One woman made the shocking discovery she had been dating her half-brother at school after taking a DNA test.
Victoria Hill, who hails from Connecticut in the US, has opened up about the traumatic ordeal when she made the bombshell discovery after years of having no clue about the true identity of her biological father.
The 39-year-old found out about her true origins after it was finally revealed that her mother was allegedly wrongfully and unconsensually artificially inseminated by a fertility doctor, Burton Caldwel, CNN reports.
After always suspecting something was off, given the difference in her looks to her father, the licensed clinical social worker finally purchased 23andMe DNA testing kit a few years ago, and sent her DNA to the genomics company.
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The results were a bombshell revelation, indicating that Victoria had a whole lot more siblings than just the brother she grew up with, with the count now standing at a colossal 22 in total.
The test showed that Victoria's biological father was not the man she was raised by but, in fact, was the fertility doctor.
A sibling told her he had used his own sperm to inseminate her mother, allegedly without her consent.
One of the most devastating discoveries, however, came just this summer when Victoria found out that one of her newly-found siblings had been her high school boyfriend - one she says she easily could have gone on to marry.
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"I was traumatised by this," she told the news outlet in an exclusive interview. "Now I’m looking at pictures of people thinking, well, if he could be my sibling, anybody could be my sibling."
Indiana University law professor and fertility fraud expert, Jody Madeira, explained a little more about the laws surrounding fertility fraud.
She explained: "This was the first time where we’ve had a confirmed case of someone actually dating, someone being intimate with someone who was their half-sibling."
Another one of Victoria's siblings, Janine Pierson, is currently trying to take Caldwell to court but the lack of legal groundwork is proving to make it an uphill battle.
Janine, who made the discovery in 2022, told CNN: "It shouldn’t just be, you know, the Wild West where these doctors can just do whatever it is that they want."
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"He was not in any way apologetic," she claimed, adding Caldwell admitted he 'never gave it the thought that he should have … that there would be so many [children], and that it would have any kind of an impact on us'.
She went on: "One thing that really has always bothered me is that he asked me how many grandchildren he had.
"And he was very curious about my scholastic achievements and what I made of myself. … Like how intelligent I was, basically."
Some experts have pointed to take-at-home DNA tests by companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry are helping to work towards eradicating fertility fraud.
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Julia T. Woodward, a licensed clinical psychologist and associate professor in psychiatry and OBGYN in the Duke University Health System, explained: "To my knowledge, the majority of fertility fraud cases took place before 2000.
"I think it is highly unlikely any person would engage in such practices today (it would be too easy to be exposed). So this part of the landscape has improved significantly."
Featured Image Credit: CNNTopics: News, Sex and Relationships, US News, Parenting, Science