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Kat Palmer always knew she was a Barwin baby.
It was a matter of pride in her family that Dr. Norman Barwin, Ottawa’s renowned fertility doctor and baby whisperer, had helped her parents conceive after years of trying.
As members of Ottawa’s tight-knit Jewish community, they sometimes ran into the doctor at events while she was growing up.
“My parents were so grateful to this man. My dad would bring me over and say: ‘We are so thankful to him because he gave us you.’”
Those words hang in the air as Palmer says them today. They have new meaning now.
In 2015, through sheer persistence, the 27-year-old was able to do what no one else had. She convinced Barwin to take a DNA test. The test confirmed her growing fear that Barwin, not the unidentified sperm donor of Irish and German heritage her parents had chosen, was her biological father. Years of searching for half siblings and comparing her DNA profile against others had convinced her there was no other conclusion.
“I cannot understand how this could have happened,” Barwin wrote to her in an October 2015 email confirming his paternity. “This has caused me much stress and remorse. I regret we have both had to endure this major disruption in our lives.”
It was more than a disruption in Palmer’s life. The truth shook her world and its ripples are continuing to shake the lives of dozens of other people.
The fallout, in fact, is growing.
Kat Palmer set out to get proof that Dr. Norman Barwin was her biological father.
The former fertility doctor is facing a potential class-action lawsuit from 11 people who allege they are Barwin babies, conceived using the doctor’s own sperm. Some had believed their own fathers were their biological parent; others believed they had been conceived with donor sperm; but all allege their genetic link to Barwin has now been identified by testing their DNA against two women believed to be his biological children.
The lawsuit includes others: Some conceived at Barwin’s clinic who have now learned their own fathers are not their biological fathers and don’t know who is. Others, who were conceived using donor sperm selected by their parents, do not know which sperm was used or who their biological fathers are. A final group includes men who stored their sperm at Barwin’s clinic, in some cases because they had cancer, and who are concerned it may have been used to conceive children without their knowledge. The potential suit, which has yet to be confirmed in court, involves 150 people so far.
Like Palmer, Rebecca Dixon, is 27, petite and olived-skinned with sleek dark hair.
Lawyer Peter Cronyn says Dixon’s resemblance to the fertility doctor hit him like a gut-punch the first time she walked into his office. “When I saw her, I was quite blown away.”
Cronyn is one of the lawyers at Nelligan O’Brien Payne working on the lawsuit. His firm has hired a geneticist and is setting up a genetic databank to help clients find information.
“It has been devastating for all of them,” says Cronyn of those seeking to sue the doctor. “This is at the core of probably the most important thing any of us does in life — have a family.”
The suit comes after Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons reprimanded Barwin in 2013 and found he had failed to maintain a professional standard of practice and failed to use the correct sperm. He was banned from practising medicine for two months and reprimanded for artificially inseminating three of his patients with the wrong sperm.
Even if all the allegations against Barwin were true, it is possible he would have broken no law. Such is the lax state of regulations around the world of fertility medicine and sperm donors.
Amid the confusion and devastation of the fertility fallout, something positive has emerged: The half-siblings allegedly conceived using Barwin’s sperm — born between the 1970s and 1990s — are building a new kind of family.
They have met in small and larger groups and are slowly getting to know each other. For those struggling with the confusion and pain of questioning their identity, the newly formed bonds are an unexpected silver lining.
“Every time I spend time with my siblings, afterward I am filled with love and joy and warmth. It has been fascinating to get to know them,” Dixon says.
Rebecca Dixon, 26, is part of a potential class-action lawsuit against the doctor.
One of the the strongest bonds is between Dixon and Palmer.
The two young women, both “only” children and born seven months apart in Ottawa, led such parallel lives growing up in Ottawa, and resemble each other so much, it is remarkable they had never met until 2016.
In fact, they very nearly did.
Both young women attended Canterbury High School and were in the music program one year apart. They had friends in common. Palmer says she remembers regularly going to Dixon’s music class to pick up a friend.
When the two finally did meet, there was an eerie familiarity.
They both giggled the same way; they both played with their hair the same way; they looked like sisters. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off her,” Dixon says of Palmer.
