Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 11, 1992 TAG: 9202110134
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Associated Press
DATELINE: ALEXANDRIA LENGTH: Medium
WITNESS TELLS OF INFERTILITY ORDEAL UNDER DOCTOR'S CARE
A patient of former infertility doctor Cecil Jacobson tearfully related to a federal jury on Monday her distress at having been told repeatedly by him that she had become pregnant but later miscarried."I started a diary to the child, indicating my feeling to the child," Deborah Gregory, a hospital media director, testified on the opening day of Jacobson's trial on 52 counts of fraud and perjury.
The charges include allegations that Jacobson used his own sperm to artificially inseminate dozens of patients and tricked others into believing they were pregnant when they were not.
During her third supposed pregnancy under Jacobson's care, Gregory said, she underwent an ultrasound exam and "he drew on it and said there's the baby, the baby's arm, and said he was sucking his thumb."
Prosecutor Randy Bellows, in his opening statement to the eight-woman, four-man jury, said Jacobson put his patients through "an emotional hell."
"He knowingly led these women to bond with . . . babies that he knew did not exist," Bellows said. "He led numerous women through the most brutal of charades, telling these women that their babies had died when he knew they had not been pregnant in the first place."
Defense attorney James Tate contended Jacobson's treatment was effective and that almost one third of his infertility patients had babies. He disputed Bellows's contention that it would have been virtually impossible for the women's bodies to have reabsorbed their dead fetuses, as Jacobson is accused of telling them.
Tate acknowledged, however that "in some cases, Dr. Jacobson would do his own insemination with his own sperm . . . we do not deny that on occasion he did that."
Tate said Jacobson believed that fresh semen was 60 percent more effective than frozen sperm in artificial insemination.
Gregory, at times choking back tears, said she became alarmed during her first supposed pregnancy when she began experiencing bleeding.
"He assured me that everything was OK," she said. Later she said the doctor told her the baby had died.
"He said that the cold virus had most likely killed the baby," Gregory said. "We were devastated. We believed that we were having a baby."
If convicted of the 52 counts he faces, Jacobson could be sentenced to as much as 285 years in jail and a $500,000 fine.
Prosecutors say Jacobson promised his artificial insemination patients he was using an anonymous donor bank including medical students and that he would seek to match their husbands' physical characteristics and religion. He also promised that the donors would never know the identities of the recipients, the indictment said.