

Um, once this came out,
we'd have discussions,

and I think that him
using his own sperm,

to him,
was no different than using his own blood.

People were so
desperate to have a child

and really wanted it so badly,

and he couldn't do it any other way,
then of course...

You know, if there was a way,
a will and a way, then...

there it goes.

And in his mind,
he meant no harm.

In his mind, he provided

a biological necessity.

But then,
what went on after that,

was then another
family. That was...

That was their family then,
and he was removed from that.

Why didn't he tell patients

that he was using his own sperm?

I don't think that people had as much,
um...

desire to know their backgrounds

and things like
that as they do now.

I think people were, um,
happier with knowing that

their family was their family.

I think the part
that bothers me the most

is the fact that I trusted him.

What do you think he
did with your husband's sample?

Well,
I know that the ones I read about online

said that... He said
that he had mixed...

Mixed,
you know... Then donor thing and...

I don't know.

I don't know.

I do know that when I was in there,
in his office,

for my exam and whatever
procedure he was doing,

that he was in and out of the...

the exam room...

two or three times, and I...

At the time, I did kinda wonder,

"I wonder why he
keeps going in and out,

in and out, in and out,"
you know?

I do feel like I have
to protect my mom.

And I can't, and I couldn't.

I wasn't there,
and there's nothing I can do,

and I... and, you know,
my own selfishness

probably kept me
from protecting her

even from the secret
because I had to know.

I just had to know more,
once I found out.

Do you regret telling her?

I do feel guilty about telling her,
because...

you know, maybe it would
be better if she just didn't know.

And I just remember her
starting to cry on the phone...

and she said, um,
"He was older than my dad."

All I could think of was,

here is my sweet young
mom wanting a baby

and being in love with
her husband and happy...

and just wanting a baby.

And this... this old man...

'cause to someone
who's 23 years old,

a 53-year-old person
is an old man...

Um, doing this to her...

Um, my father is passed away...

and I'm very glad
he didn't know.

It would have devastated him.

Yep. Came up. Here we
go. This is my real tree.

Family tree.

I think most of us that have
a tree online have two trees.

We have the tree of
what we're supposed to be,

and we have the
tree of what we are.

And, usually,
what we are is hidden.

Windows 10 says we're one
and the same person.

I wouldn't mind making it public,
except that...

You know,
after I tell my mother.

That's the only thing.

My mother, she was so afraid

I was gonna turn out
like her first husband,

the man I thought was my father.

He could do these
violent things.

He left her when
I was a little kid.

I knew he was gone. I
knew he wasn't coming back.

So I inherited this very
negative context of who I was

by who she thought
my father was.

I wasn't going
to tell her initially.

I had it in my
mind not to tell her.

And then, my gut thinking that,
well, this, uh...

I don't have any
right not to tell her.

Who else can I share it with,
you know?

Who do I go back
with the longest?

And that's my mother.

I can be distant from people.

I'm quiet. I like
to be to myself.

My tendency to be
kind of cool and clinical

did serve me very well
in the work that I did.

But I worry that that coldness,
you know, comes from him...

because it's part of
me. It's half of who I am.

I think that there
can be good in people

that are doing bad
things. I... I do think that.

And, you know,
he builds this hospital

when he was first starting
out being a rural doctor

in an area where, you know,
they desperately need doctors.

There's stuff
just kinda left behind.

Unbelievable.

There are, uh,
birth cards in here.

Dr. Q. E. Fortier's
Pioche Hospital.

Pioche, Nevada.

Makes me wonder how
many cards he filled out

for his own children.

I was born in Pioche.

As a little kid,
I was always a little odd.

You know, I did needlepoint
from the time I was three.

I took apart a stuffed animal
because it stopped working

and actually sewed it back up

with the kit from
my needlepoint set.

In the fourth grade,
I get announced to the class

that I'm a bastard. "Do
you know what that means?

It means he doesn't
have a father.

He can never be a priest."

And I wanted so
much to have a father.

Everybody had a father.

When I turned 18, I found him.

And he was in a dive,
South of Market, alcoholic.

"Hey," I beat on the door,
and he said, "Who are you?"

And I said, "I'm your son."

I put my hand out.

And that's how I met him.

We talked for a while.

Then he hit me up for 20 bucks.

And I thought to myself,

"That's the most expensive
20 bucks you ever got."

I don't think it
would be controversial to say

50 percent of a person's traits,
behavior predispositions,

are determined by DNA.

My father is very
socially adept.

Uh,
he's very comfortable with people,

more traditionally,
uh, extroverted.

And I was never like that...

from the time I was a kid.

Yeah,
I was interested in chemistry,

physics, and mathematics.

And I've never been all
that socially comfortable.

I was kind of closed
and egg-headed.

