After learning the true identity of her biological father, Victoria Hill’s life was turned upside down forever. And there further horrors in store after the mum-of-two realised she’d been ‘intimate’ with her own brother
This Morning: Woman finds out ex-boyfriend was her half-brother
All her life, Victoria Hill had a feeling something wasn’t quite right within her family unit. Then, an out-of-the-blue text message confirmed her darkest fears.
Mum-of-two Victoria had long been puzzled by why she bore no resemblance to her dad, even joking that she must be the postman’s daughter. She ended up with more questions after suffering from a health issue that neither of her parents exhibited symptoms of.
Searching for answers, the now 40-year-old took an at-home DNA, which revealed she had 23 half-siblings. After digging a little deeper, Victoria, from Connecticut, US, learned that her biological father was, in fact, her mother’s fertility doctor, Dr Burton Caldwell, who had deceived a number of women into using his sperm without their consent.
Devastatingly, there was another sickening shock in store for Victoria after she received a text message from her old high school boyfriend.
READ MORE: ‘I accidentally slept with my half-brother – but the family horror isn’t even over’
After finding the courage to tell close friends about her discovery, her former teenage sweetheart, now friend, also realised he had questions that needed answering, and so took a DNA test. The results came back, and he messaged her with the shocking reveal: “You are my sister.”
Yesterday (March 24), Victoria appeared on This Morning via video link, where she opened up to hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard about the moment life as she knew it changed forever. She shared: “We figured it out, there was a high school reunion, we started sharing info with close friends and fast forward to a dinner and it was at that time that as I’m telling this story, my high school boyfriend, now friend, looked like he was turning something over in his head.
“His mother had recently told him that the reason why him and his brother, who is also a really good friend of mine, that his mother went for fertility treatment with his father. So we just kind of assumed that she must have gone to the same place.
“He ultimately called his mother, and his mother confirmed that the same doctor had performed the same procedure. So then it was a waiting game. We sat there in disbelief that this was something we were entertaining. We made jokes, but it felt very surreal. Then in a couple of weeks, he sent me the screenshot that you are my sister.”
Expressing fears over further nasty surprises to come, she added: “It was just one next thing that hits after another. We still don’t know what is to come.” Speaking previously with CNN about the moment she realised the former love she could have “easily got married to”, was in fact her brother Victoria said: “I was traumatised by this.
Now I’m looking at pictures of people thinking, well, if he could be my sibling, anybody could be my sibling. It has me look back at my whole high school experience through a totally different lens. It tarnishes the whole thing.” She admitted: “I’ll just put it out there: I was intimate with my half-brother.”
Dr Caldwell, who recently passed away, had been helping Victoria’s mum conceive using donated sperm, which he claimed came from an unknown medical student. Little did she know, he was actually using his own. Going forward, Victoria is campaigning for laws around fertility treatment to change, and is sharing her own traumatic story as a means of raising awareness.
In a recent statement, Yale New Haven Health claimed there was “no evidence of Yale New Haven Health’s involvement in the conduct alleged against Dr. Caldwell.” Its attorneys clarified that the alleged fraud happened “at his own private practice” and what the doctor did there was “unbeknowns to Yale”.
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