Tag Archives: artificial insemination

Joe and the Juice…

Posted on May 29, 2025 by suesspiciousminds

Oh boy. Buckle up, buckaroos.

Not sure there’s all that much valuable law in this one – unless you happen to have a case with the man in question, but there’s a LOT to unpack.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/HCJ/2025/130.html

CA & Ors, Re (Children of Unregulated Sperm Donor) [2025] EWFC 130 (16 April 2025)

Now, you were already saying to yourself – why has Suess opened this blog post with a photo of tomato passata? And now you’re saying – well, I’ve read the title of the case and it makes EVEN LESS sense now.

Stick with me.

High Court case, the LA seeking Care and Placement Orders in relation to two children, CB and CX, and there were linked private law proceedings in relation to CA. What all three had in common was that their biological father is a Mr Robert Albon. (weird to name him, you’re thinking…).

Mr Albon is for want of a better term, a professional donator of sperm. He has fathered on his account 180 children. He opposed the making of the Care and Placement orders for CB and CX – the mother did not oppose but did not consent.

In analysing the right outcome for the children, the Court had to look at Mr Albon’s history and thus his parenting capacity. Mr Albon uses the pseudonym, Joe Donor. If you’ve just had a shudder down your back as you realise exactly why this blog post has the title it does, I’m sorry.


  1. Robert Albon is 54. He was born in the United States of America and was adopted with his twin brother at the age of three. His adoptive parents later conceived and gave birth to a boy themselves whom Mr Albon feels was favoured by them. The family lived around the world because of his adoptive father’s work. Mr Albon’s twin died in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. His adoptive father died a few years ago. Mr Albon has no contact with his surviving brother or his mother. He is fluent in Japanese and Chinese, speaks other languages, and has worked as a translator. He married a Japanese woman and they had two children who are now in their 20’s. During the marriage Mr Albon had an affair with a Chinese woman with whom he had two children. In or about 2013, he started acting as an unregulated sperm donor. He told the Court that he wanted to have more children whereas his wife did not. He enjoyed having brought further children into the world with the Chinese woman but not the complications that arose from having done that. Sperm donation allowed him to produce more children without complications.

Without complications…

Mr Albon seems to be quite the international jetsetter.

  1. In 2017, Mr Albon was living in the US with his wife. The children of his marriage were their daughter, then aged 21, who he says had become estranged from the rest of the family by 2017, and their son, then aged 17. One day, when his wife was out of the house, Mr Albon drove to the airport and caught a flight to Argentina. He contacted his wife a few days later to tell her that he had left. He lived in Argentina for about three years. He told the Court that there were a number of reasons why he left, including that he and his then wife wanted different things in life. He said that he had chosen Argentina because he spoke Spanish, and there was a low cost of living there. He says that he sent about US$1000 per month to his wife but also revealed that the family home was repossessed and that an order for alimony payments to his wife was made against him. He complained that the order was manifestly too high due to an error made by his ex-wife when she completed the application. However, the order remains in force. They divorced in 2019 but he says that he speaks to her a few times each year. He says that he is on good terms with his ex-wife but produced no evidence to corroborate that assertion. They both remain estranged from their daughter. He met his son when he returned to the US to deal with the car he had left at the airport but now has no contact with him. He has no contact with the Chinese woman or their two children which he puts down to having lost their contact details and difficulties finding and communicating with people in China.
  2. Mr Albon had carried on sperm donor services in the US before he left in 2017. One mother, from Wisconsin, pursued him for child maintenance and secured a court order. He complains that she harassed his daughter and that he applied for a restraining order against the woman to protect his daughter. He accepts that the maintenance order remains in force and that a warrant was issued for his arrest for breach of the order. The warrant remains in force. He is confident that he would be able to set aside the order if he returned to the US but he accepted that, between that order and the alimony owing to his wife, he is in debt for tens of thousands of dollars.
  3. Mr Albon continued to act as an unregulated sperm donor in Argentina. Whilst there he made a trip to Australia visiting fifteen or so women for the purpose of donating sperm to them. His visit was reported upon in a news documentary programme called “60 Minutes Australia” which I have viewed as well as reading a Media Watch report, critical of aspects of the programme. He also made trips to other South American countries. He claims to have fathered multiple children in the US, South America, and Australia. At some point Mr Albon also started a sperm donor Facebook page in Africa. It is wholly unclear how many children he may have fathered there. The co-administrator of the page has reportedly used the expression “bleach Africa” which Mr Albon told this Court was a joke.
  4. Mr Albon says that he left Argentina because of a change in government there, the effects of the pandemic, and because he wanted to travel to The Netherlands and Germany. He came first to the UK but was prevented from leaving for Germany or The Netherlands as planned due to the second wave of restrictions due to the Covid 19 pandemic. He arrived in September 2020 and has remained here since then. On 5 October 2020, he appeared on television on This Morning, claiming to have fathered 150 children “by personal insemination” and was interviewed by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. He was granted a visitor visa to the UK from 29 September 2020 to 30 March 2021 and initially lived in a hotel in Essex. His visa was extended to 3 November 2021 due to the pandemic. He then applied for permanent leave to remain.

This is not the first set of English family law proceedings Mr Albon has become involved with.

