"I'm Not Your Biological Father" - My Life As A Jerry Springer Episode

This is my retort. I hope you’ll be gracious enough, father, to allow it without comment. It is neither necessary nor welcome.

Photo: Getty Images

by Justin Rosario

Trigger Warning: This article contains instances of child abuse both physical and emotional.

At the beginning of October, I was potentially diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called “Muir-Torre Syndrome”. MTS is a subcategory of Lynch syndrome, a broader set of genetic disorders which greatly increase my chances of developing a variety of cancers. Since then, I have been scrambling to get all of the tests I need to find any lurking tumors. 

Part of this scrambling was going through family medical history to see who else had cancer, what kind they had, and if anyone else had been diagnosed with Muir-Torre or Lynch syndrome. 

Naturally, I talked to my father first (my mother died in 1999) since he’s one of the oldest members of that side of the family. He confirmed what I had suspected, that cancer was not really a thing on the Rosario side. There are a lot of Rosarios and since MT/Lynch is inherited, one would expect a significant number of relatives to have developed cancer over time. They had not. 

The confusion came when I contacted Janis, one of the last living relatives on my mother’s much smaller side and she also confirmed that cancer was not really a thing on that side, either. Muir-Torre is rare and spontaneous cases are even rarer. It happens, but it is ”winning the lotto twice” levels of unlikely. So why would I possibly have it? 

That confusion was hypothetically cleared up the next day when my father called to let me know he was most likely not my biological father. I am 48 years old.

“Uhhhhh...OK?”

It was not a long conversation but I was informed that my mother had (allegedly) slept with someone I had known growing up as “Fat Larry” and I was almost certainly the result of this. Looking back, it is clear I was not immediately processing the full magnitude of what I was being told. I understood what was being said but my reaction was far too calm and coherent. It was not until maybe thirty minutes later that the ramifications of what I had learned started to come into focus and I got angry. But not entirely for the reasons you are probably thinking.

Interlude: When I was maybe 6, I got a teddy bear. It wasn’t fluffy and soft. In fact, it was kind of rough with almost denim-like material. But that didn’t matter. I loved it. I do not recall if I gave this teddy bear a name but I do know I slept with it. A few years later, my father decided I was too old for teddy bears and instead of quietly making it disappear, which would have been bad enough, he stood with a few friends around a barbeque grill and burned it while I watched, screaming and crying.

The first thing that came to me was the level of sheer disrespect required to keep this a secret. And that was before I found out that almost everyone knew about it except me. My mother died several years after I went to live with her and I have no doubt that she was afraid to tell me. But after her death two decades ago, there was really no reason for my father to keep it a secret other than to protect himself from the embarrassment. Except he told my brother Matthew. But not me.

It has been suggested that this was kept quiet because I had placed my mother on a pedestal. The idea is risible. I am well aware of who my mother was. She was having an affair with my father while he was still married to his first wife, Marie. She had another affair with another married man when I was maybe six years old and left to marry him. I love my mother but anyone who believes I placed her on a pedestal does not know me at all. 

A little later, after I was done seething at the lack of respect, I started to think about the abuse. 

Interlude: One day, both Matthew and I did...something. I do not even slightly recall what it was. I don’t even know if it was the same thing or if we had both done something different to incur our father’s wrath. Whatever it was, a spanking (of which there had been many) wasn’t going to cut it so he took us down to the basement and used a horsewhip. He chased us around the basement, whipping our backs, arms, and legs for what seemed like forever. We were bleeding when he was done.

This was the most extreme case but of the two of us, I got the lion’s share of the beatings. I was always the problem child. The one who got in trouble in school and acted out at home. The divorce exacerbated the situation significantly. My father regularly resorted to spankings, first by hand, then by paddle, and a level of emotional abuse that is hard to describe. As an adult, I wondered if he had even been aware he was doing it, but now? Now I wonder how much of it was from being a bad parent and how much was because he resented me for being the (possible) bastard son of an affair.

Would he have kicked me out of the house if there had been no question that I was his? Would the abuse have been as severe? He was abusive to Matthew as well but I will never know how much of his cruelty towards me was out of spite, conscious or otherwise. 

