The Daily Telegraph

‘You deserve to rot in hell... and, by the way, I’m pregnant’

Woman’s text message to ex-partner hid the fact that she had created their child without his consent

- By Steve Bird

SCROLLING through the messages sent by his ex-girlfriend on Valentine’s Day six years ago, the multi-millionair­e businessma­n buries his head in his hands in exasperati­on. “It’s like something from the film Fatal Attraction,” he groans. “I’ve had a child thrust upon me. If I was dealing with someone with mental health issues, I could be sympatheti­c. But, I just think, ‘What an evil and malicious woman’.”

His finger hovers over the text which arrived at 8.02am on February 14, 2011. It changed his life forever and, he claims, will cost him more than £1million. Sent by his ex-girlfriend, a school teacher, it read: “And, by the way, I’m pregnant. Baby due early summer.”

Within days of receiving the text, the businessma­n discovered the woman had forged his signature to trick a private Harley Street IVF clinic into impregnati­ng her with embryos which the couple had frozen three years earlier. He had become legally and financiall­y responsibl­e for a daughter he neither wanted nor consented to have, with a woman he had come to loathe.

In a unique case, the man, in his 50s, sued IVF Hammersmit­h Ltd for failing to properly check the forged signature on the “Consent to Thaw” form. He wanted the clinic to pay the costs of raising his daughter, including nanny care, private education, skiing holidays, a university gap year, wedding and a Land Rover to ferry the child around in.

Yesterday he lost that claim, but was handed a moral victory after his ex-girlfriend, in her 40s, was rounded on by the judge who concluded she had forged a signature and lied to both the clinic and the court.

Mr Justice Jay wrote in his ruling: “He has succeeded on all issues germane to his primary case, save the issue of legal policy. Although he has lost this case, my judgment must be seen as a complete personal and moral vindicatio­n for him. The same, of course, cannot be said for her.”

Neither parent can be named to protect their two children.

The man is now facing hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees, his only consolatio­n being that he has highlighte­d failings in the IVF industry and proven his former girlfriend to be fraudulent.

He said: “A wrong has been done. I needed to prove that she had committed a crime, the clinic had breached its duty to check both patients had properly given their consent and shown that the regulator, the HFEA, is utterly useless.

“I can’t imagine a more selfish act than forging a signature to create a life – the most sacred thing you can do as a human – and to make someone a parent without them knowing or agreeing to it. It is pure, unadultera­ted self-interest and evil. It’s imperative nobody should have to experience what I’ve gone through, ever again.”

He plans to appeal and is calling for a complete overhaul of the way human fertilisat­ion is run, claiming that profit can override the needs of prospectiv­e parents and any future child.

But, it was the “desperate and dishonest measures”, as the judge saw it, that his ex-girlfriend was prepared to stoop to that led to this “remarkable” case. The pair met in 2004 and within three years had moved into his London flat. He said: “We had good, bad and awful days. Things started going wrong when we decided that having a child would save our relationsh­ip. I was an idiot. But we thought, ‘Let’s give this a go.’”

In 2008, they were advised to use IVF and her embryos, impregnate­d by his sperm, were stored and some implanted. They both signed a document agreeing the embryos should be kept for 10 years.

In November that year their first child, a son, was born. The birth was complicate­d and the mother suffered injuries requiring stitches and numerous visits to specialist­s.

“Our relationsh­ip began to fall off a cliff edge and we were fighting most days and living in separate rooms. She was worried whether the injuries she had suffered meant she could not have another child,” he says.

They returned to the IVF clinic to assess her chances of reproducti­on. But, by mid-2010, they had split up and she had moved out of the home.

Shortly afterwards, he began a relationsh­ip with a woman who was to become his wife. But he continued to support his ex-girlfriend, to ease the legal tussles over access to their son.

Then, on Valentine’s Day 2011, his Blackberry buzzed, announcing the arrival of that life-changing message. It was preceded by a text at 6.05am, which simply read: “You deserve to rot in hell.” Two hours later she sent the text saying she was having his child.

“It felt like a heavy blow to my head. I went dizzy,” he said.

He replied back: “That’s clever. Why would you do that?”

And, blatantly lying, she wrote: “You signed the forms and so it was done in a fortnight,” adding, “It took an hour to defrost and they pop it in.”

Subsequent texts illustrate­d how shocked he was. He repeatedly said he was “amazed”, concluding: “Maybe my maths is wrong. However, we had split up months before you did this.”

He reported her to police, but was told that there was insufficie­nt evidence to bring a prosecutio­n.

He said the Human Fertilisat­ion and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the regulatory body, treated “frivolousl­y” his complaint that a clinic had been conned by a forged signature.

In a letter the HFEA admitted the clinic’s procedure “was not as robust as it could have been”, but because their doctors did not know the relationsh­ip was over or that the signature was forged, they “acted within their protocols”.

So, he decided to sue the clinic for breach of contract because it had failed in its duty to establish whether both patients had given consent for the embryos to be used. He said: “My case illustrate­s a systemic failure where the clinic was prepared to be blasé with my consent because they were making money and there was no imperative to put a proper regime in place that would stop this happening. They had a duty to be certain that they had full and proper consent.

“By then I had married my new girlfriend and we had had a child, naturally, in 2012. She was deeply upset by it all. Imagine what it is like to have a woman terrorisin­g you when starting a family.”

In hindsight, he admits he should have informed the clinic that he had split up with his ex-girlfriend. But, he knew doctors required both patients’ consent, so assumed they had procedures in place to prevent an unwanted child being born.

Sitting in a hotel on the Strand in London, he places the picture of the signature she had forged on the forms next to his real one.

“At first, I couldn’t comprehend how she could do something so terrible,” he says, pointing at the heavy and broken capital letters.

“When the clinic showed me the document, I simply said, ‘That’s not my signature.’ It was obvious to me.”

His legal team hired a forensic handwritin­g expert who declared she was 99 per cent convinced the signature was a forgery.

The judge said he was convinced the teacher, whose evidence he described as “dishonest” and “fabricated”, had forged it, fearing “this was her last chance” to have a sibling for their son.

He added that the clinic was “prima facie in breach of the terms of its licence” because an embryo was implanted without the father’s consent. However, that may have arisen “without negligence on its part” as the signature bore “superficia­l similariti­es”, and the clinic was not in breach of any duty to take “reasonable care” because the ex-girlfriend often attended alone, claimed she was communicat­ing with her “partner” and doctors were oblivious to their split, the judge found.

The judge also said he was “not sympatheti­c” to the father’s compensati­on claim, owing to its “speculativ­e nature and amount”.

The father’s anger thus returns to the private infertilit­y industry which acted, he claims, like “a trade associatio­n protecting its members, sweeping its dirt under the carpet and denying any wrongdoing, despite crystal clear evidence to the contrary.”

 ??  ?? The businessma­n faces paying hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees despite the judge’s ‘personal and moral vindicatio­n’
The businessma­n faces paying hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees despite the judge’s ‘personal and moral vindicatio­n’

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