  1. On or before 6 November 2020, Mr Albon was contacted by a woman, B, about his becoming a sperm donor to assist her to conceive. The circumstances of the conception and birth of their child are set out in the published judgment of HHJ Furness KC sitting in the Family Court at Cardiff, A v B and C (above), in which the child is referred to as D. I have seen other papers from that case. HHJ Furness KC found that D was conceived by artificial insemination performed on 8 November 2020. At the time, B was in a same-sex relationship with C whom she later married. D was born in July 2021.
  2. HHJ Furness KC found that Mr Albon promoted his sperm donor service, both online and during his interview on This Morning, as being provided with no expectation of any paternal involvement with the child. Specifically, he had said, “Moms I help can choose no contact and I respect that.” The Judge found that B and C did not want Mr Albon to be involved in D’s life and that when Mr Albon contacted B about a fortnight after the birth asking to see D, she replied that she and C had already said to him that they did not want any contact. On 11 August 2021, there was what B and C thought would be a one-off meeting at which Mr Albon met D and photographs were taken. On 16 August 2021, Mr Albon applied for a declaration of parentage, an order granting him parental responsibility, and a CAO giving him contact with D. Later he applied to the court to change D’s name. On the day that B and C received the court papers there was a telephone conversation between them and Mr Albon which he recorded. Two years of litigation ensued before the Court dismissed Mr Albon’s applications. The Judge found that “the motivation for [Mr Albon] commencing the proceedings was principally to support his immigration position.” The Judge recorded that the mother, B, had a history of mental health problems made worse by the litigation. The Judge found that Mr Albon was dismissive of C’s role in D’s life, suggesting at one point that she could be called “aunty” by D. The Judge found that a CAO giving Mr Albon direct contact with D would lead to conflict and instability and be detrimental to D’s welfare. As agreed by B and C, the Judge ordered that indirect contact should take place by way of an annual updating letter from B and C to Mr Albon and an annual card or letter from Mr Albon which would be retained for D “for when he was of an age to understand from whom the document derived”.
  3. HHJ Furness KC handed down a finding of fact judgment in July 2023 and a final welfare judgment in November 2023. He found that Mr Albon:
  4. “… is a man who seeks to control, women and children appear to be almost a commodity to him as he sets about increasing the number of his children around the globe.”
  5. Mr Albon sought to appeal all the decisions of HHJ Furness KC. He was a litigant in person. He put forward 47 grounds of appeal. Peter Jackson LJ refused permission on all grounds on 30 January 2024. Mr Albon then sought to apply to the European Court of Human Rights but that application seems to have got nowhere.

The High Court looked at material involving some of the women in the UK who have had Joe Donor’s service- remember that what he says he wants is to produce more children ‘without complications’

  1. I have access to social services and police records concerning Mr Albon’s involvement with a woman, MC, from Norfolk. They met in January 2021 and agreed to undertake what Mr Albon likes to call “partial insemination” or PI. This is sexual intercourse without kissing, foreplay or affectionate touching. MC fell pregnant by February 2021 and Mr Albon and MC then started living together in Norfolk in March 2021. The following month they moved house within the county. Each of MC and Mr Albon alleges that the other was physically violent over the months from April to August 2021. Mr Albon made several complaints to the police about MC being violent towards him, stalking, causing criminal damage, and having assaulted her child. Nevertheless, on 1 July 2021 Mr Albon and MC appeared together on This Morning, announcing that they were now engaged to be married, under the story headline, “I slept with a Man for his Sperm.” On 4 August 2021, whilst pregnant with their child, MC moved out of their home but Mr Albon remained living there. The police imposed bail conditions on MC. Later that month, MC complained to the police that Mr Albon had been domestically abusive toward her including using physical violence, isolating her from her support network, and perpetrating emotional, sexual and financial abuse. Social Services asked Mr Albon to move out of the family home and he did so on or about 24 August 2021.
  2. In November 2021, Mr Albon told Norfolk police that MC “suffers a personality disorder that causes her to act this way. He was aware of this at an early stage in the relationship…” . MC gave birth to her and Mr Albon’s child, a boy, in October 2021. Although MC wanted the police to pursue a prosecution against Mr Albon for domestic abuse, she did not attend an appointment to make a statement and in December 2021 the Norfolk Police closed the file on her complaint for want of co-operation. In January 2022, Norfolk Police also closed the file on Mr Albon’s complaints against MC for lack of further evidence from him.
  3. In October 2022, MC reported to Norfolk police that Mr Albon was seeking access to their child and asking for a photograph and had threatened court action.

I think there may have been some complications here.


  1. There are common themes in relation to these six families who have had involvement with Mr Albon in the UK since his arrival here in September 2020. Five of the six women are known to have mental health issues or histories that make them vulnerable. Most of them are known to have believed that it was understood that Mr Albon would not play any parental role in the lives of the children he and they hoped to produce. All six relationships with these women ended in police involvement and/or litigation. All but one of the mothers do not want him to have anything to do with their children and the one that does, has agreed contact limited to one meeting a year, an arrangement not yet approved by the court as being in that child’s best interests. This is Mr Albon’s track record in relation to the six donor-conceived children in the UK of which the Court has evidence.

What do the Court say about Mr Albon?


