Britain's Most Messed-up Family: Gay Father Who Donates Sperm Twice To Lesbian Mother

When 12-year-old Shannon Baker is older, she wants to look her biological gay father in the eye and ask him: ‘Am I just a sperm donation or am I your daughter?’
It is a disturbing question.
Having twice donated his sperm to their lesbian mother, Mandy Baker, without, he says, intending to take on a parental role, he has suddenly found himself with a bill from the Child Support Agency.

Ms Baker is pictured with daughters Shannon 12, left, and Rianna 14, right

 This week, in the hope of winning public support, the 47-year-old spoke out about his situation — even appearing on ITV1’s  to complain of his plight.

He says the £26 a week he is now expected to pay for the girls is an outrage. His name is not on either of their birth certificates and he insists he played no part in their upbringing following his ‘act of kindness’. He is, he says, a sperm donor, not a father.
‘It was purely a donation,’ he says. ‘I had no desire, then or now, to be a father. Mandy wanted children and I supplied the ingredient. The biggest regret of my life is getting involved with this.’
Meanwhile, the girls’ 49-year-old mother Mandy claims that she and Mark had always intended to co-parent the girls, and raise them as one big, happy — if unconventional — family, and that she only reported Mark to the CSA out of desperation.
She argues that Rianna and Shannon once called him ‘Daddy’ and has photographs of Mark cradling the girls, along with video footage of them together at birthday and Christmas parties at their three-bedroom home near Braintree, Essex.
Both parties spoke this week to give their sides of this sorry affair. While both talk of betrayal, their row throws the spotlight on a loophole in UK family law. Only anonymous donors, at licensed clinics, are exempt from being treated as the legal father of a child born as a result of their sperm donation.

Mr Langridge is pictured with Rianna and Shannon

 Men like Mark, who donate sperm as part of a personal arrangement, have no such legal protection unless they donate to couples who are married or in a civil partnership.

But the legal niceties of Mark and Mandy’s arrangement are meaningless to the two confused teenage girls caught up in this lamentable saga.
‘I get upset about my dad,’ says Shannon. Rianna adds: ‘I’ve lost all respect for him.’
Their story began, somewhat prosaically, in an Essex nightclub called ‘Bliss’ in 1997 where their mother, then a 34-year-old former landscape gardener, was helping out on the door.
Mark Langridge, a part-time book-keeper from Basildon, was a regular visitor with his partner, florist Shaun.
Over the months, Mark and Mandy became friends. Eventually, their conversations turned to parenthood.
‘I was desperate to have my own family,’ says Mandy, who adds she was not in a relationship and, despite having realised she was gay as a teenager, was not open about her sexuality.
‘I regarded it as a private matter,’ she says. ‘I’m not a conventional lesbian. I don’t believe in two women calling themselves Mum. I think there’s one mum and one dad.
‘I was desperate, but in the late 90s, it was impossible for single women to get treatment from fertility clinics.
‘Mark was a nice bloke, and every time he and Shaun came down, we got back to the same topic of conversation. In the end, it was Mark’s idea. He offered to help me.’
On this part of the story, both parties agree. ‘Mandy wanted a baby,’ recalls Mark. ‘I talked it over with Shaun and I couldn’t see a reason not to help her. It was completely altruistic. I was helping her dream come true.’
At this point, however, their recollection of the facts starts to divide. ‘The understanding was that there would be no financial or parental obligation on my part,’ insists Mark.

Whatever the truth may be, it seems certain that neither she nor Mark put much thought into their momentous decision or considered that such a flimsy arrangement might be a poor basis for years of co-parenting.