Featured Image Credit: CNN
Topics: School, Science, Sex and Relationships, US News, Health
Gerrard Kaonga
Topics: School, Science, Sex and Relationships, US News, Health
A woman has said she is now traumatized after a DNA test revealed she had actually dated her half-brother while in high school.
This really is the news that would make your heart drop.
In fact, you wouldn’t be blamed for just never wanting to know this. ‘Ignorance is bliss’ really would be applicable here.
However, one woman wasn’t aware just how much a DNA test, initially done to find out more about her health, would reveal about her past.
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Victoria Hill, from Connecticut, decided she wanted to get the test after becoming worried about her own health.
The 39-year-old licensed clinical social worker sent her DNA off via 23andMe genomics company.
But realistically, there wasn’t really anything that could have prepared her for finding out how closely related she was to a boy she had been intimate with during high school.
Nothing could've prepared her for the results of the test.
The test revealed the man Hill grew up with knowing as her dad, wasn't actually her biological father.
Not only that, but her biological father - a sperm donor - had lent his services to multiple other women too, so Hill had multiple half siblings she previously had no knowledge of - later discovering she had over 20.
And one of those 20+ siblings turned out to be someone who Hill already knew very well already. The story had taken a dark turn.
One of her newfound siblings claimed the sperm donor wasn't a donor at all, but the doctor who'd been helping Hill's mom get pregnant used his own sperm without Hill's mom's consent.
Hill tells CNN she was 'traumatized' by the news, adding: "Now I’m looking at pictures of people thinking, well, if he could be my sibling, anybody could be my sibling."
And knowing he'd also been conceived via a donor as well as his parents having used the same doctor to Hill, Hill's high school boyfriend decided to take a test too.
It turned out he was one of Hill's half-siblings too, him sending her a screenshot of the news stating: "You are my sister."
Hill says she now looks back her 'whole high school experience with a completely different lens,' the news 'tarnishing the whole thing'.
"I was intimate with my half-brother," she continues. "We didn't know."
Hill's story is considered an extreme example of fertility fraud and the 'first time' there's been a 'confirmed case of someone actually dating' and being 'intimate' with a half-sibling by accident, expert on fertility fraud and Indiana University law professor Jody Madeira says.
Fertility fraud is illegal in 12 states, but not in Connecticut, as per Connecticut Public.
Two other woman in the state named Eve and Laura discovered they were victims of fertility fraud too. Laura made the discovery after developing health issues and asking her donor to share his records but he refused and then similarly to Hill, Eve discovered her dad wasn't her biological father and that the sperm donation wasn't from a donor but her mother's fertility doctor.
The women are now campaigning for stricter legislation and legal protection.