  1. Mr Albon advertises his services as an unregulated sperm donor under the pseudonym Joe Donor. He has written self-published books about sperm donation. His account of his donor service can be summarised as follows:
  1. a. He promotes himself as a sperm donor online using Facebook and Instagram including Facebook groups which he administers.
  2. b. He makes no claims to a woman who contacts him about his health or the absence of hereditary conditions. In fact he has tests for HIV about once a year but not for sexually transmitted infections (“STI’s”). He has not been screened for any genetic conditions.
  3. c. He does not enter into any oral or written agreements with the woman.
  4. d. He offers natural insemination (NI), artificial insemination (AI), and what he calls partial insemination (PI) which is sexual intercourse without any intimacy (no kissing, foreplay or prolongation of intercourse for pleasure).
  1. I have seen a number of examples of Mr Albon’s online postings and self-promotions. He has recently posted images and audio recordings of his offer to send out samples of his sperm by post for the purpose of artificial insemination. The images include him wearing latex gloves, holding syringes beside a centrifuge machine.
  2. Mr Albon is frank about his sperm donor activities. He regards himself as performing a job which benefits women. He says that just over 50% of the women who use his service are inseminated through intercourse and the rest inject his sperm using a syringe. He says that he leaves it entirely up to the women who become pregnant whether they want him to have any contact with the child. He says that he maintains contact with upwards of 60 of the children he has fathered and that he is named on about ten birth certificates. When asked to name any of his donor-conceived children with whom he maintains contact he was unable to name more than ten and the Court is aware of six of those in England and Wales as set out above. It was difficult to believe that he maintains contact with 60 or so of his children and he produced no evidence to corroborate that claim. He told the Court that currently there are some six or seven women in the UK who are pregnant after having used his sperm.
  3. The women who use Mr Albon as a sperm donor mostly fall into two camps: women in a lesbian relationship and women who are not in any relationship. The risks they take in using a prolific, unregulated sperm donor who operates as Mr Albon does, are obvious. They do not know anything about the health of his sperm, his genes, his physical or mental health, or his history. Like MA, many will not even know his real name. There is no record of his other children, their mothers, or where they live. There is nothing to prevent Mr Albon seeking declarations of parentage, parental responsibility, or child arrangements orders in respect of the children he fathers.
  4. The three advantages of Mr Albon’s service for women who use it are (i) it is cheap, (ii) it is available almost immediately, and (iii) no conditions are attached and no questions are asked: the evidence before the Court shows that Mr Albon will have sex with, or provide his sperm for artificial insemination, to just about anyone who asks. I received no evidence of any occasion when he has declined to offer his donor service to a woman who has asked. He is indiscriminate in that respect.
  5. Mr Albon’s motivations for acting as a prolific sperm donor have been questioned at this hearing. Is he motivated by the desire to have sex with many different women? Is he compelled to reproduce? Does he enjoy gratification from knowing that there are scores of his children on the earth? Is he simply attention-seeking? Does he want to secure his immigration status? It is difficult to look into the mind of Mr Albon because he is not self-reflective. He has a matter of fact attitude toward what he does. In the documentaries or interviews I have viewed, he appears to regard his “work” as a both a humanitarian service and a bit of fun. He uses cartoon type imagery to promote his service. He refers to his semen as “Joe’s juice” and “baby batter”, and joked with a reporter who had accompanied him at a hotel where he was due to provide a sample of his sperm for AI, that a mug he was holding was a “cup of Joe”. He even put down his co-donor’s sinister comment about “bleaching Africa” as a joke.
  6. Mr Albon was given a warning about self-incrimination under CA 1989 s98 before he was asked well-targeted questions prepared by Ms Howe KC and Mr Simpson about the storage, processing and distribution of his sperm. In his statement of 15 March 2024 in the Durham proceedings, Mr Albon said,
  1. “I survive month to month on the money left over from the reimbursement of the costs associated with private sperm donations that are provided to cover my expenses. This can vary, but I generally have £800 a month left over from the expenses.
  2. I also get some payments from media for pictures and stories. This can vary but it generally works out at around £100 a month.”
  3. Mr Albon was asked about this statement. He confirmed that he charges £100 for the delivery of his sperm by post. He explained that he puts his sperm into a syringe, packages the product and packs frozen passata (tomato puree) around it which, he says, defrosts slowly and keeps the product at a suitable temperature. He then posts or couriers the package to the recipient. Although he has described his charge as being for expenses only, he told me that the costs associated with this service are about £50 (including the passata). He has not produced any evidence to verify this claim but, even on his own account, he still has £50 left over after the payment of expenses. He said that he has to pay his utilities and rent but these are living expenses and even if he was treated as running a business and could claim some of his rent and other outgoings as business expenses, the total costs to him of producing, treating, packaging and posting his sperm would not amount to £50 for each delivery he sends out. He said that the balance of £50 after expenses was “opportunity cost”. That is an economist’s term for the profit foregone from alternative activities when a chosen activity is undertaken. It is not an expense or overhead of a business. If, in March 2024, he had £800 a month left over after the payment of expenses and was clearing £50 per package, he must have been sending out about 16 packages a month.

(Ah, that’s why the passata….)

  1. I conclude that Mr Albon produces sperm and distributes it as a sole trader for profit. He uses terms such as “expenses” and “opportunity cost” to obscure the fact that sperm donation is, for him, a business. He has not produced any business records or accounts but on his own account the costs to him of shipping his sperm are no higher than 50% of the £100 he charges for that service. He advertises his services online using cartoon-like imagery and light-hearted terms, whilst at the same time creating the impression that his sperm is tested and packaged in laboratory conditions. He has used images of plastic syringes, a microscope, and a centrifuge machine in promotional material. He refers in such material to “quality controlled sperm”. He told the court that he uses a substance known as an “extender” added to his semen. He is in business and he makes money out of the business. As such, having regard to the provisions of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 set out below, there must be a concern that he ought to have had a licence at least for distributing his sperm in the course of business to aid reproduction.

And here is one of the sentences of masterful understatement that only a High Court Judge can deliver…


  1. Mr Albon is not a man troubled by self-doubt. He invariably describes his own conduct positively and seems not to recognise the personal turmoil he has left in his wake. None of it seems to have made an impression on Mr Albon. He has moved from country to country and at times from family to family. More recently he has found that shipping his sperm is more profitable than travelling to have intercourse with women, but otherwise the disputes and difficulties in which he has been embroiled have not caused him to change the way in which he operates. The turmoil created has not had an impact on his behaviour.

Findings about Mr Albon


  1. I have given careful consideration to all the evidence before making any findings of specific motives for Mr Albon’s applications in relation to CA and CB. I have been greatly assisted by the expert evidence of Dr Young and by having the opportunity to see and hear Mr Albon give evidence over many hours at the hearing. There is no evidence before me of any diagnoses of a personality disorder or a mental health condition but there are traits to his personality which emerge clearly from all the evidence. First, he has very strong personal defences such that he appears to have rock solid confidence in his own judgment and decision-making. Second, he lacks empathy and only has superficial relationships with others. Third, he is dismissive of those who do not agree with him or who question his behaviour and beliefs. Fourth, he has a strong will and a determination to get his own way. Fifth, he needs to feel validated and recognised. Sixth, he seeks to control others to prove that he is right, to secure recognition, to get his own way, and to serve his own ends.
  2. This sixth trait – controlling behaviour – is demonstrated in many different ways. He uses language to control narratives: he sought to do so in cross-examination and in his description of his business. He uses ambiguity to manipulate. Thus, he is ambiguous about his future involvement in the lives of his future children when he first has contact with their mothers. This allows him later to decide whether and, if so when, to seek to become involved. In many cases he chooses not to do so, but in others he does, as it suits him. When he needs a roof over his head he has crept into the lives of women to his advantage: he moved in to live with MB, with MC in Norfolk, and with MD in the North East of England. He uses others’ vulnerability and naivety to suit his own ends – for example persuading MB to send him messages she had received from MC, and seeking to exploit MA’s fear of losing her children to try to persuade her to register him as CA’s father. The evidence suggests that his practice as a sperm donor attracts a high number of vulnerable women. MA and MB have mental health issues, and MA has a borderline IQ. MC apparently had borderline personality disorder, MD and B had histories of mental health issues, and a referral was made to the police in Yorkshire after concerns that Mr Albon had had sexual intercourse with a woman not capable of giving consent (albeit that was not pursued further by the police). These are women whom he can seek to control. He has covertly recorded conversations, guided those conversations, and then sought to rely on the recordings for his own advantage. That is a means of exercising control over others.
  3. I find that Mr Albon has sought to control five of the six women in England and Wales who have carried his children whose identities are known to the Court and whom I have identified earlier in this judgment. I exclude MC in the Chelmsford case because I am yet to conduct a final hearing in that case and I do not have evidence before me in these proceedings on which I could find that Mr Albon has been controlling of ME. Nor do I have any evidence that she is vulnerable to manipulation by him. It might well be the case that ME has made a fully autonomous decision to enter into a written agreement with Mr Albon, uninfluenced by him or anyone else. The arrangements they have reached may be in the child’s best interests. However, in the five other cases, including the two before me, there is evidence of Mr Albon exercising controlling behaviour. He has also used litigation as a means of control, as he tried to do in the Welsh proceedings and, I find, in both of the present proceedings. Pertinently, he told the Court that he is now making money by writing pre-action letters for others, in particular people who claim to have been defamed.

