Sperm donor nightmare leads woman to accidental incest with her half-brother

A US woman has revealed the shocking moment she learned that she had a sexual relationship with her own half-brother, uncovering a mortifying incident of medical malpractice and shining a light on an unregulated industry that has left families fractured.

Connecticut woman Victoria Hill, 39, spoke out to CNN as part of an investigation into what they termed “fertility fraud”, where doctors misled female patients and used their own sperm without the women’s consent.

Hill uncovered the traumatic truth of her conception when she sought out a commercial DNA test to find answers for a medical question.

Suffering from a complaint that neither of her parents was afflicted with, she sent her sample hoping to learn more.

She soon found she had a much larger family than she knew, uncovering brothers and sisters that shared paternal DNA.

This new family revealed their biological father was not the man she grew up with.

They told her he was Burton Caldwell, the fertility doctor who had artificially inseminated her mother.

While her mother had told her she had sought fertility treatment, she never admitted to Hill the sperm used was not from the man she called Dad.

But last year she received news that she had already formed a connection with one of her siblings.

She was celebrating her 20-year high school reunion with friends, including an ex-boyfriend.

She was recounting what she had learned on her DNA journey and she told CNN her audience were captivated, except her ex.

He seemed to be thinking things over before he then admitted that his parents had also sought help from a fertility doctor.

Months later he sent her a screenshot of his own DNA test.

“You are my sister,” he said.

The text message that revealed it all. Photo / CNN

“It has me look back at my whole high school experience through a totally different lens. It tarnishes the whole thing,” Hill said

“I’ll just put it out there, I was intimate with my half-brother.”

“I was traumatised by this,’” she added.

“Now I’m looking at pictures of people thinking, well, if he could be my sibling, anybody could be my sibling.”

Victoria Hill with her ex-boyfriend and half-brother. Photo / CNN

Laws against “fertility fraud” differ between US states and victims have struggled to seek legal recourse.

One of Hill’s biological siblings, Janine Pierson, is trying to take their father Burton Caldwell to court.

“It shouldn’t just be, you know, the Wild West where these doctors can just do whatever it is that they want,” Pierson told CNN.

She also revealed she had confronted him and he did not apologise.

“He was not in any way apologetic,” she said, adding 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”.