Interlude: When I was in fifth grade, my father decided that he’d had enough of me. One weekend when I was visiting my mother, he left a message on the answering machine that I would not be coming home. I was no longer welcome there and would be living with my mother from now on. At the ripe old age of 9, my father had kicked me out of the house. A few weeks would pass before family and friends pressured him to undo this. 

On my way home from school, he picked me up without a word to my mother and took me back to Brooklyn. She must have been frantic when I disappeared but I was too young and stupid to think about that. I was just happy to be going home. A home where I was not wanted.

The opposite of love

I saw a therapist for a while and Joanne really helped with my self-control. I had hospitalized a kid who had punched me in the face (he’s fine) and clearly, my home life was causing me no small amount of stress. Fortunately for me, this was long before school resource officers or I would have certainly been arrested. Joanne and the kid at school were a turning point for me. I stepped back from physical confrontations, acutely aware of how easily I could break people. 

Once my rowdier behavior eased up, one would think things at home would go more smoothly. That’s not how it worked out. Arguably, the next phase of the abuse was even worse. They say the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. I can tell you with certainty that this is true. 

Interlude: By the time I was in middle school, my father had almost completely checked out on raising me. There was no one going over my homework, or asking if I even did it. No one cared about my grades, or if I was studying for tests. I was left to my own devices in one of the worst middle schools in the city. Later, when I somehow passed the test to get into Brooklyn Technical High School, one of several specialized schools in NYC, I was completely unprepared for the level of academics required. “Smart” does not equate into “good student” if no one bothers to teach you how to be one.

I occasionally wonder why I went to Brooklyn Tech while Matthew went to South Shore, our local high school. I was always smarter but Matthew is by no means stupid. I’m not even sure he took the test. Maybe I was sent to the advanced school because it would give my father bragging rights? I find it unlikely he was concerned about my future because he did not pay the tiniest bit of attention to what I was doing there. He did not really pay much attention to Matthew, either, and was surprised by how that turned out.

Interlude: By high school, my brother Matthew had discovered marijuana and sex were more fun than attending class. His once-excellent grades tanked and the only way my father could think to deal with this since we were too old to spank was to take him to the backyard and start a fistfight. Matthew spent most of this with his face buried against a tree, crying. Later, he threw Matthew out of the house to go live with our mother. I guess it gets easier with practice.

After Matthew left, I moved down to the basement. At the age of 15, I had a studio apartment to myself, with my own bathroom, kitchen, and entrance to the house. No one cared to know what I was doing. I had no curfew, no one checked on me. I could come and go as I pleased. 

I didn’t abuse this wild freedom, though. I had no interest in partying until all hours of the night and I wasn’t much of a Lothario. Nobody was getting drunk, stoned, or pregnant at my place. When I was a teen, and even into my twenties, I used to think I had this level of “trust” because I had earned it. Maybe not with my grades but undeniably with my staid behavior. Compared to the rest of my family, I was actually kind of a wet blanket. 

It occurred to me when I was older that I had been stashed as far away from my father and Kim, wife #3 who despised me (the feeling was mutual), as possible. Out of sight, out of mind. Indifference is a hell of a thing. 

Interlude: After I had started 10th grade, my father and Kim announced that we were leaving New York and moving to Florida. The idea of leaving everything I had ever known to be trapped, alone, with a woman who hated me and a man who didn’t care was too much. I left to live with my mother. My father made no attempt to stop me even though he had legal custody.

Moving in the middle of the school year might have been one of the most selfish things I have ever seen. It wasn’t like I was thriving at Brooklyn Tech, but I could have been the Valedictorian and they still would have moved. This was about them starting their perfect life in Florida and I was, at most, an afterthought. Curiously, my father still thought he had the right to dictate Matthew’s life, although he still had no interest in mine.

Interlude: When Matthew inevitably got Dawn pregnant. She had an abortion. When they continued to have unsafe sex, even after we were both living in Long Island with our mother, Dawn kept getting an abortion until she was no longer able to do so without risking permanent damage. 18 years old, Matthew was going to be a dad. Our father, who had his first child at 17 or so, was enraged by this despite never having bothered to have The Talk with us. He called Dawn a “crack whore” and ordered Matthew to stay away from her.

Abuse is generational

After escaping my father, and it did feel like escape, I was badly scarred. When I was maybe eleven years old, I saw the movie Mr. Mom and thought being a stay-at-home father would be pretty cool. I liked the idea of raising kids in a loving home. By the time I was in college, though, the idea of having children horrified me. 

