Victoria Hill’s mother, Maralee had placed her trust in a fertility doctor to help her conceive a child. He then broke this trust by using his own sperm in the process, covering his misdeeds with a sick lie
This Morning: Woman finds out ex-boyfriend was her half-brother
After taking a DNA test, Victoria Hill uncovered a secret that would change her family life forever. Although she had long wondered about why she was so different to her dad, mum-of-two Victoria could never have imagined the harrowing truth behind her true paternity.
To her great surprise, the at-home DNA kit revealed that Victoria had 23 half-siblings, one of whom was her old high school boyfriend. After connecting with one of her half-sisters, a sick pattern began to emerge, with the branches of the mysterious family tree all linking back to duplicitous fertility doctor Dr Burton Caldwell.
Appearing on This Morning, Victoria, 40, told hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard this week that she’d “quickly dismissed” the disturbing DNA results until a woman she would later learn was her half-sister started emailing her repeatedly. Victoria recalled: “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’.
READ MORE: ‘I accidentally slept with my half-brother – but the family horror isn’t even over’
“As she continued to push, she said, ‘Did your mother go to Yale Fertility Treatment Clinic to get help for fertility?’… when she said that, it got my attention because I did not know that much. My parents had struggled with fertility.”
Over a period of more than eight years, Dr Caldwell had been helping Victoria’s mother, Maralee, conceive using donated sperm, which he told her came from an unknown medical student. Instead, the doctor, who has recently passed away, used his own sperm during the process, allegedly without Maralee’s consent.
Reflecting on the moment she found out, Victoria shared: “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.”
Maralee is far from the only patient to be duped by Dr Caldwell, with at least 23 people claiming they were conceived by Caldwell secretly using his sperm. Victoria, who is now campaigning for changes to fertility treatment laws, claims that more than 80 doctors have done the same as Dr Caldwell. She also spoke about the moment she bravely confronted her biological father, who appeared to have no shame about his actions.
Victoria remembered: “When I asked him, ‘Why?’, he said, ‘It was in the business of making babies. There wasn’t a lot of remorse or 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.”
According to records kept by The Donor Sibling Registry—a non-profit U.S. organisation that serves donor offspring, sperm donors, and egg donors— Dr Caldwell fathered at least 23 children. Currently, the doctor’s misdeed is not recognised as a federal crime in the US.
Yale New Haven Health recently issued a statement claiming there was “no evidence of Yale New Haven Health’s involvement in the conduct alleged against Dr Caldwell.” Its attorneys remarked that Dr Caldwell’s alleged fraud happened “at his own private practice” and what he did there was “unbeknowns to Yale”.
Do you have a story to share? Email us at [email protected]
READ MORE: Susanna Reid wows Good Morning Britain fans in ‘spectacular’ red floral dress