A mum-of-two who took an at-home DNA test on a whim made a horrifying discovery that changed her life forever. Now she’s campaigning for laws to change
A woman who took an at-home DNA test to get some answers about her health had her whole world turned upside down when the results came back.
Worried about a medical issue and baffled that neither of her parents had suffered any of the same symptoms, Victoria Hill bought a DNA test online in a bid to seek some clarity. But her whole world came crashing down when the results revealed she has at least 23 half-siblings, and her biological dad was not the man she’d grown up with.
The 40-year-old married mum-of-two from Conneticut, US, grew up with a niggling curiosity on how she could look and act so different to her father, and even joked that she perhaps was the mailman’s child. But the truth was much more sinister – as she pieced together the puzzle and spoke to some of the siblings that popped up on her family tree results, she discovered that her biological dad was her mother’s fertility doctor.
Dr. Burton Caldwell had been helping Victoria’s mother concieve using donated sperm. But instead, he used his own, allegedly without her consent. Victoria’s mum, Maralee, says she was fooled by Caldwell, who said he would use sperm from an unknown medical student. And it wasn’t the first time he’d duped one of his patients – at least 23 people say they were born because of Caldwell using his sperm in secret.
Today, Victoria appeared on This Morning to via video link to tell hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard about the harrowing discovery. At first, she ‘quickly dismissed’ the DNA results that pointed her towards her half-siblings, until a woman repeatedly started sending her emails. She turned out to be her half-sister. Victoria explained: “She had my attention and she gave me the rest of the information – this doctor, my mother’s fertility doctor, was in fact my biological father.’ As she continued to push, she said ‘did your mother go to Yale Fertility Treatment Clinic to get help for fertility’… when she had said that, it got my attention because I did know that much. My parents had struggled with fertility.
Recalling the shocking moment she found out, the woman said: “It was pretty surreal. It took a while to set in. I have to say growing up I felt a part of me was different or distant, we used to have a joke, between my father and I, that the only thing that was similar was our hands. In some weird ways, it clicked. But it seemed too bizarre, throughout the different stages of it. Not only is it the man who raised me not my biological father, but my mother’s doctor that she went to for over eight years of treatment trying to conceive, then kind of bringing her the news, sharing that with her. She was not aware of this as well. We sat through it together.”
Horrifyingly, her initial findings were just the tip of the iceberg. When she finally plucked up the courage to tell close friends about the ordeal, her old high school boyfriend soon had his own questions and decided to take a DNA test. Soon she got a devastating text from him that read: “You are my sister”.
Victoria said in the live interview: “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.” She added: :It was just one next thing that hits after another. We still don’t know what is to come.”
Previously speaking to CNN about reading the shock text from the man that she could have ‘easily got married to’, 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 added: “I’ll just put it out there, I was intimate with my half brother.”
Victoria claims that more than 80 doctors have done the same as Dr Caldwell, who recently passed away. Desperate to raise awareness, the mum, who is campaigning for laws around fertility treatment to change, revealed what happened when she confronted the doctor before he died.
Victoria said: “When I asked him “Why?”, he said ‘It was in the business of making babies’. There wasn’t a lot of remorse, there wasn’t a lot of concern. The impression I got was just ‘your mother wanted a baby, she got a baby'”.
“I believe he was a big part of founding the clinic, so this was his life and I can only imagine, the extreme measures to make this programme work, which creates this cognitive dissonance, because on one hand, everyone asks ‘Aren’t you happy to be alive? Your mother wanted a child, and she got a child’. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to be a product of fertility fraud, my mother didn’t consent to his sperms and I didn’t consent to having a growing number of siblings that will continue to grow.”
The Donor Sibling Registry – a non-profit U.S. organisation that serves donor offspring, sperm donors and egg donors – records that Caldwell fathered at least 23 children. Currently, Dr Caldwell’s misdeed is not recognised as a federal crime in the US.
“There really are no [regulations],” she told Cat and Ben. “That’s why we’re fighting. That’s why I’m bringing this story out, so that we can get some better laws, protections and regulations out there.”
Yale New Haven Health recently claimed in a statement that there was “no evidence of Yale New Haven Health’s involvement in the conduct alleged against Dr. Caldwell.” Its attorneys noted that the alleged fraud happened “at his own private practice” and what he did there was “unbeknowns to Yale”.