Abuse is often generational. It’s a cliche that we become our fathers/mothers but cliches exist for a reason. I was worried, for very good reason, that I would be exactly the same kind of father and why would I ever inflict that on another soul? 

Interlude: When Dawn gave birth to Cassie and made it clear she expected Matthew to stick around and be a father, Matthew spent a few years not really doing that and then moved to first Florida and then Arizona to escape his responsibilities. Was this Matthew fulfilling his father’s wishes to stay away, a deep character flaw of his own, or a combination of both?  

Matthew ended up being worse than our father in some ways. There’s a lot to say about my father but leaving for another woman a decade and three kids later as my father did is not the same as never being there in the first place. Marriages end. Staying together in a deeply unhappy marriage “for the kids” can be far more toxic than even a bitter divorce. And as far as I know, Marie (again, his first wife) always got child support. Matthew never manned up and his child support was...inconsistent to be charitable. His parenting skills, the random times he showed up, were just as inconsistent.

Many people become their fathers and fail to break the cycle. Matthew was a case study in why I did not want kids. As Cassie got older, he got worse.

Interlude: When Cassie turned 16, Matthew apparently decided the hard part of raising Cassie was over so he moved into her neighborhood to be a real “Dad” for the first time in his life. But as a teen, Cassie had a fully developed life of her own that did not revolve around her father. Matthew took offense to this and started to deliver increasing amounts of psychological abuse, exactly like his father had inadvertently taught him. When I tried to tell Matthew that he was driving Cassie away in precisely the same way our father had driven me away, Matthew exploded in rage and stopped speaking to me. His current relationship with Cassie is incredibly strained. Matthew has “disowned” his daughter about three times. I’ve only been disowned by our father once. For the crime of telling him something he didn’t want to hear, and the even greater crime of being right, Matthew has not spoken to me in 11 years.

Jordan was already a year old and Debbie was pregnant with Anastasia when this happened and thank god for that. If I had realized earlier that Matthew had become the splitting image of our father, I might have gotten cold feet and never agreed to have kids. As it was, I almost didn’t. If my friend Maria had not asked me to be a donor and if Debbie hadn’t agreed under the condition that she get a baby as well, I would have missed out on the most important and fulfilling role in my life. I would have missed everything because of the scars left behind by an abusive father. 

Your Ancestry DNA results are in! 

Knowing that the abuse was worse because of something I had nothing to do with makes everything infinitely more horrible and the rage that has been boiling through my mind since early October is something I have not felt in a very long time. The only way it could possibly be worse is if it turned out that I was, in fact, his biological son. I needed to know, without a doubt. 

A regular paternity test was no good because I would have to trust my father, who lives in Florida. You might be shocked to learn that after all of this, trust is in short supply. A DNA kit like Ancestry.com, on the other hand, would tell me things I needed to know regardless of what my father did or did not do with his kit. 

If my results came back that I was 100% not Puerto Rican, well, then that’s that. Presumably, I would show up as 100% European Jew since Larry was also Jewish. If they came back that I was 50% Puerto Rican, well, then unless my mother had an affair with another Puerto Rican (not entirely impossible, I suppose), chances are my biological father is a man who did not think I was his for almost the entirety of my life and exacted a cruel price for it. The worst case scenario. His kit would confirm it.  

Think about it this way. If I’m not his son, then nothing really changes other than the fact that now I know the why of it all. A question that has always been at the back of my mind gets answered and the status quo remains. He was abusive, I got the brunt of it, now that is explained.

If I am his son, it was all for nothing. I would have been abused anyway, because that is just who he is. But the additional cruelty? That would not have been there.

Interlude: I don’t have a very clear memory of my childhood. Repressed trauma? Maybe. Regardless, I remember my father telling me on multiple occasions when I was young that I was an accidental pregnancy. He told me that enough times that I remember it continuing across a number of years. I don’t remember anything that clearly over a period of time but I remember that because it did wonders for my self-esteem. I didn’t even understand the concept of self-esteem at the time, that’s how young I was, but I know it made me feel bad. Just a little extra icing: Not only was I an accident, I was the reason he had gotten a vasectomy. To make sure I was the last accident.