Their paths to finding each other and the others, none of whom wanted to speak publicly for this story, were quite different.
Dixon grew up happily in Ottawa, the only child of Davina and Dan Dixon. The couple, older when they became parents, had tried to conceive without success and started seeing Barwin in 1989. Rebecca was born a year later.
“We had a very good experience with Barwin,” says Davina Dixon. “He never put us off, weekdays, weekends, it never made a difference. We called him and he gave us a time to meet at the clinic.”
“We had a very good experience with Barwin. He never put us off, weekdays, weekends, it never made a difference. — Davina Dixon, mother of Rebecca
Rebecca was the apple of her parents’ eyes, although she did not physically resemble either of them. She has brown eyes and olive skin and her parents have blue eyes and pinkish skin. People often thought she was adopted. But she shrugged the differences off as a weird anomaly.
Rebecca Dixon with her parents Dan and Davina Dixon.
It wasn’t until she was diagnosed with celiac disease as a young adult, a condition no one else in their family had, that the Dixons began asking questions.
Allegations against the highly respected doctor surfaced publicly in 1995 when a patient discovered her child was not biologically related to the sperm donor.
After that case, in 1995, the college warned Barwin to take steps to make sure no such errors happened again. Then, in 2013, Barwin was disciplined by the college for sperm mix-ups with three patients. He admitted he failed to maintain the standards of practice of the profession but couldn’t explain how the mix-ups occurred. He gave up his licence after being reprimanded by the college in 2013.
The publicity around those cases caused others who had been patients of Barwin’s to look more closely at their own experiences. Many are now involved in the potential class action.
The fall from community pillar to medical pariah of a fertility doctor long revered by patients and considered a leading champion of women’s rights and LGBT rights continues to stun many. Among other things, Barwin, an avid runner, was found to have cheated in both the Boston and Ottawa marathons. He resigned from the Order of Canada in 2013.
Dr. Norman Barwin
It was a blood test that confirmed what the Dixon family most feared — that Dan could not be Rachel’s father.
Dan, who had been against using donor sperm to help his wife conceive, reacted with tears and anger. Davina says she was angry at what her husband and daughter were dealing with and for herself.
“I had had something done to me without my permission,” she says.
For Rebecca, “It was like a wave of shock running through me. I was in shock and I was very concerned about how my dad would feel about it and how difficult it would be for him. We all cried. We love each other and we are still family.”
Another revelation was yet to come.
Not sure what to do next, the Dixons looked up the lawyers who had dealt with the previous cases involving Barwin and contacted them.
When they walked into Peter Cronyn’s office, he says, he was immediately struck by Rebecca’s appearance.
Cronyn had spent time around Barwin as part of earlier lawsuits. He and colleagues had wondered whether, in addition to the sperm mix-ups in those cases, there would be cases of the doctor using his own sperm, as had happened elsewhere in the world.
“When I saw Rebecca, I was very concerned. I really was almost certain, but I am not a doctor. The resemblance (with Barwin) was just so striking.”
The law firm attempted to get DNA from Barwin’s lawyer, to confirm the concerns, with no luck.
But there turned out to be another way to test whether Barwin might have used his own sperm to help Davina Dixon conceive. Cronyn learned there was another young woman who had contacted Barwin and done a DNA test — Kat Palmer.
Palmer’s quest to learn more about herself had started as a search for any half-siblings. As an only child, it was something she had always dreamed about. For her and for her father, who was equally curious, the search became a kind of bonding experience, she says.
When Palmer began with a home DNA test, the results told her that her genetic background was Ashkenazi Jewish. There was no Irish and German, as her parents had been told, which meant their information about the sperm donor was not correct.
She began contacting Barwin’s office, searching for clues to the real sperm donor.
During a visit to Ottawa from Vancouver where she now lives in 2014, Palmer made an appointment to see Barwin in person.
“I wanted information.”
She was told no donor list could be found. “I don’t know how this happened,” she recounts Barwin telling her, in what would become a familiar refrain.
The fertility doctor had something else to say to Palmer.
“He told me I was obsessive for wanting the answer. ‘You are young. You are in a healthy relationship, isn’t that enough for you?’” he asked.
