Dads by deception

Last week, Liz Jones confessed how she tried to trick her husband into fathering her child. Now four men reveal the trauma they felt when the same thing happened to them



The email sent to Jack Goodchild this summer was short and to the point. Jack recalls: ‘Basically, it said: “I’m pregnant, it’s yours — but don’t worry, you won’t be having any involvement and we won’t be seeing each other any more.” ’



It had been written by Tess, his on-off girlfriend of several months. And now it was all over. Having learned she was expecting his child, Tess apparently wanted nothing more to do with the father.



Moreover, the 41-year-old London businessman soon learned that this seemed to have been his lover’s plan all along. ‘I telephoned her straight away, as anyone would after receiving an email like that, to find out what was going on,’ he says.



Unintentional fathers: Some men have been left holding the baby that they never wanted in the first place (posed by models)

‘I thought maybe there was some misunderstanding; that because we hadn’t talked about anything serious like starting a family, she assumed I wouldn’t be interested in the baby.



‘Instead, she said she had wanted to get pregnant, that she had “stolen” my sperm, and now she no longer wanted to be in touch. She was incredibly matter-of-fact about it; clinical even.’



As far as he knows, Jack’s baby is due some time in early spring, although Tess has made it clear she won’t be getting in touch to let him know when the day has arrived.



‘I was ambivalent about fatherhood before, and unsure whether that’s what I wanted from life,’ he says. ‘Now I’ve been put into a situation where I know I am going to be a father, but one with no involvement. I don’t think it has fully hit me yet.’



Jack is far from alone in finding himself, in effect, a father by default, after trusting someone who said she was taking precautions. Last week, the Mail’s Liz Jones described how her desire for a baby had led her to the ultimate deception, despite her then boyfriend’s assertions that he had no interest in becoming a father.



She had, she confessed, effectively ‘stolen’ his sperm — attempting to impregnate herself after sex with the contents of a used condom.



In Liz’s case there was no baby; but her candid admission provoked a heated debate among readers, many of whom were horrified by her actions.





'I just felt like a sperm donor. I told her I didn't want anything to do with her or the baby'

But for 46-year-old Jonathan Evans, an IT manager from Warwickshire, her confession was only too easy to believe — because the same thing had happened to him.



When, 14 years ago, his girlfriend of just a few weeks announced her pregnancy, the news was coupled with an astonishing admission: she claimed to have impregnated herself using a condom that they had discarded after sex. To this day, Jonathan has no idea why she told him — although he still has the letter she wrote expressing her profound regret for her actions.



‘The whole thing was devastating,’ he recalls. ‘Our relationship had been fun, but casual. Carol and I dated for a few weeks, but then she was moving to Australia for a few months, which seemed to mark a natural end to things. We certainly never talked about a long-term future.’



So when she called with news of her pregnancy, that was shocking enough. But the confession she made left Jonathan doubly stunned. ‘My gut reaction was to have nothing more to do with her,’ he says.



Nonetheless, when Carol arrived back in Britain he agreed to meet up.



‘I suppose I wanted to find out why she’d done what she’d done — although she never did really explain. I kept saying: “You just can’t do this to somebody” — but I don’t think she really got it.’



On the day his daughter was born, Jonathan received a message from Carol and went to the hospital, wondering if he might feel a rush of affection for his child.

Liz Jones shockingly revealed she tried to trick her then-husband Nirpal Singh Dhaliwall into pregnancy by 'stealing his sperm'



Instead he felt nothing. ‘It may sound cold, but then so was the way she was conceived,’ he says. ‘I just felt like a sperm donor. I told Carol I didn’t want anything to do with her or the baby.’



Six months later, though, Jonathan received a letter from the Child Support Agency asking him to make a contribution to his daughter’s upbringing.



‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he says. ‘I hadn’t chosen to be a father, so it seemed hugely unfair that I was being expected to pay. But in the eyes of the courts it was simple: I was the biological father, and I had to take responsibility.’



Jonathan has been making monthly payments ever since, and calculates he will have paid around £80,000 by the time his daughter is 18 — a sum that is all the more bitter-sweet now he has married and has a young family of his own.



‘I do resent paying the money for something I have no say in,’ he says. ‘But what I resent more is the way Carol had no thoughts for the impact of her actions on other people.



‘I have tried to put things to the back of my mind, but at some point I will have to tell my children they have a half-sister. I also think Carol wasn’t thinking of the child, and I wonder how she will tell her why she is growing up without her biological father.’

A spokesperson for the Child Support Agency said: 'The Child Support Agency has more than one million cases on its books and we have not encountered one in the circumstances described.



'In exercising our discretion to enforce child maintenance payments we are entitled to take into account all of the circumstances of each case.



'There are exceptional situations, for example when men donate sperm to licensed fertility clinics, when we do not collect maintenance from the biological parent.'

For Jack Goodchild the situation is different, as his former partner Tess has said she wants no involvement from him — although this could, of course, change.





'I do love my daughter. But it has also changed the way I feel about my wife. However you frame it, I feel she deceived me'

‘Whatever she says while she’s pregnant may be different the moment she has the baby,’ he says. ‘It all feels out of my hands.’ Some may find it hard to muster sympathy for Jack, a self-confessed serial dater who, until latterly, had little interest in settling down. By his own admission, when he met Tess on transatlantic dating site www.Iloveyouraccent.com, he was ‘out to have a bit of fun’.