The Court did grant him the declaration of parentage that he sought, declined to give him parental responsibility, and gave him some contact with CA

For CB and CX the Court made Care and Placement Orders and directed that a copy of the judgment be provided to the Home Office and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, both of whom I suspect will be in touch with Mr Albon.

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Striking ineptitude from an organisation.

Posted on January 24, 2016 by suesspiciousminds

 

This is a HFEA case, along the same lines as the one decided by the President discussed here:-

 

IVF and declarations of paternity – major cock-ups in IVF clinics

 

I.e that because a clinic involved in artificial insemination (IVF) failed to use proper consent forms and keep proper records, the parents ended up in Court to resolve who had parental responsibility.  You may recall from that case, that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority had carried out an audit and found that about HALF of the clinics who do this work were using the wrong forms and losing records.  There was always going to be more litigation about this cock-up.

This individual case, however, did not (as the President’s 8 cases did) involve parents who were all on the same page about their intentions and who should have parental responsibility but parents who were already litigating issues about the children. So this was an added complication to already difficult proceedings.

 

In this particular case, Pauffley J was rightly very critical of the clinic involved, Herts and Essex Fertility Centre.

 

  • In the course of my separate Children Act judgment delivered on 30 November, I said I would be able to find unequivocally that F is entitled to the declaration he seeks. He is the father of C. This judgment explains my reasons for that preliminary indication. It also comments upon the actions and omissions of the Herts and Essex Fertility Centre (HEFC) for identical reasons to those described by the President in his judgment. It is both alarming and shocking that, once more, a court is confronted with an instance of such striking ineptitude from an organisation which is subject to statutory regulation and monitored by a statutory regulator namely the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

We’ll come onto it in detail later, but because the Clinic refused to comply with Court orders, the Court had to make the orders again, but with a penal notice attached. It is pretty unusual for a Court to need to do that against an organisation (as opposed to say a lay person)

 

 

F v M and Others 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/3601.html

 

When the parties contacted the clinic to ask for the records, and even when Court orders were sent, the Clinic was unresponsive – my reading is that the requests were processed by someone who went into “someone is trying to sue us for something, give them nothing” mode.  (which is not even the way it actually works with a personal injury or negligence claim, where disclosure is part of a pre-action protocol). As it turned out, the Clinic’s resistance to assist and comply with Court orders not only made the litigation more protracted and costly, but they ended up having to offer to pay the costs anyway.

Also, seeing the lawyers involved in the case in the headnote, boy did this clinic mess with the wrong people…

 

 