I always felt like there was
something wrong with me.

People who don't share
DNA with their parents,

and don't know they don't
share DNA with their parents...

may feel that they're not just different,
but somehow wrong.

You know,
I... I believe in the biological

and psychological
manifestations of genetics.

I'd like to see my half
siblings' personality traits

and... discuss life choices

and see where we had similar
and divergent perspectives,

and why.

I'm anxious.

I've gone over it and
over it in my mind,

probably for the
better part of a year.

My mom is 93 years old.

And I still haven't nailed
down exactly how I'm going to...

broach the subject with her.

You know,
I couldn't sleep last night.

I played Scrabble at
three o'clock in the morning

'cause I couldn't...

wrap my head around
all this information.

I... I was sitting...

Then the first thing I
woke up this morning,

I was deciding certain things,
what this and what that.

First thing you think of,
I didn't have sex with him.

- Don't wish that on me.
- This is... This is the biggest story

of my life, Mom,
this thing with Quincy,

and I so wanted
to share it with you.

And I... It was like...

uh,
having a whole different life,

and not being able to
share it was eating me up.

Yeah.

There's a lot of stuff in
my life I don't remember,

but that was strong. And I...

I went in there, uh,
because I didn't feel good,

and I thought he was treating
me for infection or something,

I don't know.

He put me on this table and examined me,
and...

He says, "You stay here and, uh,
and don't move. Don't move."

So... I did what he said.

Well, I was wondering if,
you know, that I was out,

and was he, you know...

Yeah,
I don't know that he did...

he had any history of...

forcing himself.

He certainly did some
unscrupulous things.

Was he trying
to see how many people

he could have on this
earth before he left?

I don't know.

I really don't know.

I wasn't even
looking to have a baby.

I wasn't wanting
a baby at that time.

You know, my life would've...

May have been
altogether different.

I'd have gone back to school,

but I probably
would've gone farther.

You know, because I was young.

I was only 20 years
old when I got married.

I had plenty of time to... you know,
to...

redo.

I had already saved...

money to go to school.

I just wanted to get out of Pioche,
Nevada.

Doctors in those days,
you took them as...

As, uh, almost next to a priest,
or like a priest, you...

You, uh... uh,
whatever they said, you would...

think they're a good doctor,
and, uh,

they know what
they're talking about.

You just took
them at their word.

What do you
think about the doctor now?

- Doctor Fortier? - I think that

that's a terrible
thing to do to people,

but I wouldn't have had Mike.

Life takes...

You know? I think...

God decides what...

What's gonna go on with you,
you know?

I keep looking at that picture,

and it looks exactly like
Mike did at that same age.

You know, I'm relieved.

Because I didn't
think much of his...

what we thought was his father.

- My not-father.
- "My not-father," yeah.

You have one unheard message.

Hi, Ms. Babst.

I'm calling from the
Clark County courthouse.

Uh,
some materials you requested just came in.

You can pick them up this
week during our business hours.

Have a good day.

It's a notarized
affidavit of Connie Fortier.

She allegedly recanted.

That's pretty suspicious.

Uh, it says,
"...being first duly sworn upon oath, said,

'My father passed
away around 1950.

My mother married Quincy Fortier,
MD.

Dr. Fortier later adopted me.

My stepfather
sexually molested me

on numerous
occasions as a child,

beginning at age four to five

and continuing
until around age 13.

Dr. Fortier also
sexually molested me

during his many medical
exams of me as a child.

He would examine my vaginal area

even if I only had
a stomachache.

When growing up,
our family never discussed

my father's sexual
molestations of his children.

I avoided thinking about
these sexual attacks.

As a teenager,
when I finally realized these attacks

by my father were wrong,
I felt even more guilt and fear

telling anyone,
as I thought they would not believe me.

I asked him why he had
sexually molested me.

He then said, "I never raped
you or were physically violent.

I was always gentle,
and you were very relaxed

and never got hurt."

I became pregnant at
age 17. This was a shock,

as I was not having
sexual relations.

My stepfather would
not allow an abortion

and sent me to Minnesota

to live in a home
for unwed mothers.

At that home,
I arranged for my son to be adopted.

I never attempted to have
any contact with such son,

as I was ashamed
of this involuntary

and surprise conception.

Around 1992, I was contacted

by a Minnesota governmental
agency to arrange contact

with my then about
27-year-old son.'"

Maybe "John." I can't
see. It's too blurry.

Hello?

Hello?

Hi. - Hi.

- I'm Wendi. - Hi. Jonathan.

- Nice to meet you.
- Good to meet you.

Let's see if we can
get the heat going.

I wonder what you
were doing that year?

- 'Cause that was '78, I think.
- Oh, my goodness.

- Probably finishing middle school.
- What town were you living in?

