This one makes you angry, and sad, and then you marvel at the depravity. The story in today’s Mirror relates the sordid, painful saga of Jonathan (not his real name), who became the father of a little boy by in vitro fertilization and then learned recently that his wife had substituted her boyfriend’s sperm for his. Now he has a child he loves but is almost never allowed to see.
Nine years ago, Jonathan and his then wife Susan welcomed their child Simon into the world. Jonathan already had two children by a former marriage and was in no hurry to start a new family, but he says she insisted on their getting married and that he reverse his vasectomy. Even as the marriage was deteriorating, she campaigned for them to have a child together. Believing that a child might bring them together, he agreed. When they were unable to conceive naturally, they began using IVF. When Susan traveled to the IVF clinic, however, she took her boyfriend instead of her husband, and the boyfriend became the biological father of the child. Because she introduced the boyfriend as Jonathan, the clinic’s records showed Jonathan as the father.
When the couple’s marriage crumbled, Jonathan and Susan engaged in a lengthy struggle over custody, and he eventually agreed to pay child support and to pay part of the cost of her flat. Only after the divorce was concluded did Susan tell Jonathan that the child was not his but her boyfriend’s.
Jonathan’s time with Simon is now reduced to near zero. He has no parental rights. Apparently he is dependent of Mom’s generosity about when he sees Simon, and that’s now down to a few minutes per year.
Lost in all of this is the devastating impact this must have had on the child Simon. First the parents you love and know to love you slit up. Then you lose almost all contact with one of them. No one has said how much of the devastating story he knows; I hope none of it.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.