BOSTON (AP) – John J. Donovan, the $100 million Internet guru who survived an ambush by a gunman outside his Cambridge office last week, has a pedigree that would make any entrepreneur jealous.

The 63-year-old has degrees from Tufts and Yale universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a longtime professor. He’s published 11 business books and has started a long list of profitable companies. Fortune 500 firms used to pay Donovan hefty fees to speak, prompting The New York Times to dub him the, “Johnny Carson of the training circuit.”

But behind that veneer of success, Donovan has led an increasingly troubled life. Most recently, it was being shot several times last week outside his office at Cambridge Executive Enterprises by an unknown assailant. Police say a belt buckle deflected one of several bullets, and may have helped save him from more-serious injury.

Last year, he was entangled in at least 17 lawsuits, from wetlands protection orders to a clash in civil court with his five children that included allegations of sexual abuse. The dispute got nasty as they tangled over properties in Bermuda, Vermont and along Boston’s North Shore – and at one point, his children tried to get him banished from an exclusive polo, golf and fox-hunting club.

“The dispute … has evolved into an epic, tragic, and quite hostile, struggle,” a lawyer for four of Donovan’s children wrote in a February 2005 legal brief. Ultimately, Donovan agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement.

Police are still looking for a suspect in Friday’s shooting who hit Donovan with several bullets, including one that was deflected by his belt buckle. He was released from the hospital the next morning.

Four of Donovan’s five children released a joint statement Saturday that said they were, “shocked and saddened by the incident.” The children’s spokeswoman, Nancy Sterling, said Monday that the children had “absolutely nothing” to do with the shooting.

Police Monday offered no new details, and have not yet suggested whether there are any suspects. The shooting came on the same day that police responded to a possible break-in at Donovan’s home in Hamilton, a tony suburb about 40 miles north of Boston, and two years after someone fired shots at the home, hitting his favorite couch.

Donovan is a former engineering professor and clinical pediatrician. During his career, he earned millions in businesses, often working with his children, who shared his Ivy League pedigree.

In the fall of 2002, however, one of his daughters told her four siblings that she had a dark secret: “My father … abused me sexually when I was a child,” the woman said in a sworn deposition.

At a Boston law firm in December 2003, Donovan’s children confronted him with the charges.

Donovan denied the allegation. He claimed in a deposition that his children tried to blackmail him, threatening to use the sex allegations to force him from his home.

“They demanded that I abandon all of my rights to my home, Devon Glen, and that I move from and never return to the North Shore, my lifetime home,” Donovan said. “They also demanded that I resign from the Myopia Hunt Club and that I never visit the club again.”

Myopia declined to say if Donovan still belonged to the club because membership is private, a spokeswoman said.

In June 2004, the family signed a 21-part settlement agreement that began with Donovan promising to pay his five children $6 million in cash.

The children would later claim that their father didn’t stick to the settlement terms. They went back to court, forcing mediation with a retired federal judge.

Donovan could not be reached for comment Monday, and hasn’t returned calls placed to his home and office since the shooting. His spokesman, George K. Regan Jr., said, “He’s emotionally drained, and he is very thankful his is alive.”