I have to take a load off for a second.

I always knew I was adopted.

But you always answer this
question when you're adopted:

"Well,
do you know who your real parents are?"

- "Yeah. These are my real parents."
- Yeah, the people who...

And then,
you say that long enough,

and it's its own
truth. It's true.

But it's not all of the truth.

- Right.
- And so, you start to feel at a certain age

that somehow it
starts to feel like a lie.

Did your parents know
any circumstances about you?

They knew, um,
that my mother was pretty young,

but they didn't know anything
about who the father was.

Yeah,
my... so my mom was really thinking...

"Go find out,
maybe you can find out."

And so,
I wrote Lutheran Social Services...

with the intent of finding her.

Then Connie
wrote a letter to me.

What did she say?

I mean,
how did she say she conceived you with him?

She just said when
she was at the...

Getting the checkup from Quincy.

- And she ended up pregnant.
- And ended up pregnant.

- And wasn't sexually active.
- And said she wasn't sexually active,

so that she... It
couldn't have been...

Nothing else worked in her mind.

So...

Do you... do you believe
now that that's truly

- how you were conceived?
- Yeah.

And when Connie's
mother found out...

that was the end
of their marriage.

The divorce was...

- They got divorced right after.
- Mm-hmm.

So, I suppose you could say

my grandmother
divorced my grandfather,

who is also my father.

Did you ever meet Quincy?

I did.

One of those trips out there.

Went into... He...

I went in the house. I
could hear him whistling.

And then I went through
the side door 'cause, it...

You know, "Come on in,"
da-da-ba-da.

And he jumped up over the dryer.

He was working on the dryer
duct or something behind the dryer

in, like, Mr. Furley nylon bib,

um, kind of dark green...

nylon one-piece.

But he had the same arms I have,
like, you know,

where there's, like,
a big forearm muscle.

Me and Quincy had,
like, Popeye arm.

You know, it took me off guard.

I... I... On some level,
I liked him.

And on another level,
I just like,

I still kept the
aperture really closed.

But on this,
just this level of, like...

uh, just...

"There's his hands," you know,

nothing about what
his hands have done.

"There's his..." You know,
like, just the raw materials.

It's like I liked
the raw materials.

And what'd you talk about?

Um... with... uh...

Conversations with Quincy,

he doesn't talk about
anything that means anything.

So it's hard to remember.

I can remember a
feeling of mendacity,

'cause you're trying
to listen to somebody

who's like a worm...

you know,
wiggling away. And so...

He had a kind of higher pitched voice,
right?

And, uh... At least,
when he was squirming.

And he was like, "Well,
Connie had a kinda, um, no..."

"When Connie
came in for a physical,

I had just taken a semen sample
and... on a cotton swab, but...

And then I did a swab of her,
and that's..."

And then he switched...

"Somehow I got
the swabs switched.

And then when she
left..." He plays the drama.

"Then when she left the,
uh, checkup..."

He looked!

Then he realized the
cotton swab was missing!

You know,
that he must've used...

"I must have used
the wrong swab!"

It's like he was still
selling himself this story,

or trying to sell me the story
that he had made a mista...

It was an accident!

You know,
that that was an accident.

He had the audacity to tell her,
like,

"It could be a virgin birth."

This guy of science, like...

So what... when you... When that... I mean,
how...

How did that... How'd
that make you feel?

I hate to ask that question,
but I mean, what...

What went through your mind?

I think that it was violence.

I don't feel like the
violence is carried by me,

but I feel like the...
The consciousness...

of the violence
was born into me.

Um, I'll tell you,
I never did really confront Quincy.

I don't think he would've been
impossible for you to confront.

Also, I really felt like it was
Connie's thing to confront him.

Like,
I'm the sperm that's confronting him.

It's just,
the drama didn't seem...

I could never step into it,
like the motivation

for the character
just didn't fit.

But you realize,
"Jesus Christ, who are you?"

I certainly have some
impressions that I wanna share.

"I asked him how he could
take back the sexual abuse

that he did to his children.

I told him what he did was wrong

and had tremendous
lifetime negative effects.

I asked him why he
thought it was okay

to sexually abuse his daughters.

He said that there were studies
from the Menninger's Clinic

that sexual relations with
children and their father

were not harmful.

On my way home,
I deliberated on the conversation

and feel that he was trying
to manipulate once more,

so that he doesn't get in
trouble for the sexual abuse

that he committed
when we were children.

I am so sorry for
him. He is pathetic.

He has always used money
and his power and control

to make us do things
that no one wanted to do.

He needs to be held accountable

both on this earth
and after death."

So, my father was crazy.

Also a pervert.

When my mother found out,
she started,

she got right into it.

But nobody told her.
For the longest time.