Palmer says she tried to be as cordial as possible to keep a line of communication open. Inside, she says, she was seething at the roadblocks his clinic seemed to be putting up to prevent her from getting more information about herself.
“I was trying to get into his head that this isn’t a ridiculous question. You are not breeding puppies, you are creating humans.”
“You are not breeding puppies, you are creating humans.”
She says she felt as though he was lying to her as he kept putting her off in her search for records.
She decided her only hope of discovering more about her genetic roots would come from registering on the database Family Tree DNA and searching for matches.
By the summer of 2015, when she was discouraged she would ever find a match, a third cousin — a journalist from New York — contacted her. Palmer had included information that she had been conceived at Barwin’s clinic in Ottawa. The cousin, whose family was from the same town in Lithuania as the Barwin family and whose mother was his second cousin, was certain he had found the link.
“He says, ‘I think it was probably (Barwin).’ He was the one who linked it together. I think he thought I had never considered it. He was very gentle in telling me.”
In fact, it had been a belief that Palmer was coming to on her own. Her genetic profile — Ashkenazi Jewish — matched her mother’s genetic material, but also Barwin’s. Her appearance, from her nose, eyes and mouth, to the way she smiles is uncannily similar to Barwin’s, leading an aunt to suggest when Palmer was younger that the fertility doctor was, in fact, the sperm donor. At the time, the idea was overwhelming to her.
Dr. Norman Barwin
But as her hunt for genetic information about herself led to Barwin, she became determined to find out the truth.
Her cousin helped her draft a letter to Barwin.
“I am writing this letter because I have found information that makes me believe that you used your own genetic material or that of a close relative in your fertility treatment of my mother and that I am, genetically, your descendant,” she wrote.
She laid out the evidence she had, adding: “It seems beyond statistical possibility that you would have used a sperm sample of a male donor who, by coincidence, was a close genetic match to your own Barwin family. It seems clear that only explanation for this connection is that you provided the sample.
“My interest is very basic, very human. I want to know more about my genetic legacy and the story of how I came to be.”
Within an hour, Barwin responded: “Please contact me on my cellphone,” and sent her his number.
In Palmer’s mind, the search for her biological identity was over. “I had my answer.”
It took her more than a week to call him back, during which they arranged a swab test to confirm paternity.
He told her he didn’t know how it could have happened and that he used his sample to calibrate the sperm counting machinery. “The only explanation I can offer is that there was some contamination of the sample. The sample was used inadvertently.” It is unclear whether his explanation is plausible.
By the end of the conversation, Palmer was in tears.
“At that point, I couldn’t talk to him. He had lied to my parents, he had lied to me. It was devastating.”
But Palmer, who describes herself as both passionate and stubborn, was not done there.
She had begun her search as a means to find half-siblings. Now she knew she had some, Barwin’s children.
“I desperately wanted him to tell his kids. I wanted to know half-siblings, and here they were.”
In fact, she had grown up knowing some of his grandchildren.
In a series of email exchanges in the spring of 2016, Barwin wrote to Palmer that he couldn’t bring himself to tell his family. They emails give the clearest sense yet made public of what the fertility doctor was thinking.
Palmer wrote to Barwin in March 2016, telling him:
“First, let me make clear what I don’t expect. I don’t expect to suddenly be a part of the Barwin family, nor do I want to be. I certainly don’t expect any money or other forms of inheritance. What I want is much simpler than that. I don’t want to feel the burden of hiding who I am, the fullness of who I am. … I expect (his children and grandchildren) to know I exist, that I am connected to them in this slightly confusing way. And that the relationship is not my fault. It’s not some threat from an outsider. I was just born and the nature of my birth and my genetic relationship to them is entirely from choices or mistakes that others made.”
Barwin responded: “I am concerned that if this becomes public my professional credibility will be damaged. … I am so sorry that my issues are causing such an impact on you. It’s not that I don’t want to let my children know about you. It’s just I am worried about how they will feel about me. If you plan to inform others, my concern is how they will see me — again it is not about you,” he wrote. “You have been very understanding, reasonable and patient and from what I can gather, you are a fabulous person. I wanted to let you know why I have been delaying, I am still trying to come to terms with what I have done and how my family will feel about me if they were aware of my unintentional action.”