  • The second noteworthy matter surrounds HEFC’s litigation conduct which has been wholly extraordinary. Notwithstanding both parents’ written authorisations and ready agreement to the disclosure of material from HEFC, the process has been fraught and, at best, piecemeal. There would seem to have been a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose for which disclosure of records was sought.
  • In early May, only 20 or so pages of medical records were made available. Had there been full and proper disclosure at that stage, the eventual shape of the litigation could have been very different. Again and again, letters were written by M’s and F’s Solicitors. In late May, HEFC was strongly recommended to attend the first court hearing. In response, the Clinic’s finance manager stated that it was not accepted that “HFEC had failed to comply with the necessary procedures;” and the suggestion of attending the hearing was declined.
  • On 29 May an order was made joining HEFC as a party and directing it to file any evidence upon which it intended to rely. Two months later, on 28 July, in the absence of any engagement by the Clinic, F’s Solicitors wrote a lengthy and informative letter, drawing attention to the 7 cases being heard by the President, seeking agreement to fund the father’s legal costs, reiterating the disclosure requests and giving information about the next court hearing.
  • On 10 August, the Clinic’s finance manager emailed F’s Solicitors saying, “to confirm, we will not intervene nor will we be attending the hearing.”
  • On 14 August, I made an order directing HEFC to disclose all and any medical notes relating to M and F’s treatment as well as all correspondence (including emails and other communications) with M and F. I also directed the Clinic to file and serve detailed statements from the Person Responsible and the Medical Director. The HEFC was directed to attend the next hearing on 22 October.
  • On 4 September two statements were provided, one from the Person Responsible, the other from the Medical Director. The covering email from the finance manager indicated that the Clinic would not be in attendance at the next hearing as “this is a Family Law matter.”
  • I cannot begin to understand how such a misapprehension arose as to the proper role for the Clinic in these proceedings particularly given the unambiguous correspondence from the parties’ Solicitors supported as it was by the text of several court orders.
  • On 20 October (about a month after F’s Solicitors had drawn the Clinic’s attention to the President’s HFEA 2008 judgment), an email was sent to the Clinic’s finance manager reminding her that HEFC was required to attend the hearing on 22 October. The response was that the Clinic would not be attending.
  • It was therefore necessary, on 22 October, to make an order with a penal notice attached so as to ensure the Clinic’s compliance with directions. I also listed a hearing to determine the Clinic’s liability for the parties’ reasonable costs. Once again, an order was made that the Clinic should attend the next hearing.
  • On 4 November, Russell-Cooke LLP was instructed by the Clinic. Seemingly that was the point at which the Clinic appreciated the need for assistance from lawyers. As Mr Powell explained during his final submissions, the Clinic’s first point of contact (when faced with requests for information) had been the insurers. Apparently, though this is difficult to understand given the explicit nature of incoming correspondence, the Clinic had not appreciated the gravity of the situation.
  • There was then inter-solicitor correspondence resulting in further disclosure on 10 November. For the first time, critically important laboratory records were revealed showing affirmative ticks by the WP and PP boxes on forms. Two further and important tranches of documents were disclosed on 19 and 20 November just a very few days before the final hearing listed on 24 November.
  • The detail of the Clinic’s litigation conduct is both important and profoundly disappointing set against the framework of the dispute between these parents. The levels of conflict have remained at the highest level throughout. M and F are bitter, resentful and mistrustful of each other. M’s position, in all probability, became ever more entrenched as the result of the Clinic’s lack of engagement and failure to disclose early.
  • The Clinic’s bewildering behaviour has undoubtedly added to a situation of enormous tension in circumstances which were already intensely fraught. It would have assisted greatly if the Clinic had responded to requests for information in a timely and cooperative fashion. Seldom is it necessary to make orders backed with a penal notice against organisations whose aims include a desire to serve the public and to a high standard. It was altogether necessary here.
  • It should also be observed that even by the very end of the hearing, there had been no attempt on the part of the Clinic to engage directly with either M or F. Beyond what had been said formally within the proceedings there has been no correspondence and no apology on the part of anyone at HEFC. That is quite obviously a profoundly shocking state of affairs. Neither parent has had any offer of help, support or explanation for the situation in which they have been entangled. They have been left completely on their own with no ability to understand the reasons for what went so badly wrong.
  • On behalf of the Clinic, Mr Powell accepts that no words would do justice to the emotional distress caused to M, F and their family members. He did not seek to defend the Clinic’s actions; and accepts the criticisms levelled. The Medical Director’s unreserved apology, said Mr Powell, although late is nonetheless candid. The Medical Director accepts that the Clinic’s litigation conduct was wholly unsatisfactory and has prolonged the parents’ distress. He intends to write directly to them apologising on behalf of HEFC and would welcome the opportunity to meet each parent to provide an apology in person and answer their questions.
  • Mr Powell indicates that lessons have been learned and contrition on behalf of the Clinic is genuine. It is a good indication of the HEFC’s remorse that it has undertaken to pay the parties’ costs as they relate to the declaration of parentage proceedings.

 

 

On the fundamental issue, whether the proper consents had been recorded about the treatment and who was to be considered as legal parents for any child produced by the treatment, the Judge had this to say:-

 

 

  • Without descending into more of the detail, I am entirely satisfied of the following – (1) that M and F did sign WP and PP forms prior to the commencement of treatment; (2) that the forms as well as the internal consent forms were signed at the treatment information appointment (as the checklist confirms); (3) that the WP and PP forms have subsequently been mislaid or lost; (4) that M and F received appropriate counselling prior to treatment in relation to the consequences of using donor sperm; (5) that notwithstanding the lost forms the clinic acted within the terms of its licence; and accordingly (6) F is C’s father.
  • Turning from the specifics relating to parentage, there are a number of associated matters which require comment. The first is as to the bemusing and seemingly unsatisfactory response of HEFC to the Legal Parenthood Audit initiated at the request of the HFEA on 10 February 2014 following the judgment of Cobb J AB v CD and the Z Fertility Clinic [2013] EWHC 1418 (Fam).
  • On 1 September 2014, the HFEA wrote to all clinics to inform them of the outcome of the Audit – namely that “nearly half of all clinics that have responded reported anomalies with their legal parenthood consent.” The letter expressly informed clinics – “if you have any doubt about the validity of legal parenthood you should seek your own legal advice. You should also inform the affected patients and their partners.”
  • The underlying message was clear. Clinics should have been supporting and assisting parents. They have an obligation to be open and transparent – most particularly with those whose parenthood was potentially disturbed by administrative incompetence. The parents were (and are) the individuals in most need of advice and assistance; they are entitled to and should have been treated with respect and proper concern. In this instance, M and F were left completely on their own without assistance of any kind from HEFC.
  • The medical files for these parents should have been (but were not) included in the Legal Parenthood Audit which was to be completed over a period of three months. The omission has been reported to the HFEA. It is perplexing to say the least that this couple’s files were missed when account is taken of the chronology of the mother’s telephone calls (from late March / early April 2015) seeking information about the consent forms as well as initial ‘phone calls followed then by a formal letter from M’s then Solicitors requiring information.
  • At the instigation of the Chief Inspector of the HFEA an investigation is about to begin to discover the reasons for the error. There will be a ‘Root Cause Analysis’ undertaken by an independent consultancy for UK regulated organisations so as to identify what went wrong. The investigation will also seek to discover whether the HEFC complied with the HFEA’s request to sample or review files. Importantly, it will examine how the WP and PP forms were mislaid or lost. It is said on behalf of HEFC that the investigation will be thorough and comprehensive.
  • The findings of the independent consultancy will be reported to the HFEA so that decisions may be made about what action should be taken. The medical director of HEFC assures the court that he is committed to “getting to the bottom of what happened, to taking all remedial action and to working with the HFEA to ensure that the circumstances which gave rise to this case can never happen again.”
  • The HEFC has taken other steps including the installation of ‘Meditex,’ a new Fertility Database which will require the scanning in of Forms WP and PP enabling immediate retention and availability for inspection. The database is comprehensive, internationally recognised and used by other leading clinics across Europe.

 

It really does seem likely that there will be many more of these cases. I’d suggest that hospitals stop putting Court orders from family Courts in the “Go Screw Yourselves”* section of the in-trays.

 

(*That wasn’t actually intended to be an artificial insemination joke when I first wrote it, but hey, I’m not one to snub serendipity when it comes a’knocking)

 

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Oh what a tangled web we weave

Posted on July 2, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

I do love it when I learn something new.