He molested every
one of my sisters,

me and my little brother,
and anybody else

who happened to
show up. He didn't care.

He wanted to play.

I think the happiest
he ever made me was

when he was laying in his coffin,
dead.

Then I felt safe.

That's a long way to go.

Sonia,
was there any abuse in your house

when you were growing up?

It wasn't part of my life.

Do you think any
part of the allegations were true?

I don't know.

Have you asked? - No.

You never asked your siblings?

No.

Did you ever ask your dad?

No.

Why not?

I don't wanna know.

Do you think
there was a part of you

that was afraid it was true?

I wanna change my nose.

I just, I don't... I mean,
I don't like it,

and now I feel like it,
you know,

I know where it comes from,
and it just... it's not...

I don't know. Just
makes me not wanna...

have my nose look this way.

I've spent more
than half my life

trying to, you know,
hopefully protect children.

And I put my family aside,
even, a lot of times

to do what I thought
was pursuing justice.

And, so,
to find out all those years I'm doing that,

there's this man who's
molesting his children...

and he's my, you know,
my biological father.

And that's, um...

You know, you can... you
can feel like you're fighting

and stopping a lot of monsters,

and then there's this
monster that's your... your...

He's living in me.

He probably had the idea

that he was doing
a great service.

Yeah,
but you can't be a miracle worker

and not let the individuals
know what's going on.

Means to end, my dear.

They don't justify the end.

Bad means don't justify the end.

What if one of the
kids from the times you've donated

in medical school came
out of the woodwork?

Well... That can't happen.

It can't happen.

It's not supposed to ever happen,
you know?

But what about with DNA?

Oh, yeah, what... Well, again,
it's not supposed to happen

because, um, the...

It would be very
difficult to identify.

So, I guess you could with DNA. Yeah,
it's possible.

And if they found you?

Oh, I'd love it. You know,
what's wrong with that?

Listen, another little me.
How could you not love that?

One day,
one of my sons, uh, called me up

and told me that
I have a daughter.

And I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Well,
we did the genetics,

and we did the
genetic... The DNA test,

and... and you're... you're
the father of this person."

About two weeks later,

he calls me up again.

He said, "Dad?" "Yeah?"

"Uh, we got another one."

And then it was about a month later,
I think,

I got... He calls again,
and again, it's another...

another daughter.

And now I know of 13.

When you think
about all the times you donated

in medical school,
how many kids do you think you have?

I don't know.

What can I tell you? I
don't know. It's...

It's a... it's a not... not a...

Not a number that we
can put our fingers on.

Let's just put it that way.

You know, I feel like I actually
share a lot in common with you.

- Yeah.
- I just so appreciate hearing about your background

and the desire to
work with your hands,

but in technically
oriented ways...

- Yeah, likewise. Likewise.
- Um, I just...

- It feels really familiar.
- You went through the schooling

that I didn't do. Gee,
could I...

- No, no, no. -

Which finger is longer?

Is your index finger
longer than your ring finger?

My ring finger's longer.

- Yeah, me too. Yeah.
- The ring finger's longer?

So, Brad,
has this revelation changed your research

or your mindset at all about your research?

It's like... like a puzzle
that we all have pieces to.

Sure.

So, I found out
a year and a half ago.

- Man.
- My parents said it, they said,

"We need to tell you something."
They sat us down like,

"Okay, well, we're not...
I'm not your dad

because, you know,
I'm infertile, blah blah blah.

We used a donor.
We don't know who it is."

I was like, "Great." And I guess
the initial thing for me,

it was just the whole, like...

You find out later in life,
it's like,

"I don't even know
who I am," you know?

"Everything I know is wrong."

Exactly.

I got really sick for...

like a month and a half.

- I was, like, sick...
- As a result, like?

Yeah, I was just
totally distraught.

"Am I a child
of something unspeakable?

Am I a child of someone
who is helping her husband?"

You know, is that what
he was thinking? I don't know.

I used to dream that...

there was a door
in the back of a closet,

and I would work my way through,

and there would be this hall
out of Beauty and the Beast,

this fantastic hall.

It was finding something
where there was nothing...

and finding something
dramatically different.

When I found out
about my father...

this was that
something different.

I think it would be
a mistake to... to presume

that by having the facts
you have the truth.

It's never the whole truth.

I did sense that there was
a little bit of a pleasure

of pulling it off.

But... there we are.

These kind of, like, you know,
forbidden fruits

that shouldn't even exist.

And somehow he's the reason
that we exist.

He's propagated himself forever

through me and my family.

It's like a chain reaction
that I can't really stop.

Did you think you knew better
than my mom and dad?

Um, why did you decide...

you know, that them having
a child was worth, uh...

deceiving them and...

you know, did you think
you were better than them or...

you know, wh... why... why?

And I don't think
I have that answer.