In 2014, Jacoba Ballard found out her biological father was her parents’ doctor, who’d secretly inseminated countless women. Ahead of a Netflix series, she talks about her fear that the avalanche of siblings will never stop – and why she dreads Christmas
Plenty of true crime documentaries revel in the cold case, doling out narratively complete stories that can be presented with the comforting buffer of history. Our Father, available on Netflix from Wednesday, is different. It is a shockingly, painfully current film.
Our Father tells the story of Jacoba Ballard, a blond haired, blue eyed woman who never felt she completely belonged in her family. After using a 23andMe DNA testing kit in 2014, she began to discover why. Her DNA results showed that she had a handful of half siblings from an unidentified father. As she began to investigate, the sickening truth started to reveal itself. Her biological father – and the biological father of her new siblings – was Donald Cline, her parents’ fertility doctor. Cline, it turned out, had habitually inseminated women with his own sperm without their consent or knowledge.
