side note: This is one of the more salacious and odd medical malpractice cases that I’ve read.

Hundreds of women have trusted him with their bodies, and their dreams of motherhood. Many depend on him as their doctor today.

But for nearly seven years, none of Dr. Ben D. Ramaley’s patients have known that the prominent obstetrician/gynecologist had been accused of an almost unimaginable act — substituting his own sperm for that of a patient’s husband during an artificial insemination procedure.

The allegation was made against the veteran Greenwich, Conn., doctor in a 2005 medical malpractice lawsuit – which was quickly settled, then sealed, the very court documents shredded. The suit was filed by a couple when a DNA test revealed that the husband was not the biological father of their twin girls, born after an insemination procedure performed by Ramaley.

The state Department of Public Health investigated after the lawsuit, but did not order Ramaley to undergo a DNA test – even though state law appears to give the department authority to do so. Instead, in a consent agreement negotiated with Ramaley’s attorney, they fined the doctor $10,000 for “using the wrong man’s sperm” in the procedure and allowed him to keep an unrestricted license.

The lawsuit was settled before Ramaley had to answer questions. Through a letter from his attorney, Ramaley denied the accusation to the DPH during its investigation. Contacted this week outside his Southport clinic, he said he had no comment.

A DPH spokesman insisted the department did not have jurisdiction to ask Ramaley to submit to the test, which would determine the truth or falsity of the claim that he fathered the twins himself.

Greenwich Time obtained much of the state’s investigative file on the matter through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The case began in 2002 when a woman visited Ramaley, 61, at Brookside Greenwich Ob-Gyn Associates to have an intrauterine insemination performed. She brought a sample of her husband’s sperm and the hope that the treatment might help the couple get pregnant.

Nine months later, she gave birth to twin girls.

It should have been a joyous occasion, but the mixed-race couple quickly noticed something wasn’t right. The twins had a strikingly fair complexion that seemed impossible considering their father was black.

Their appearance was so uncharacteristic of the couple, in fact, that people frequently asked if the twins were adopted, according the lawsuit.

After several months of speculation and anxiety, the couple sought a paternity test in March 2004, and discovered that the husband was not the twins’ biological father.

The couple filed a lawsuit several months later. One count alleged that Ramaley, identified in the suit only as “Dr. Roe,” had not only used the wrong sperm, but intentionally used his own in an “extreme and outrageous” act.

“Upon information and belief, Dr. Roe intentionally inserted his own sperm into (the patient), causing (the patient) to become pregnant and give birth to children biologically fathered by Dr. Roe,” stated the lawsuit.

“Dr. Roe intentionally concealed that he had inseminated (the patient) with sperm from someone other than (her husband), despite the fact that he knew he had done so.”

The DPH, responsible for medical discipline in the state, launched an investigation of the suit’s claims in January 2007. In October 2007, an outside consultant from the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology was brought in to review Ramaley’s case.

The consultant, Dr. Robert Gfeller, a Hartford-area gynecologist, reviewed medical records, DNA results from the twins and the 2005 lawsuit complaint. He determined that Ramaley made serious errors.

“The matter speaks for itself as a violation of this Standard of Care when DNA analysis of the products of IUI conception (the twins) do NOT have the genetic DNA material of the intended father and that, therefore, the sperm of another male was used in the insemination,” Gfeller’s report stated.
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