A special half-siblings kinship decades later

A special half-siblings kinship decades later

Matt White remembers that day in September 2016 when a mystery began to unravel that would change his life.

ZIONSVILLE » Matt White remembers that day in September 2016 when a mystery began to unravel that would change his life.

It started when White read a news report that Dr. Donald Cline, a retired Indianapolis fertility specialist, faced charges for lying when he denied he’d inseminated unwitting patients with his sperm decades ago. He checked Cline’s address; it was the location of his mother’s former doctor. Then he found a photo online, and saw that he resembled Cline.

“It was just too similar to be coincidental,” he says. White had long known he was a donor baby, but that day, he had an eerie feeling he was staring at the man who was likely his biological father.

Around the same time, Julie Harmon saw a TV news story about Cline. She’d discovered years earlier her blood type indicated she wasn’t the child of both her parents. She didn’t follow up then, but after watching the report, she says, “I knew something was wrong.”

The TV story featured Jacoba Ballard, whose mother, like Harmon’s, had been Cline’s patient. Harmon contacted Ballard, and they traded photos.

“I looked at pictures of her, and I knew,” Harmon says. “We even part our hair the same.”

These two women and White recently crowded into an Indianapolis courtroom to hear Cline receive a one-year suspended sentence for lying to investigators when he denied wrongdoing; DNA tests determined he’s the biological father of Ballard and another woman whose mother was his patient. Cline apologized “for the pain my actions have caused” but didn’t specify how often he used his own sperm in procedures — court documents say he told Ballard about 50 times.

Cline’s sentencing, though, wasn’t the end of this story. In an extraordinary epilogue, White, Harmon and Ballard have forged a kinship as they wrestle with the revelation about their identities. They’ve also reached out to 21 men and women, all in their 30s, who’ve been identified through DNA tests as half-siblings — evidence, they say, Cline is likely their father, as well.

COURTESY MATT WHITE VIA AP Matt White with Jacoba Ballard, left, and Julie Harmon are in New York before a television interview. The three onetime strangers have also reached out to 21 others.