American technology and business professor formerly at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Donovan is the author of eight books including “The Second Industrial Revolution” and is an esteemed business lecturer and consultant. Founder of a dozen companies, he considers himself a “visionary” and has achieved great wealth through his business acumen and ideas.
Along the way to his great success, he has made many enemies for making promises he didn’t keep, for alienating neighbors by his aggressive building practices, and for starting companies that boomed initially but failed. He is also patriarch of a dysfunctional family.
John Donovan has five children, all grown, all accomplished and intelligent. According to Donovan in 2004, his children are trying to force him out of his house and fortune of at least $100 million by threatening to spread lies about their father.
The crowning blow came in November 2002, when one of his daughters charged that he had sexually abused her for years when she was a child. Donovan denied the charge, declaring that his children were trying to ruin him if he did not agree with their financial demands. His four oldest children have sided with their sister demanding a separation of assets. The youngest, John Jr., did not join the charges but has called his father a liar and left the executive training firm where he worked for years with his father. Their father signed the agreement but then backed off, claiming he was coerced by their threats to ruin his reputation by going public with their claims of his vile behavior.
In October 2003, Donovan Sr. reported that a bullet had been fired through a window of his 68-acre home in a prestigious neighborhood and took out a restraining order on his son James. His son, James, an investment banker and father of two, with another child on the way, was order to appear at a hearing but the restraining order was rescinded. The following month, in November 2003, Donovan Sr. charged John Jr. with unlawfully entering the father’s business headquarters. The charges were dropped.
The father of the clan has declared through his spokesperson that the daughter charging him with sexual abuse only made her claims after she and her husband took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a family-owned business.
Donovan and his first wife, the mother of the five children, ended their 17-year marriage in an acrimonious divorce in 1981. The children remained with their mother ,and a court-appointed psychologist at the time found no evidence of sexual abuse.
Sometimes it seems that even a soap opera doesn’t have as many twists and turns as this man’s life. On December 16, 2005, the former MIT professor and multimillionaire was shot five times outside his Cambridge, MA office. The assailant escaped, and as of this writing, no arrest has been made. Despite the number of shots, he was not seriously injured and Donovan was released from the hospital within a day of his admittance.
Link to Wikipedia biography