This is a case decided by a Circuit Judge, Her Honour Judge Taylor, in a case where a woman had lied to a man as to whether he was the biological father of her child.  He was then suing her for deceit.

[I confess my ignorance, I didn’t know that you could sue someone for deceit. Helpfully, HH Judge Taylor sets out all of the relevant law, so now I not only know that the concept exists, but what you need to prove]

X v Y 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/Misc/2015/B10.html

 

I can already hear, as I type this, the sound of readers ears pricking up at the idea of being able to sue for deceit.  [We have discussed before that you can’t sue for defamation for anything that someone says in Court or puts in a Court statement, and that a criminal prosecution for perjury is (a) difficult, and (b) not the decision of the victim, but of the Director of Public Prosecutions. So is suing for deceit a remedy? We shall see]

The law and deceit

45 Following the cases of P v B [2001] 1 FLR 1041 and A v B [2007] EWHC 1248 QB, followed in Rodwell v Rodwell [2011], it is clear that the cause of action in deceit may arise in cases such as this in a domestic context.

46 In A v B at para.43 Blofeld J set out the ingredients of deceit.

(1) a representation by words of conduct.  [Suess note, I think that is a typo and it should be ‘or’ conduct. meaning that you could give rise to a deceit action by semaphore, or more realistically that when asked a direct question the person nodded, shook their head, or put their thumbs up or some obvious gesture of that kind…]

(2) Secondly, that representation must be untrue to the knowledge of the maker at the time the representation was made.

(3) Thirdly, the maker must make the representation by fraud, either deliberately or recklessly, in the sense that he or she could not care whether the representation was true or not.

(4) Fourthly, the representation must be made with the intention that it should be acted upon by the claimant.

(5) Fifthly, it must be proved the claimant acted upon the fraudulent misrepresentation and therefore suffered damage.

 

In English

 

(1) that the other person said something

(2) that when they said it, they knew it wasn’t true

(3) that there was either intention, or recklessness that you might believe it

(4) That  they MEANT you to do something as a result of believing it, and that you acted on what the person said  (i.e you didn’t just believe it, that belief caused you to do something about it)

(5) That those actions caused you loss or harm

 

So, for the immediate question on your lips “If a social worker tells lies about me, can I sue them for deceit?”  I think that the fourth ingredient is the problematic one.  In order to sue for deceit, you need to show that not only was there a lie, but that you believed it. And that you did something as a result of believing it. If you never believed the lie, then you weren’t deceived.

You can only sue for deceit if the person successfully deceived you.  A lie is different to a deceit – telling a lie that you didn’t believe isn’t a deceit, it is an unsuccessful attempt to deceive.

[It might be possible to construct such a case – that the social worker told a lie about mum, dad believed it, dad did something as a result, and dad suffered loss.  Or I suppose the section 20 style case where a parent is told that it will just be for a few days and having signed the agreement never gets the child back]

 

In this particular case, the couple had made use of a fertility clinic. The man had had a vasectomy, but had taken the precaution of having his sperm frozen before the procedure. He had been told by the woman that she, with his consent, had used his sperm to conceive a child through the fertility clinic.  In fact, she had not. The sperm used had been another mans. DNA testing later proved that the child was not his.  The man had made maintenance payments to the woman for this child.

The woman’s case was that she had taken two samples to the clinic, one from the man and one from another person and that she had not known which sample was used – so she had not been honest with the man that there was a possibility that the child was not his, but had not lied to him because she did not know that he definitely was not the father.

 

The Judge held that the ingredients for a claim of deceit were all made out.

 

84. On the facts of this case where I have found there has been clear deceit and fraud in relation to the agreement, in my judgment it is right that the court order repayment of these sums which are not for the benefit of Z. The sum claimed in respect of these payments for maintenance to Y is £22,845 plus interest which has been calculated to date at £2,476 making a total of £25,321.

  1. Consequently, the sums that I award are the sum of £10,000 of general damages plus £4,000 in respect of the loss of earning capacity and the £25,321 inclusive of interest in relation to the maintenance of the property.

 

 

 

 

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One flew over the Cuckold’s nest

Posted on August 1, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

The peculiar set of facts of Re M 2013, which hinged on whether a child had been conceived by artificial insemination, or in the traditional way, and if the former, whether the husband of the mother had consented.  Also, we touch on the issue of anonymity. 

The case is here

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2013/1901.html

We have three players – M, who is the mother of the child, F who provided the gametes for the child’s conception, and H, the husband of the mother.  It is fairly to establish that M  is the child’s legal mother, but establishing who is the child’s legal father is a bit more difficult.

In essence, F was a man who was a sperm donor on a regular basis. Sometimes he did this by means of artificial insemination (AI), and sometimes by natural intercourse (NI).  It was factually agreed that F had been contacted by M and asked to assist with her fertility issue, and that some episodes of NI took place. The issues between the parties were these :-

1.       Was the event which led to the conception of the child, AI or NI ?

2.       Was the Husband in agreement with this?

Why is that relevant? The Court are clearly about to plunge into very delicate and sensitive matters and things are liable to get (excuse the phrase in this context) sticky.

Well, it is because when the Government decided to legislate and regulate the whole business of insemination done outside of the confines of a relationship or even one night stand, they brought into being the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008  (HFEA from now on)

Section 35 of that Act, provides (in very clinical language) that if a woman is married, her husband shall be the legal father of a child produced by artificial insemination with another man’s gametes PROVIDED that he consented to that insemination taking place.

If he did not consent, he is not the child’s legal father. And the donor of the gametes would only be the child’s legal father if he had provided the mother with a notice saying that he consents to be treated as the father of the child AND M has provided him with a notice that she agrees to that.  So, a child conceived by AI without the consent of the Husband  (H) or biological donor of the gametes (F) agreeing to be treated as the Father would have no legal father.

With me so far?

IF the child was conceived by NI, then the male participant would be the child’s legal father (but would not automatically acquire parental responsibility, unless he was registered on the birth certificate)

In this case, which was heard by Mr Justice Peter Jackson – who is rapidly becoming the “go-to” guy on difficult AI cases, the Mother was claiming that the conception had taken place as a result of NI, and that therefore F was the biological AND legal father. She was also seeking orders for financial support for the child from F, under Schedule One of the Children Act 1989.