You might say that once as a joke. You don’t say that to a child you don’t think is yours over and over again for years unless you’re being cruel. 

I got my results the day before Thanksgiving:

That’s one half. Here’s the rest:

If you’re having a little trouble interpreting that, don’t feel bad, it took me a minute, too. I had forgotten that “Puerto Rican”, as we understand it, is a mish-mosh of Spanish (colonizers), Native Caribbean (colonized), and African (enslaved). My father literally had an afro in the 70s. Like, several inches thick and he used a pick. I was probably the only White kid in my school who got this joke in Spaceballs: 

According to various sources, Puerto Ricans are, on average, about  65% European, 20% African, and 12% Native. Since I would be half, my percentages would also be half. So, 32-33% European, 10% African, 6% Native.

Let’s take a quick peek at my results again: Spain 18% + Portugal 12% + Scotland 4% = 34%. Senegal 4% + Nigeria 3% + Ivory Coast & Ghana 1% = 8%. Indigenous/Native 6%. 

Well, I guess I’m a Puerto Rican, after all, and almost certainly the son of John J. Rosario. Don’t you feel like a fucking idiot after all these years? I know paternity tests weren’t a thing until the 90s but did you even do a non-DNA blood test during the divorce? Did it even occur to you to try and find out? It clearly didn’t. Years of abuse for something that wasn’t even true. Well done. Enjoy having that on your conscience. 

Greater than the sum of his failures

It’s true that my father made me the man that I am. But in all the wrong ways and for all the wrong reasons, whatever they were. I did not have a guide to manhood. I had an albatross dragging me towards a lifetime of being emotionally distant, unable to make meaningful long term connections. With great difficulty, I overcame the mental and emotional landmines left behind. This is why I’ve been with Debbie since 1997 but Matthew has wrecked almost every relationship he’s ever been in (the jury is out on his most recent), and my father has been divorced more times than Donald Trump (4, if you’re curious). 

I had the strength of character and perseverance to rise above such poisoned beginnings. Who could I have been had I been raised in the kind of nurturing home I am providing for my children? I’ll never know and, I suppose, I don’t really care outside of the most abstract thought experiment. 

Because I am a massive nerd, I often think about stuff like time travel. I think about it enough that I have a code phrase a time traveller would have to use to convince me they are from my future. I also have a rule that I would never go back before the last major event I would never risk changing. First it was meeting Debbie, then it was Jordan’s birth, then Anastasia’s. After that was Kyle’s birth. A few years later, it was meeting Claudia and Lila and folding them into our family. These are the people that give my life meaning. This is my family. I am where I am supposed to be and I am surrounded by the love denied to me growing up. I am a father unbound by the failures of my own upbringing.     

Matthew was never able to overcome those failures and his limitations as a father to Cassie are manifest. He knocked up another woman several years ago and is now, ironically, also a stay-at-home parent. Only time will tell whether he will be able to break the cycle on his second try. I have my doubts.

Breaking the cycle really wasn’t that hard, though. For the first five years of Jordan’s life/three of Anastasia’s, my ruling principle was “What would my father do?” and then do the opposite. It was oddly effective. This is a man who could not tolerate his sons not being cast in precisely the same mold as him. This is why three of the five of us stopped speaking to him. Louie stopped speaking to him until he died from heart failure, Marky has not spoken to him for years, and I only started speaking to our father again when I decided, after months of serious deliberation, to allow my kids to know their grandfather. My issues with him were not their issues and I chose to be the bigger man.

For maybe a second or two, I contemplated not writing this article. I mean, I was always going to write it, but I was going to wait until after he died. I felt there was no sense in dredging it up now. But that was before. Now, I have years of pointless abuse to address. This is my retort. I hope you’ll be gracious enough, father, to allow it without comment. It is neither necessary nor welcome. We will not be discussing this. Any of it. Ever. That is the price for continuing to exist in my life. If that is not good enough, that is your choice to make but I cannot imagine many people would give you a better offer.

You may find that some, or much, of this does not match your recollection. You may feel you have been treated unfairly. You may feel hurt. You may feel betrayed.

Trying living it for five decades. That is what you did to me. That is your legacy. 

By the way, all of my tests came back negative. I do not have cancer. Enjoy your holidays and I’ll give you a call on Christmas Day. Answer the phone. Or don’t. It’s up to you.

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