The Law Is A Ass #455: In An “Almost Family” Way
Okay, here’s the part of our entertainment that no one wants to see; Bob Ingersoll dances.
We’re not talking Bob does a Viennese waltz or trips a light Japanese Chakkirako. I’m not performing any other shaking and shimmying the sight of which would make you want to Polka sharp stick into your eyes. No, I’m dancing my way around certain indelicacies.
Our topic, you see, is the Fox Network TV series Almost Family.
You say you’ve never heard of Almost Family? Wouldn’t surprise me. The show debuted in October of 2019 and performed so poorly that after the original thirteen episodes Fox ordered ran, Fox didn’t want to pick up the back nine. Kind of like how I feel halfway through a round of golf. Almost Family disappeared forever in February of 2020, which proves that something good did happen in 2020.
It was the story of the Bechley family. Dr. Leon Bechley, the patriarch of the family, was a fertility doctor with a clinic in Manhattan. Julia Bechley, Leon’s daughter, was the communications director of the clinic. Edie Palmer and Roxy Doyle were some of Leon’s other children and some of Julia’s half-siblings; family no one knew about, because, in a plot inspired by the real-life case of Dr. Cecil Jacobson, Dr. Bechley used his own sperm to impregnate several of his female patients.
I don’t know why Dr. Bechley used his own sperm, especially without his patients’ knowledge or consent, but I have a suspicion. From comments Dr. Bechley made, I suspect he wanted a son and, after not having one through his marriage, decided to try for a son by, uhh, playing fast and loose with his personal juice. (Like I said, I’m dancing here!)
I don’t know if my suspicion is correct. I watched one episode of Almost Family and dumped it even faster than Fox. I didn’t see if the show offered an explanation for Leon’s pecker-dillos.
I can tell you this, the pilot episode ended with Dr. Bechley being arrested while the assistant district attorney in charge of the case said her office determined that his acts constituted sexual assault. So Dr. Bechley would be charged and tried accordingly.
Except he wouldn’t. There is no such crime as “sexual assault” in New York. There are many sexually oriented offenses in New York all of which would constitute sexual assaults, but none of them are actually called “Sexual Assault”.
Dr. Bechley could be charged with a felony sex offense. Which one requires examination of the elements of New York’s sex offenses.
He couldn’t be charged with rape. Rape offenses in New York require the defendant to have sexual intercourse with the victim. NY Penal Law § 130.00, the law that defines some of the terms used in setting out New York’s sexual offenses, did not define sexual intercourse, per se. All it said was that sexual intercourse, “has its ordinary meaning.” Now conversation is an ordinary meaning of intercourse, but you can’t get charged with rape for talking dirty. Rather it’s what happens when… Well, when, “a mommy and a daddy love each other very much.” As Dr. Bechley didn’t have sexual intercourse with any of his patients in it’s “usual meaning,” he didn’t commit rape.
New York has a series of crimes called Criminal Sexual Act offenses. They require that the defendant have had “oral sexual conduct” or “anal sexual conduct” with the victim. NY Penal Law § 130.00 did establish what specific acts would constitute either type of “sexual conduct.” Rather than to quote them in graphic detail here, let me just say they also have their “ordinary meaning.”
New York also has crimes called Sexual Abuse. They require that the defendant have “sexual contact” with the victim. The statute defines sexual contact as, “any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person for the purpose of gratifying sexual desire of either party.”
When he artificially inseminated his patients, Dr. Bechley probably used one of the two most-commonly used methods, intracervical insemination or intrauterine insemination. Intracervical insemination involves introducing semen into the vagina using a needleless syringe. Intrauterine insemination involves introducing semen into the uterus with a catheter.
If Dr. Bechley used either technique, he would definitely have touched the sexual or intimate parts of his patients. So could he could be charged with one of New York’s Sexual Abuse crimes because he had “sexual contact” with the victim? Possibly, but proving him guilty would be tricky.
Remember, the prosecution would not only have to prove sexual contact but also that said contact was done to provide sexual gratification to Dr. Bechley or his patients. Dr. Bechley artificially inseminated his patients to make them pregnant. I doubt his patients got any sexual gratification out of it. Dr. Bechley might have gotten gratification out of it, but could the prosecution establish that he acted for that reason instead of to make his patients pregnant? As I said, a Sexual Abuse prosecution would be very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Where New York probably could prosecute Dr. Bechley is under one of the Aggravated Sexual Abuse crimes , specifically Aggravated Sexual Abuse in the Fourth Degree. According to the pertinent parts of NY Penal L § 130.65-A, that crime happens when a defendant “inserts a foreign object in the vagina… of another person and the other person is incapable of consent by some reason other than being less than seventeen years old.”
There can be little doubt that artificially inseminating someone would consist of inserting a foreign object into a vagina. But didn’t Dr. Bechley inseminate with the patient’s consent?
No.
Remember, the patients didn’t know Dr. Bechley was going to use his own semen. It is doubtful the patients would have consented to the artificial insemination, if they had known this. So, while the patients did consent to the procedure, that consent was obtained by fraud. The patients were, therefore, incapable of giving a proper and meaningful consent, because of the fraud perpetrated in obtaining that consent.
The statute does state that “Conduct performed for a valid medical purpose does not violate the provisions of this section.” If, for example, a doctor had to perform an act which would violate the statute as part of an emergency procedure on an unconscious patient, the doctor would not be guilty of the crime. That defense does not apply to Dr. Bechley.
When Dr. Bechley inseminated the women using his own semen without their permission, he violated medical norms and practices; not to mention his patients. His acts would not be considered a valid medical purpose.
By the way, it was not my intention to make light of a serious subject. As I said, I was trying to dance around some of the more explicit aspects of this column and fell back on my old standby of humor. It’s a psychological defense mechanism, like projection. Call it a deflect in my personality.