Did Jessica H. Cockburn, a 19-year old girl from Columbus, Ohio seek 13 paternity tests after having sex with an entire football team? Of course not, that story was made up and is totally not true.
The fake story was published by World News Daily Report on March 21, 2018 under the headline "Pregnant teen seeks 13 paternity tests after gangbang with football team" (archived here). It opened:
Columbus, OH | A nineteen-year-old girl has officially asked an Ohio judge that several members of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team pass paternity tests to determine the father of her child.
Jessica H. Cockburn, 19, says she partook in consensual sex with at least 13 members of the team during a late-night party several weeks ago and has since then fallen pregnant.
Cockburn admitted participating in the orgy willfully but now seeks to determine who is the father of the child-to-be.
In reality the girl in the picture that went with the article is 17-year-old Michelle Carter who was convicted in Massachusetts for encouraging her boyfriend to commit suicide.
The summary of the story looks quite convincing if you only see it on social media:
Pregnant teen seeks 13 paternity tests after gangbang with football team
Columbus, OH | A nineteen-year-old girl has officially asked an Ohio judge that several members of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team pass paternity tests to determine the father of her child. Jessica H. Cockburn, 19, says she partook in consensual sex with at least 13 members of the team during
But the website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:
World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.
It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.
Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.
