‘The doctors knew I was willing to go through anything to save my son’
THE FATHER of a boy that is not biologically his says that he had never stopped loving his child and that no matter what his ex-wife had done, he would always consider the boy his own.
Andreas Georgiou, 45, was speaking after his ex-wife, Christoulla, walked free on the remaining two charges against her. She had been accused of duping her former parents-in-law into giving her money for a medical procedure her son did not need.
“I feel unfairly dealt with. I don’t know how the state can do this,” Georgiou said simply.
Behind Georgiou’s sad eyes lies the story of a man who has not only been cuckolded by his wife but who had been tricked for years into believing their third child was his own.
“It’s the thing of science-fiction scripts. She lied to the whole family. To our son, to our other children, to me, to our parents, to everyone,” he said.
Georgiou said he had no anger left and all that remained was exhaustion.
“I’m all spent. What was I supposed to do? Shout at the judge and tell him that the money belonged to both my parents,” he said.
Georgiou was referring to Thursday’s court decision to acquit his ex-wife after the prosecution failed to show that the money paid to her by her former mother-in-law had been obtained under false pretences. The prosecution only showed the woman’s former father-in-law had complained. The court ruled that the bank account and therefore money had belonged to her mother-in-law who had not testified in court to support the prosecution’s argument. The court said it could not presuppose the mother-in-law’s position was the same as that of her husband.
Georgiou said he still remembered the date when he found out his third child was not his own.
“August 8, 2003,” he said. That was the day he took their two older children and walked out on his ex-wife. The couple was divorced in 2006.
“The older two still see their brother all the time and I talk to him too. He calls me up and calls me his dad. He’s in primary school though and still too young to come to me on his own and because of the legal proceedings and problems I have with his mother I can’t just go and knock on the door and see him whenever I want,” he said.
Georgiou said had his family lived in another country he might very well have gained custody of his son even if he wasn’t biologically his own.
“He is the one that could have suffered even more than he has over all this. Had he found out in the turbulent years of adolescence about his mother’s deception the consequences to his emotional state could have been much worse,” he said.
Georgiou said he did not hate his wife, he just felt injustice that she and a group of doctors had gotten away with what they’d done to him and his family. He said that with their lies they had allowed him to believe his son had been born with bone marrow aplasia, while hiding the fact that he really suffered from thalassaemia because his ex-wife had become pregnant by her lover who like her had been a carrier.
“The doctors knew I was willing to go through anything to save my son and they let me go through all these tests so that he could have a treatment done that would have allowed their names to go down in history. In fact if the treatment had worked I could have ended up with one or two kids that weren’t my own,” he said.
This was because the doctors suggested that the couple have another baby from which they could transplant bone marrow to the sick child, he said.
“They took sperm from me and then discarded it and had to use the other man’s sperm as he was the biological father. They were trying out a procedure in the United States that had never been achieved before and our son would have been the first in the world. They would have made a name for themselves. They were doing it for the glory and they didn’t care that they were playing with my feelings,” he said.
Georgiou also claimed the doctors put him through a series of painful tests when knowing full well he wasn’t the child’s biological father. What he found hard to believe was how the court could have acquitted the medics for what they had done to him and his family.
Georgiou said he had already filed an appeal against the district court decision to acquit the doctors involved in the whole charade as well as his ex-wife.
He said he didn’t want his ex-wife or the doctors to go to jail. All he had ever wanted was for them to apologise for what they’d done to him “and then I never want to see them again”.
Everything came out in the open in 2003 when Georgiou insisted that they get a certificate of health from the Thalassaemia Centre as part of a media campaign to search for financial donors to produce a compatible donor at a medical centre in Chicago. This would have been the second effort, after the first effort carried out with the money obtained from her in-laws had failed.