In June he wrote in another email that he was “just not ready yet” to tell his family.
Palmer says his response was infuriating but, a few months later, in August 2016, she got word that there might be another family connection. She had been in touch with a family that had sued Barwin for a sperm mixup when their child was conceived. They strongly suggested she contact their lawyers, saying they had clients who were very suspicious that Barwin had used his sperm to conceive their child, but that they couldn’t get a DNA sample from him to prove it.
That was Rebecca Dixon.
Dixon, left, Barwin and Palmer.
Palmer was beyond excited to finally meet a possible half sibling. And, since she had done a DNA test with Barwin, she was believed to be the key to answering the Dixon family’s questions.
She and Dixon compared their own raw DNA and had their answer: They were half siblings.
“It was so exciting for me. But I was really concerned for her. For her, us being half siblings meant the sad reality that her father that she loved so much is not her biological father.”
Palmer was also struggling with identity issues.
“Does it make me a bad person because I am related to this person who has hurt so many families?”
Both Palmer and Dixon were thrilled to get to know each other.
“I was really excited and really focused on the fact that I had this relationship with Kat,” says Dixon. “We both were only children. She had been searching for siblings. She was really excited to find me.”
They met first on the phone, then on Skype. They emailed constantly. They discovered how much they had in common, from going to the same high school, to the way they laughed and reacted to each other.
When they first met in person, at Pearson International Airport in Toronto while Palmer was on a stopover, Dixon says she couldn’t keep her eyes off her half sister. “You are looking for similarities and looking to get to know somebody. I knew we were going to be together forever.”
The half sisters’ relationship has blossomed to a larger family — nine others, all of whom have concluded Barwin is their biological father by testing against Palmer or Dixon’s DNA. Their lawyers still do not have any of Barwin’s DNA, although he and his lawyer are in talks with the lawyers over the growing class action lawsuit.
Palmer, who has achieved a lifetime dream of having siblings many times over, calls her new kin “a weird alternative-universe version of myself.”
Kat Palmer and Rebecca Dixon (right) with their half brother, James.
“There are certain parts of myself that I see in them. This one gets angry in the same way I do. Even the ones I don’t have that much in common with because they are at different stages of their lives, there is something unspoken. There is this connection you can’t really put your finger on. There is a sense of family and knowing who this person is. We are all siblings.”
Dixon has had the others to her house, has met in small groups at bars or over coffee and talks or emails with Palmer in Vancouver frequently.
“I have never had people who physically look like me before. For me, it is the act of claiming each other as brothers and sisters.”
Davina Dixon, who has also met the others, says they are creating a family with each other. “They have all been lovely and supportive of each other in this weird situation.”
And there is no question the situation is at times both joyous and strange.
Dixon calls what Barwin is alleged to have done “such an intimate kind of violation.”
“We talk about relationships in terms of blood. Your DNA is in every cell. You can’t help but pass it on.”
After years of pressing the now 78-year-old Barwin for answers, Palmer says she no longer expects one.
“For such a long time, he was the only person who could give me the answers I needed. Now, I don’t think there is anything else I can ask. I have my answers. I have my siblings. I don’t need him to answer any more questions.”
Dixon recoils with a “No, no way!” when asked if she would like to meet Barwin.
“I don’t really feel I have a connection with him and I don’t want one. Some of the things I have heard him say make me believe he will not have an explanation and does not understand the severity of what he has done to all these families.”
Cronyn says he tells his clients that they will probably never get an answer from Barwin and not to expect one.
“Every time he has been asked, he says he regrets it and it is his worst nightmare. I don’t think we will ever get any answers from him.”
Barwin declined to comment for this story.
Those dealing with the fallout from his actions, meanwhile, look to the future and cope with a range of emotions — from anger to gratitude.
“I am who I am,” says Palmer. “Whatever actions this man did, they led to my existence and it has brought all these wonderful people into my life. It is hard to be angry that I exist.”
Dr Norman Barwin makes his way to the disciplinary hearing at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2013. He declined to comment for this story.
epayne@postmedia.com
查看原文...