It would be fair to say that the role of the Court became less one of determining which of F or M was telling the truth, but which of them, after sifting through the multiple lies that each had told, was the more credible in their overall account.  Given that F said the conception was by AI, and M said by NI, one of them must have been telling the truth about the circumstances, and it was, the Judge said, unfortunate that each of them had told so many lies in the proceedings.

These are the lies the Court found that M had told. (The names that I give are names that are within the anonymised transcript, and do not relate to the real names of M, F or H, or the child)

 

·  Examples of Ms M’s deceptions are these:

(1) Her opening e-mail to Mr F stated that she was healthy (she has a medical condition) and that Mr H was excited about donor insemination (he was against it but she hoped to bring him round).

(2) She told Mr F that she had miscarried his child, when she had in fact had a termination.

(3) Her ‘misdirected’ email to a girlfriend, deliberately sent to Mr F, is the work of a fluent fabricator.

 

 (4) Her use of the ‘Andy Hitchings’ name and e-mail account shows a capacity for determined and malevolent action to achieve her ends, and also demonstrates that she will use an alias when it suits her.

(5) I find that she wrote those ‘Andy Hitchings’ emails that she denies writing. Her criterion for accepting or denying authorship was no more than an assessment of the damage that the truth would do to her case.

(6) I find that she probably wrote the ‘Nicole White’ and ‘Edward Mason’ e-mails for the reasons given in Mr F’s opening submissions. She has had two years to prove that these people exist in the face of Mr F’s allegation that they do not, but she has made no attempt to do so.

(7) If I am wrong about point (6), the only plausible alternative is that Ms M conspired with one or more other persons unknown to pursue her campaign against Mr F.

(8) Ms M’s reason for keeping a transcribed log of text messages was that it was as a record for the child. This is unconvincing; a more likely explanation is that she kept the information as a form of insurance.

·  I found Ms M to be an unimpressive witness in relation to the above matters and to show no sign of discomfort when caught in an obvious lie. She freely stated that she is motivated by her own need for Mr F to be punished.

 

 

And then these are the lies that F told

·  Examples of Mr F’s deceptions are these:

(1) His calculating betrayal of his girlfriends, to whom he made promises that he was no longer engaging in sperm donation, and his unabashed dishonesty in concealing his overall activities from recipients with whom he entered into relationships.

(2) His casual untruthfulness on his website profiles about the number of children that he had fathered, lies that would only work to his benefit by disguising a level of hyperactivity that might have deterred responsible approaches.

(3) His deliberately misleading first statement, in which he trumpets the rules of the website as being ‘AI-only’ in an effort to create the impression that this was the case here, when in fact he had been engaging in and advertising sexual activity through the website for years.

(4) His untruthful evidence in these proceedings and to the CSA that he had not had sexual intercourse with Ms M until December 2010 or January 2011, when on his own case it occurred in October 2010.

(5) His gratuitously inaccurate statement that sexual intercourse with Ms M began ‘at her instigation’.

(6) His denial of certain text messages to and from Ms M, taking the same selective tactical approach as she has done.

·  As to the last matter, the log of text messages was produced by Ms M in an unsatisfactory form (allegedly transcribed in edited form from notes that no longer exist of texts that have been ‘lost’). Having exercised due caution in the light of Ms M’s general dishonesty, I nevertheless find that the record can be viewed as a reasonably reliable journal of this form of communication between the couple. The messages have the spontaneous and often inconsequential flavour of real life, are congruent with the content of the contemporaneous emails, and are in my view beyond even Ms M’s powers of fabrication. Moreover, had she wanted to invent evidence, she would probably have inserted some direct and unambiguous reference to sexual activity, but there is none. Many texts are accepted by Mr F, but only where they do him no damage.

·  Mr F’s evidence was clearly given, but he had clearly taken the strategic decision to tell the truth where possible and to lie where necessary. He at least conveyed some impression that he would have been more comfortable telling the truth if circumstances had not prevented it.

 

 

The Judge then had to weigh up, which of them on balance was telling the truth on the central issue of conception, taking into account that the burden of proof was upon M as the applicant

 

·  On the central question of the manner of this child’s conception, I have reached the clear conclusion that Ms M’s evidence is greatly to be preferred to that of Mr F. My reasons are these:

(1) Her account of the sexual activity is detailed and has been consistently maintained. It was unshaken during her evidence.

(2) As a straw in the wind, her answer to an unexpected question about what happened to the AI equipment after the first meeting (which was that she kept bringing but not using it) had the ring of truth.

(3) Allowing for the difficulty faced by any witness in breathing life into a denial, Mr F’s evidence on the issue lacked any real conviction.

(4) His new-found certainty that the first occasion of sex was in late October is inconsistent with his previous accounts and best explained by his having decided to sail as close to the wind as he could in terms of dates.

(5) If the first occasion of sex occurred in October it would have been at one address: if it was in December or January, it would have been at another, Mr F having moved in the meantime. A mistake about dates might be explained: a mistake about venue cannot be accounted for so easily.

(6) My findings about Mr F’s unreliability as a witness are of course relevant.

(7) While of no great importance, it would be a curiosity that the child was conceived by AI at a meeting that was the immediate predecessor of his parents’ very first sexual activity.

(8) The coy and flirtatious tone of their emails and texts from the start suggests that the couple’s relationship had swiftly progressed far beyond AI. The approach seems to have been to communicate in way that was not explicit, chiming with the wish to keep the affair hidden from their partners. Of interest, the tone of the texts and emails is no different before and after October 2010.

(9) I attach no real significance to the use of the term ‘donor’ by either parent when it is clear that this was used interchangeably in their minds for AI and NI. As Mr F put it, ‘I call it donation by sex or receptacle’.

(10) I reject Mr F’s case that a simple friendship and closeness developed between himself and Ms M arising from the intimate nature of AI. The sheer amount of time the couple spent together in a variety of private places from April 2010 onwards is a strong indicator that they were meeting for more than repeated AI.

(11) Mr H believed from an early stage that his wife was having an affair, and I believe that he had good grounds for thinking so.

