A lesbian mother claims her two teenage daughters have been left “very, very upset” by the gay sperm donor who refuses to be their father figure.
Mark Langridge, 49, said he never considered himself as the girls’ father, but their mother Mandy Baker, 50, strongly disputes this.
At a hearing last week in Basildon, Judge A P Brewer backed a previous ruling that Langridge must pay £26 a week towards bringing up the girls. He is considering an appeal.
Langridge said he now considers his sperm donation as “my big mistake”. “I wish I hadn’t done it, I really do”, he said.
Baker commented: “I don’t see why being gay should have stopped me having children.
“I’m still a woman, with maternal feelings.”
Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, has previously warned: “It’s always a recipe for disaster to try and create children to order by artificial means to satisfy the desires of natural parents who are unrelated and lack a shared commitment to parenting.”
Mark Langridge and Mandy Baker met on a gay night at a nightclub in Essex in the late 1990s, where Baker says Langridge told her he’d always wanted to be a dad.
He later provided sperm for Baker, and she became pregnant.
Ri’anna was born later in the same year and Langridge visited Baker soon after she returned from hospital.
Later he again agreed to donate for her and Shannon was born in 2000.
His name is not on either of the children’s birth certificates, but the pair dispute the reason why.
While Langridge said he feels sorry for the girls, he commented: “I was never going to be their ‘Daddy’ but Mandy decided at some point that’s what she wanted me to be.
“Of course my partner and I visited the girls on occasions, just as we see other friends.”
Baker says: “To Ri’anna and Shannon, Mark Langridge was Daddy.
“They have many memories of him but then he suddenly decided he didn’t want to be their Dad any more.”
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