It was a matter of pride in her family that Dr. Norman Barwin, Ottawa’s renowned fertility doctor and baby whisperer, had helped her parents conceive after years of trying.
As members of Ottawa’s tight-knit Jewish community, they sometimes ran into the doctor at events while she was growing up.
“My parents were so grateful to this man. My dad would bring me over and say: ‘We are so thankful to him because he gave us you.’”
Those words hang in the air as Palmer says them today. They have new meaning now.
In 2015, through sheer persistence, the 27-year-old was able to do what no one else had. She convinced Barwin to take a DNA test. The test confirmed her growing fear that Barwin, not the unidentified sperm donor of Irish and German heritage her parents had chosen, was her biological father. Years of searching for half siblings and comparing her DNA profile against others had convinced her there was no other conclusion.
“I cannot understand how this could have happened,” Barwin wrote to her in an October 2015 email confirming his paternity. “This has caused me much stress and remorse. I regret we have both had to endure this major disruption in our lives.”
It was more than a disruption in Palmer’s life. The truth shook her world and its ripples are continuing to shake the lives of dozens of other people.
The fallout, in fact, is growing.
Kat Palmer set out to get proof that Dr. Norman Barwin was her biological father.
The former fertility doctor is facing a potential class-action lawsuit from 11 people who allege they are Barwin babies, conceived using the doctor’s own sperm. Some had believed their own fathers were their biological parent; others believed they had been conceived with donor sperm; but all allege their genetic link to Barwin has now been identified by testing their DNA against two women believed to be his biological children.
The lawsuit includes others: Some conceived at Barwin’s clinic who have now learned their own fathers are not their biological fathers and don’t know who is. Others, who were conceived using donor sperm selected by their parents, do not know which sperm was used or who their biological fathers are. A final group includes men who stored their sperm at Barwin’s clinic, in some cases because they had cancer, and who are concerned it may have been used to conceive children without their knowledge. The potential suit, which has yet to be confirmed in court, involves 150 people so far.
•
Like Palmer, Rebecca Dixon, is 27, petite and olived-skinned with sleek dark hair.
Lawyer Peter Cronyn says Dixon’s resemblance to the fertility doctor hit him like a gut-punch the first time she walked into his office. “When I saw her, I was quite blown away.”
Cronyn is one of the lawyers at Nelligan O’Brien Payne working on the lawsuit. His firm has hired a geneticist and is setting up a genetic databank to help clients find information.
“It has been devastating for all of them,” says Cronyn of those seeking to sue the doctor. “This is at the core of probably the most important thing any of us does in life — have a family.”
The suit comes after Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons reprimanded Barwin in 2013 and found he had failed to maintain a professional standard of practice and failed to use the correct sperm. He was banned from practising medicine for two months and reprimanded for artificially inseminating three of his patients with the wrong sperm.
Even if all the allegations against Barwin were true, it is possible he would have broken no law. Such is the lax state of regulations around the world of fertility medicine and sperm donors.
Amid the confusion and devastation of the fertility fallout, something positive has emerged: The half-siblings allegedly conceived using Barwin’s sperm — born between the 1970s and 1990s — are building a new kind of family.
They have met in small and larger groups and are slowly getting to know each other. For those struggling with the confusion and pain of questioning their identity, the newly formed bonds are an unexpected silver lining.
“Every time I spend time with my siblings, afterward I am filled with love and joy and warmth. It has been fascinating to get to know them,” Dixon says.
Rebecca Dixon, 26, is part of a potential class-action lawsuit against the doctor.
•
One of the the strongest bonds is between Dixon and Palmer.
The two young women, both “only” children and born seven months apart in Ottawa, led such parallel lives growing up in Ottawa, and resemble each other so much, it is remarkable they had never met until 2016.
In fact, they very nearly did.
Both young women attended Canterbury High School and were in the music program one year apart. They had friends in common. Palmer says she remembers regularly going to Dixon’s music class to pick up a friend.
When the two finally did meet, there was an eerie familiarity.
They both giggled the same way; they both played with their hair the same way; they looked like sisters. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off her,” Dixon says of Palmer.
