Rebecca Dixon says that whenever she’s out at the theatre or busier parts of Ottawa, she finds herself looking for people who look like her and could potentially be her half-siblings.

She is one of several people who over the last four years have learned through DNA testing that they are the biological children of retired Ottawa fertility doctor Norman Barwin.

The 80-year-old physician was stripped of his licence Tuesday by a discipline panel of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, which found he had impregnated a number of women going back to the 1970s with the wrong semen — in some cases his own.

“In two or 10 or 30 years, there may still be people coming forward who will only then be discovering the truth and who will only then be starting the painful process of understanding what this means for them,” Dixon said in a victim impact statement that she read to the panel.

“At first I couldn’t handle the idea of Dr. Barwin being my biological father; the idea repulsed me. It made me feel contaminated — I didn’t want to be connected to someone who had done something so damaging and I couldn’t help but wonder if it meant something about me.”

Barwin, who resigned his licence in 2014, was a no-show at Tuesday’s hearing. His lawyer entered a plea of no contest, meaning Barwin doesn’t admit guilt but does not contest the facts and accepts that the committee can find them correct. A public reprimand was ordered, but his lawyer confirmed that Barwin would also not attend at a future date as he has some medical issues. (The college said no medical evidence of that had been provided.)

“The panel would first like to express its frustration at your decision to not appear before it to receive what is clearly a well-deserved reprimand,” discipline panel chair Dr. Steven Bodley said in Barwin’s absence. “It seems immensely unfair that you are not here to face the victims of your disgraceful conduct.

“Your behaviour has been beyond reprehensible. Your patients represent a group who were vulnerable and who placed themselves and their families completely in your trust. You betrayed that trust and by your actions deeply affected individuals and their families and caused irreparable damage that will span generations.”

A proposed class-action lawsuit against Barwin alleges that 50 to 100 children were conceived using the wrong sperm, and that of those, 11 are biological children of Barwin’s. Those allegations have not yet been proven in court, and findings made against doctors at discipline proceedings cannot be used against them in civil court. Media coverage of the proposed class action in 2016 sparked the college’s investigation.

A total of 12 patients and one man whose mother was inseminated by Barwin formed part of the college’s case. The discipline hearing was told of eight children whose DNA tests show they are the biological children of Barwin. The other cases involve women inseminated with sperm they believed to be either their husband’s or anonymous donors they selected, but that turned out to be sperm of unknown origin.

“There is no precedent for the case you have before you today at this college,” prosecutor Carolyn Silver told the panel. “Dr. Barwin did the unthinkable, the unimaginable. He engaged in the most horrific violation of his patients’ trust and of their bodies.”

One patient, known as Patient B due to a standard publication ban, believed she was being inseminated with the sperm of an anonymous donor who identified as a medical student, according to a statement of uncontested facts filed at the discipline hearing.

In 2015, her daughter, identified as BB, believing as she always had that she had been conceived with anonymous donor sperm, contacted an online DNA registry as she was curious to learn if she had any half-siblings. The registry matched her with a second cousin, who turned out to be related to Barwin, according to the statement filed at the hearing.

When BB contacted Barwin to get a DNA sample, he confirmed in an email that testing showed he was her biological father. In the email, filed as part of the college’s case, Barwin claimed that he did not know how this could have happened, saying that he had used a sample of his own sperm to calibrate an automatic sperm counter and perhaps it had contaminated the sample used to inseminate BB’s mother.

(An expert retained by the college said this was an implausible explanation, especially because so many children ended up being conceived using Barwin’s sperm.)

“I hope this will not cause you any further undue stress or pain to you or your family,” Barwin wrote in the email to BB. “I appreciate the confidentiality and that my family will also not be exposed to any distress. This has caused me much stress and remorse. I regret we both had to endure this major disruption in our lives.”

BB’s father said in a victim impact statement that Barwin “has no clue” how his actions affected patients. He said that when he met Barwin in person, he showed the doctor a recent photo of his daughter.

“He had the nerve to tell me that (she) looks a bit like his late mother!” BB’s father wrote in his statement.

Dixon, who asked that the publication ban not be imposed on her name, started having questions when she developed celiac disease, which is typically genetic. Neither of her parents have it. DNA testing would show that the man she believed is her biological father didn’t have it; her tests were later compared with BB’s, showing Barwin is the biological father of both.

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A woman identified as Patient M said in her impact statement that she and her husband still have not told their daughter that the man she believes is her father is not. They do not know whose sperm Barwin used in Patient M’s case, she told the panel. She said she has replayed the day of the insemination over in her head, when she said Barwin showed her the vial of sperm.

“He looked me in the face and asked, ‘Is this your husband’s name?’ He then proceeded to insert this stranger’s sperm into my body,” Patient M said. “Then I became pregnant with another man’s child. Although it was many years later when I discovered it, I still felt so violated. I felt dirty, as if I had been raped.”

Barwin was previously suspended in 2013 by the college for two months for using the wrong sperm in several inseminations, but an expert review found no “evident errors” at the time regarding his practice. Silver told reporters after the hearing Tuesday that the college acted on the evidence that it had at the time, and acted again when it learned of the proposed class action in 2016.