Nonetheless, he was quite taken with the 31-year-old and, after striking up email contact at the start of the year, the pair had been dating for six months when she dropped her bombshell.



‘She seemed good fun and we just hit it off,’ Jack says now.



When it came to contraception, Tess told Jack she ‘had it covered’. ‘She was very clear that I wasn’t to worry about that, and I didn’t really have reason to doubt her,’ he says.



In fact, while Tess had the situation ‘covered’, it wasn’t, it seems, quite in the way she’d led Jack to believe — as her email made clear.



Four months later, Jack admits he is still struggling to digest the news that she is not only expecting his baby but that she set out to become mother to his child.



‘It’s a very odd feeling to know that out there somewhere is a girl who is five months pregnant with my child but wants no contact. It’s left me feeling pretty helpless, which I didn’t expect.’



Even within marriages and long-term partnerships, it seems women are not averse to a level of deceit to fulfil their maternal desires.



Take 43-year-old Nick Robertson, a Durham solicitor, who last year learned that he was to become a father for the third time when his wife Lucy announced she was pregnant.



Damaged relationship: One man's marriage hasn't been the same since his wife fooled him into having another child (posed by models)

Happy news, you may think — especially after the birth in January of baby Lola. In fact, Nick had previously made it quite clear that with two children already — Esme, six, and four-year-old, Josh — his family was complete.



‘My wife campaigned for months for a third child, but we’d had a difficult time with both kids for the first year and I wasn’t prepared to go through that again,’ he says. ‘We were exhausted as it was.



‘Plus, there was the financial side: we were already stretched. Finally she seemed to agree and went back on the Pill.’



Or so she said. Only several months into the ‘surprise’ subsequent pregnancy — which she initially blamed on antibiotics interfering with the efficiency of the Pill — did Nick’s wife confess.



‘I’d had my suspicions, and one night it all came out during a row,’ he says.



‘She admitted she hadn’t gone back on the Pill and had decided to see what happened.



‘She told me she was desperate for a third baby, and at 39 she felt time was running out. Her view was that we were married, and ultimately I would love any child that came along.



‘And I do love Lola. But it has also changed the way I feel about my wife. However you frame it, I feel she deceived me. And that is not good for a marriage.’



Yet not every surprised father feels bitter after discovering they have been misled.



Jon Wilde, a 49-year-old journalist, is happy to admit that while he had no choice in first becoming a father at the age of 23, he would not change the circumstances of his son Dylan’s conception.





WHO KNEW? Around one million children have little or no contact with their fathers, according to official statistics

He met Dylan’s mother, Della, an Australian writer, in 1985 when she contacted him in his capacity as editor of a music magazine to ask for help with an article she was writing.



‘We spent a couple of nights together,’ he remembers. ‘It was great fun. She said she was covered when it came to contraception, and I didn’t think much of it.’



Six weeks later, he received the call that many men dread.



‘Della telephoned to say she was pregnant and that she was going to have the baby,’ he says. ‘She also gave me a choice as to whether I wanted to be involved or not.



‘I was reeling, of course. Della had said she’d been using contraception — and it seemed ungallant to ask how it had happened.



‘I spent several months in a daze wondering what to do, but after a couple of months I rang and told her I didn’t want to be involved. I was young, and this was unfolding on the other side of the world.



‘She was OK with it and said she wasn’t going to ask me for money. I honestly felt no guilt.’



A few months later, Jon got a call from Della saying she was flying to London and asking to meet.



‘We met in a pub, and it was pretty amicable,’ he says. ‘I did bring up contraception and suggested she hadn’t been entirely straight with me.



She didn’t deny it, but I didn’t press her on the subject. As far as I was concerned, two of us had gone into the bedroom and both of us had to take responsibility.’



Only many years later did Jon learn the truth: that Della had effectively set out to have his baby.



‘Della sent me a photograph when Dylan was born, but other than that there was no contact,’ he says. ‘I got on with my life, married, and had another son, William, who is now 22.’



As his marriage foundered in the late Nineties, Jon felt a burgeoning curiosity about his first-born son, finally plucking up courage to contact Della again.



Finally, in 2003, he met his son, then 18, for the first time when Della brought him to London.



‘I was incredibly nervous about meeting him but it was very easy,’ reflects Jon. ‘Dylan was incredibly accepting of the situation. There was no anger, and no sense of recrimination.’



During that visit, Jon also learned the truth for the first time.



‘I had a heart-to-heart with Della and she said it had been simple: from the moment she had set eyes on me, she’d wanted to have my baby. It sounds odd, but there seemed no malice or forethought in it, and that is why I felt no anger.



‘I had the urge to go to bed with her; she had a bigger urge, which it is hard for most men to understand. And she gave me a choice, which I took.



Now I have two wonderful sons, and I feel very grateful for it.’



Admirable sentiments, perhaps; but there are fathers trapped by similar methods who are far less accepting of their situation.



‘What has happened has changed my perspective on women,’ says Jack Goodchild. ‘In future, I will do what I can to protect myself.’

