REALITY TV
TV
MOVIES
MUSIC
CELEBRITY
About Us Contact Us Privacy Policy Terms of Use Accuracy & Fairness Corrections & Clarifications Ethics Code Your Ad Choices
© MEAWW All rights reserved
MEAWW.COM / ENTERTAINMENT / MOVIES NEWS

'Baby God': How did Dr Fortier misuse money to hush his sexual abuse victims, including own son, Mary Craddock?

His lawyers had argued in court that there was no specific law that prevented Fortier from doing something like this, meaning nothing he did was really illegal
UPDATED DEC 3, 2020
(HBO)
(HBO)

In the 1970s, Mary Craddock was a young woman when she visited Nevada fertility specialist Dr Quincy Fortier to get artificially inseminated. She had been facing immense difficulty conceiving with her husband. Eventually, she went on to have two children - a daughter Heather and a son Cameron - with the help of Dr Fortier and everything else was history.

That was until the sibling duo made the discovery decades afterwards that Fortier was the real biological father after Heather went to work for him in 1994. Soon enough in 1996, Mary Craddock filed a lawsuit against the then 88-year-old Fortier. In this, she alleged that the doctor never told her he was going to use a mixture of biological materials from both her husband and a donor (Fortier himself) during the procedure. HBO's documentary 'Baby God' gives insight into this particular case as it tells the story of Dr Fortier's crude and unethical methods. Mary, who was at the time of the lawsuit was 50, was devastated to find out that her children weren't her husband's and had to seek mental health counselling. Mary was suing him for $14 million.

Eventually, the lawsuit was settled, but both sides declined to divulge details of the settlement. Fortier had then finally closed his practice, put his multi-million dollar estate into a trust and trusted his lawyers to keep a lid on the lawsuit. His lawyers had argued in court that there was no specific law that prevented Fortier from doing something like this, meaning nothing he did was really illegal. There was also a great deal of rush to settle the lawsuit as his lawyers worried there would be more on the way.

His adopted daughters, however, do not think their father was wrong. As Nannette Fortier says in the documentary, "I think that him using his own sperm, to him, was no different than using his own blood." Craddock's is only one lawsuit among many that hoped to bring Fortier to justice. The 1991 Nevada Physician of the Year was a very celebrated personality and this interference by the law caused only but a hiccup in his career.

(HBO)

The documentary also argues how the doctor used his position and influence in the community to hush cases against him. Wendi Babst discusses how he went to impregnate women well into his seventies. He never lost his license, died in good standing, paid people off and no one talks about it now.

Another lawsuit came from his own son Quincy Fortier Jr in 2000. He claimed that for over a decade, his father sexually abused him - from when he was three years old. He added that the doctor had also abused his siblings and other children. Now what or how was it that the jury decided to reject his lawsuit in 2002, but Quincy Jr never changed his account. "[My father] molested everyone. The happiest he ever made me was lying in his coffin dead. That's when I knew I was safe," he says in the documentary. He also calls his father "crazy" and "a pervert".

These claims could be deemed true in the case of Connie Fortier. The documentary introduces 55-year-old Jonathan Stensland who set out to find his birth mother at the age of 17. In a series of letters, Connie wrote to him that she had never had sex before she became pregnant when she was 18. "There was some crazy tale about Quincy giving her an examination and getting some swabs mixed up," Stensland says in the documentary. "He tried to say there was a possibility that it was a virgin birth."

Jonathan Stensland (Screengrab: HBO)

Quincy Jr lost the lawsuit against Fortier, which he filed when his father was 87. His lawyers argued in court that Quincy Jr was after his father's money.

A celebrated doctor as Fortier, who established hospitals and goodwill in the community had built a sturdy wall around him. At the time of his death, he had been a commander of a medical reserve unit at Nellis Air Force Base, the leader at Faith Lutheran Academy, and member of Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital's board of trustees, and the 1991 Nevada Physician of the Year. As Babst mentioned, Fortier used his influence and money to hush victims of his scientific misadventures.

'Baby God' will premiere on Wednesday, December 2, 2020, at 9 pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.

POPULAR ON MEAWW
MORE ON MEAWW