Their paths to finding each other and the others, none of whom wanted to speak publicly for this story, were quite different.
Dixon grew up happily in Ottawa, the only child of Davina and Dan Dixon. The couple, older when they became parents, had tried to conceive without success and started seeing Barwin in 1989. Rebecca was born a year later.
“We had a very good experience with Barwin,” says Davina Dixon. “He never put us off, weekdays, weekends, it never made a difference. We called him and he gave us a time to meet at the clinic.”
“We had a very good experience with Barwin. He never put us off, weekdays, weekends, it never made a difference. — Davina Dixon, mother of Rebecca
Rebecca was the apple of her parents’ eyes, although she did not physically resemble either of them. She has brown eyes and olive skin and her parents have blue eyes and pinkish skin. People often thought she was adopted. But she shrugged the differences off as a weird anomaly.
Rebecca Dixon with her parents Dan and Davina Dixon.
It wasn’t until she was diagnosed with celiac disease as a young adult, a condition no one else in their family had, that the Dixons began asking questions.
Allegations against the highly respected doctor surfaced publicly in 1995 when a patient discovered her child was not biologically related to the sperm donor.
After that case, in 1995, the college warned Barwin to take steps to make sure no such errors happened again. Then, in 2013, Barwin was disciplined by the college for sperm mix-ups with three patients. He admitted he failed to maintain the standards of practice of the profession but couldn’t explain how the mix-ups occurred. He gave up his licence after being reprimanded by the college in 2013.
The publicity around those cases caused others who had been patients of Barwin’s to look more closely at their own experiences. Many are now involved in the potential class action.
The fall from community pillar to medical pariah of a fertility doctor long revered by patients and considered a leading champion of women’s rights and LGBT rights continues to stun many. Among other things, Barwin, an avid runner, was found to have cheated in both the Boston and Ottawa marathons. He resigned from the Order of Canada in 2013.
Dr. Norman Barwin
•
It was a blood test that confirmed what the Dixon family most feared — that Dan could not be Rachel’s father.
Dan, who had been against using donor sperm to help his wife conceive, reacted with tears and anger. Davina says she was angry at what her husband and daughter were dealing with and for herself.
“I had had something done to me without my permission,” she says.
For Rebecca, “It was like a wave of shock running through me. I was in shock and I was very concerned about how my dad would feel about it and how difficult it would be for him. We all cried. We love each other and we are still family.”
Another revelation was yet to come.
Not sure what to do next, the Dixons looked up the lawyers who had dealt with the previous cases involving Barwin and contacted them.
When they walked into Peter Cronyn’s office, he says, he was immediately struck by Rebecca’s appearance.
Cronyn had spent time around Barwin as part of earlier lawsuits. He and colleagues had wondered whether, in addition to the sperm mix-ups in those cases, there would be cases of the doctor using his own sperm, as had happened elsewhere in the world.
“When I saw Rebecca, I was very concerned. I really was almost certain, but I am not a doctor. The resemblance (with Barwin) was just so striking.”
The law firm attempted to get DNA from Barwin’s lawyer, to confirm the concerns, with no luck.
But there turned out to be another way to test whether Barwin might have used his own sperm to help Davina Dixon conceive. Cronyn learned there was another young woman who had contacted Barwin and done a DNA test — Kat Palmer.
Palmer’s quest to learn more about herself had started as a search for any half-siblings. As an only child, it was something she had always dreamed about. For her and for her father, who was equally curious, the search became a kind of bonding experience, she says.
When Palmer began with a home DNA test, the results told her that her genetic background was Ashkenazi Jewish. There was no Irish and German, as her parents had been told, which meant their information about the sperm donor was not correct.
She began contacting Barwin’s office, searching for clues to the real sperm donor.
During a visit to Ottawa from Vancouver where she now lives in 2014, Palmer made an appointment to see Barwin in person.
“I wanted information.”
She was told no donor list could be found. “I don’t know how this happened,” she recounts Barwin telling her, in what would become a familiar refrain.
The fertility doctor had something else to say to Palmer.
“He told me I was obsessive for wanting the answer. ‘You are young. You are in a healthy relationship, isn’t that enough for you?’” he asked.