(12) On the evidence, Mr F did not commonly engage in extended continuous asexual relationships with the women he met through the website. He has an unmistakable track record of inveigling or encouraging recipients into engaging in sexual activity with him from the very first meeting. Ms M’s account of Mr F making a pass at her during the first meeting is consistent with descriptions given by others. Of note, Mr F accepted that he had given her the option of AI or NI within minutes of their first meeting, which was highly inappropriate when she was a stranger who had come for AI.

(13) I accept that Mr F first became involved in licensed donation altruistically and even now, I do not discount a residual element of altruism in his make-up or forget that there are many much-wanted children alive today as a result of his efforts. However, I am clear that in relation to his website activity his mainspring has been to meet his own needs, at least at a sexual level. This is seen by his behaviour in 2007, when he advertised himself in graphic terms as willing to participate in a ‘breeding party’, i.e. a male-dominated orgy designed to get a woman pregnant, though there is no suggestion that he actually took part in such activity. Likewise, he referred in evidence to an occasion when he engaged in sexual activity with both members of a lesbian pair who had approached him via the website.

(14) The fact that Mr F is bound in his professional life by a clear code of ethics makes the risks he was taking the more surprising. His prolific sexual activity with recipients amounted to a brazen flouting of the rules of the website, such as they were. In one relevant period of 2-3 months alone, he was on his own account having sex with three women and providing AI to two others. Most of these contacts had to be kept secret from the other women involved. The sheer logistical challenge alongside his professional life will have been a burden that he would have been likely to have laid down if he had not been driven on by some degree of compulsion. He even kept up and refreshed a posting on a different website, from which he never received any custom over a period of years, and despite the volume of applications the main website was reliably producing.

(15) I reject Mr F’s case that Ms M main motivation is financial, but accept that much of her behaviour is explained by a desire to damage him in any way she can as a way of getting redress for his deeds and his lies.

 

Thus finding that F was the biological and legal parent of the child, the child having been conceived by natural intercourse.

 

Where things get really rich, was the application for costs

Ms M seeks an order that Mr F should pay her costs, while Mr H seeks an order that Mr F should pay his costs on an indemnity basis. Mr H’s costs, it will be recalled, come to £13,000 and Ms M’s to £81,000, of which £61,000 is publicly funded.

 

Well, I see some merit in H asking for it, but after those findings about the pack of lies that M told, asking for a costs order required some bravery. It wasn’t successful.

The issue of anonymity was touched upon, and it is relevant in view of the current debate and the last blog piece that I wrote. Underlining here is mine.

·  Prohibited steps application Mr F seeks an order in these terms:

1. No party may, without the permission of the court, disclose to any person other than their respective legal advisors any of the evidence, oral or written, which has been adduced during these proceedings.

2. No party may disclose to any person other than their respective legal advisors, close friends and family members, or medical professionals treating either themselves or the child any information relating to the circumstances of the conception of the child.

3. For the avoidance of doubt, paragraphs 1 and 2 of this order prohibit disclosure of any information covered by those paragraphs in any of the following ways:

a. By email to any person other than those included in paragraph 1 of this order;

b. By posting the information on any website or internet forum;

c. By publishing the information via Twitter, Facebook or any other social media;

d. By disclosing any of the information to any representative of the Press.

4. Other than specifically provided for in this order, any disclosure which would otherwise have been permitted by Family Procedure Rules 2010, r.12.73 or 12.75 is prohibited unless the party wishing to make such disclosure has obtained the permission of the court.

·  Mr F seeks this order to prevent what is described as prurient interest in the circumstances of the child’s conception. He points to the findings about Ms M’s past behaviour in relation to third parties as heightening this risk. He is anxious to protect his personal position, that of the child and that of third parties, including other children fathered by him. He fears that the financial proceedings may prompt Ms M to renew her public campaign against him.

·  Ms M, who initially appeared attracted by the idea of such an order, now opposes the application. She considers that she should be free to discuss such information or desist from doing so as she sees fit in so far as is otherwise permitted by law.

·  FPR 2010 r.12.73 and r.12.75 protect information arising from the proceedings, either by way of written or oral evidence, or by description of what occurred in court, but at the same time permit disclosure of information relating to the proceedings in defined circumstances, which do not include communication to the public at large. However, in the absence of a specific order, there is nothing to prevent anyone talking privately or publicly about matters that do not originate from within the proceedings: the mere fact that information arising independent of the proceedings is then referred to within the proceedings does not mean that it cannot continue to be spoken of.

·  In this case, Mr F applies for greater restrictions than those imposed by the rules. In balancing the interests that arise under Articles 8 and 10, I am clear that this is not a case in which it would be appropriate for the court to make an order of this kind. Looking at the matter from the point of view of the child, I doubt that the sort of transient publicity that might follow either of the parties speaking publicly would have any real effect on his welfare or of other children. This is not an encouragement to anyone, and in particular Ms M, to go to the press. On the contrary, all parties would no doubt be wise to desist from washing dirty linen in public, but that is a matter for them, and not for the court to regulate in the circumstances of this case. I am not influenced by Ms M’s change of stance: had the parties been united in the application, I would still have refused it.

 

And thus the judgment is published, with names anonymised, with the standard rubric (see the last blog post) about anyone wishing to make use of the judgment having to do so on the basis that no information leading to the identification of the parties will be provided.

 

I know that some of my readers, and some of the media, and population at large, take the view that anonymising the judgments is a step too far, and that the names should just be made public save for the most drastic of circumstances.

 

But imagine, if you will, that this judgment, which is up online and can be viewed by anyone who looks for it, named the child, F, M and H, giving their real names.  Anyone in the child’s social circle could read it now or in the future, and know the whole grisly story of the conception and the lies , manipulation and deception that both of his biological parents were involved in. And could tell the child that , or tease or bully the child with that information. Imagine you are the child, and ten years hence you type your name into Google, and THIS judgment is what comes up.  And you see your mother’s name, and the name of her husband, who you thought was your father?

 

This is of course, nowhere near the worst things that are contained within family court judgments; and it is for that reason that I would support publication of anonymised judgments (hopefully with some clear guidance on what can or can’t be done with them) but not for the routine naming of those involved.

cuckoo

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