Palmer says she tried to be as cordial as possible to keep a line of communication open. Inside, she says, she was seething at the roadblocks his clinic seemed to be putting up to prevent her from getting more information about herself.
“I was trying to get into his head that this isn’t a ridiculous question. You are not breeding puppies, you are creating humans.”
“You are not breeding puppies, you are creating humans.”
She says she felt as though he was lying to her as he kept putting her off in her search for records.
She decided her only hope of discovering more about her genetic roots would come from registering on the database Family Tree DNA and searching for matches.
By the summer of 2015, when she was discouraged she would ever find a match, a third cousin — a journalist from New York — contacted her. Palmer had included information that she had been conceived at Barwin’s clinic in Ottawa. The cousin, whose family was from the same town in Lithuania as the Barwin family and whose mother was his second cousin, was certain he had found the link.
“He says, ‘I think it was probably (Barwin).’ He was the one who linked it together. I think he thought I had never considered it. He was very gentle in telling me.”
•
In fact, it had been a belief that Palmer was coming to on her own. Her genetic profile — Ashkenazi Jewish — matched her mother’s genetic material, but also Barwin’s. Her appearance, from her nose, eyes and mouth, to the way she smiles is uncannily similar to Barwin’s, leading an aunt to suggest when Palmer was younger that the fertility doctor was, in fact, the sperm donor. At the time, the idea was overwhelming to her.
Dr. Norman Barwin
But as her hunt for genetic information about herself led to Barwin, she became determined to find out the truth.
Her cousin helped her draft a letter to Barwin.
“I am writing this letter because I have found information that makes me believe that you used your own genetic material or that of a close relative in your fertility treatment of my mother and that I am, genetically, your descendant,” she wrote.
She laid out the evidence she had, adding: “It seems beyond statistical possibility that you would have used a sperm sample of a male donor who, by coincidence, was a close genetic match to your own Barwin family. It seems clear that only explanation for this connection is that you provided the sample.
“My interest is very basic, very human. I want to know more about my genetic legacy and the story of how I came to be.”
Within an hour, Barwin responded: “Please contact me on my cellphone,” and sent her his number.
In Palmer’s mind, the search for her biological identity was over. “I had my answer.”
It took her more than a week to call him back, during which they arranged a swab test to confirm paternity.
He told her he didn’t know how it could have happened and that he used his sample to calibrate the sperm counting machinery. “The only explanation I can offer is that there was some contamination of the sample. The sample was used inadvertently.” It is unclear whether his explanation is plausible.
By the end of the conversation, Palmer was in tears.
“At that point, I couldn’t talk to him. He had lied to my parents, he had lied to me. It was devastating.”
But Palmer, who describes herself as both passionate and stubborn, was not done there.
She had begun her search as a means to find half-siblings. Now she knew she had some, Barwin’s children.
“I desperately wanted him to tell his kids. I wanted to know half-siblings, and here they were.”
In fact, she had grown up knowing some of his grandchildren.
In a series of email exchanges in the spring of 2016, Barwin wrote to Palmer that he couldn’t bring himself to tell his family. They emails give the clearest sense yet made public of what the fertility doctor was thinking.
Palmer wrote to Barwin in March 2016, telling him:
“First, let me make clear what I don’t expect. I don’t expect to suddenly be a part of the Barwin family, nor do I want to be. I certainly don’t expect any money or other forms of inheritance. What I want is much simpler than that. I don’t want to feel the burden of hiding who I am, the fullness of who I am. … I expect (his children and grandchildren) to know I exist, that I am connected to them in this slightly confusing way. And that the relationship is not my fault. It’s not some threat from an outsider. I was just born and the nature of my birth and my genetic relationship to them is entirely from choices or mistakes that others made.”
Barwin responded: “I am concerned that if this becomes public my professional credibility will be damaged. … I am so sorry that my issues are causing such an impact on you. It’s not that I don’t want to let my children know about you. It’s just I am worried about how they will feel about me. If you plan to inform others, my concern is how they will see me — again it is not about you,” he wrote. “You have been very understanding, reasonable and patient and from what I can gather, you are a fabulous person. I wanted to let you know why I have been delaying, I am still trying to come to terms with what I have done and how my family will feel about me if they were aware of my unintentional action.”
In June he wrote in another email that he was “just not ready yet” to tell his family.
Palmer says his response was infuriating but, a few months later, in August 2016, she got word that there might be another family connection. She had been in touch with a family that had sued Barwin for a sperm mixup when their child was conceived. They strongly suggested she contact their lawyers, saying they had clients who were very suspicious that Barwin had used his sperm to conceive their child, but that they couldn’t get a DNA sample from him to prove it.
That was Rebecca Dixon.
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Dixon, left, Barwin and Palmer.
Palmer was beyond excited to finally meet a possible half sibling. And, since she had done a DNA test with Barwin, she was believed to be the key to answering the Dixon family’s questions.
She and Dixon compared their own raw DNA and had their answer: They were half siblings.
“It was so exciting for me. But I was really concerned for her. For her, us being half siblings meant the sad reality that her father that she loved so much is not her biological father.”
Palmer was also struggling with identity issues.
“Does it make me a bad person because I am related to this person who has hurt so many families?”
Both Palmer and Dixon were thrilled to get to know each other.
“I was really excited and really focused on the fact that I had this relationship with Kat,” says Dixon. “We both were only children. She had been searching for siblings. She was really excited to find me.”
They met first on the phone, then on Skype. They emailed constantly. They discovered how much they had in common, from going to the same high school, to the way they laughed and reacted to each other.
When they first met in person, at Pearson International Airport in Toronto while Palmer was on a stopover, Dixon says she couldn’t keep her eyes off her half sister. “You are looking for similarities and looking to get to know somebody. I knew we were going to be together forever.”
The half sisters’ relationship has blossomed to a larger family — nine others, all of whom have concluded Barwin is their biological father by testing against Palmer or Dixon’s DNA. Their lawyers still do not have any of Barwin’s DNA, although he and his lawyer are in talks with the lawyers over the growing class action lawsuit.
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Palmer, who has achieved a lifetime dream of having siblings many times over, calls her new kin “a weird alternative-universe version of myself.”
Kat Palmer and Rebecca Dixon (right) with their half brother, James.
“There are certain parts of myself that I see in them. This one gets angry in the same way I do. Even the ones I don’t have that much in common with because they are at different stages of their lives, there is something unspoken. There is this connection you can’t really put your finger on. There is a sense of family and knowing who this person is. We are all siblings.”
Dixon has had the others to her house, has met in small groups at bars or over coffee and talks or emails with Palmer in Vancouver frequently.
“I have never had people who physically look like me before. For me, it is the act of claiming each other as brothers and sisters.”
Davina Dixon, who has also met the others, says they are creating a family with each other. “They have all been lovely and supportive of each other in this weird situation.”
And there is no question the situation is at times both joyous and strange.
Dixon calls what Barwin is alleged to have done “such an intimate kind of violation.”
“We talk about relationships in terms of blood. Your DNA is in every cell. You can’t help but pass it on.”
After years of pressing the now 78-year-old Barwin for answers, Palmer says she no longer expects one.
“For such a long time, he was the only person who could give me the answers I needed. Now, I don’t think there is anything else I can ask. I have my answers. I have my siblings. I don’t need him to answer any more questions.”
Dixon recoils with a “No, no way!” when asked if she would like to meet Barwin.
“I don’t really feel I have a connection with him and I don’t want one. Some of the things I have heard him say make me believe he will not have an explanation and does not understand the severity of what he has done to all these families.”
Cronyn says he tells his clients that they will probably never get an answer from Barwin and not to expect one.
“Every time he has been asked, he says he regrets it and it is his worst nightmare. I don’t think we will ever get any answers from him.”
Barwin declined to comment for this story.
Those dealing with the fallout from his actions, meanwhile, look to the future and cope with a range of emotions — from anger to gratitude.
“I am who I am,” says Palmer. “Whatever actions this man did, they led to my existence and it has brought all these wonderful people into my life. It is hard to be angry that I exist.”
Dr Norman Barwin makes his way to the disciplinary hearing at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2013. He declined to comment for this story.
epayne@postmedia.com
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