EXCLUSIVEI had sex with my brother. I was furious when I realized... but the attraction doesn't just go away
Victoria Hill had been looking forward to her high school reunion. She had so much to update her old classmates about.
And as they gathered a restaurant in 2023, she told them how she'd recently used an at-home DNA test and had been left stunned to discover that her dad was not her biological father.
She explained how she'd made the grim discovery that her real dad was actually her mother's fertility doctor, who'd impregnated her with his own sperm.
The doctor had done it to other women too and, as a result, Victoria had dozens of half brothers and sisters she'd never met.
It was at the moment she recalls seeing her high school boyfriend's expression cloud over.
'You could see him melting a little bit, his affect changed, and he got really quiet,' Victoria, now 40 and a married mom-of-two, told the Daily Mail.
The shocking truth is that her former boyfriend, who does not wish to be named, was also conceived through fertility treatment and was among Victoria's new club of mystery half-siblings.
As teenagers, the young southern Connecticut couple had been 'inseparable' and intimate for about a year, and could well have settled down had they not gone off to college and taken different paths.
Victoria Hill, 40, a married mom-of-two, has been on an emotional rollercoaster since she used an at-home DNA kit in 2020
Victoria's mom, Maralee, is now suing the doctor who helped her conceive two children in the 1980s
However, for Victoria – who now works as a clinical social worker – such sweet teenage recollections now lie in tatters.
After all, they'd been engaging in accidental incest – which raised troubling issues for both of them.
It also raised tough questions about the oversight of fertility care in the 1970s and 80s.
Victoria says it's been an uneasy and 'surreal' experience, and one of 'cognitive dissonance'.
'You would think that when you find out you are siblings with someone, that a switch would turn off,' she told the Mail.
'But those feelings don't go away, which makes it really gross and complicated.'
Victoria always knew that her parents had struggled to have children and underwent fertility care.
She also often felt something was 'off' about her relationship with her dad as they were so different, but never doubted he was her biological father.
'I would joke when I was younger that I wasn't actually my dad's child, I was the mailman's,' she says.
The process of discovery started in 2020, when Victoria developed a health complication that is often genetic, but for which her parents had never suffered any symptoms.
So she bought a 23andMe DNA testing kit and sent off her samples to the genomics company.
The results were stunning, showing that she had more siblings than just the brother she had grown up with – with the count now standing at 24.
Some of them reached out and revealed that her biological dad was Burton Caldwell, a fertility doctor and Yale University professor.
A teenage Victoria, pictured with her high school boyfriend, and half-brother, who does not wish to be named
Burton Caldwell poses for a selfie with another of his many donor-kids
He'd used his own sperm to inseminate Victoria's mother, Maralee, allegedly without her consent.
Victoria immediately confronted her mother, who she soon realized had not been fully transparent about the treatment she had undergone.
Fertility medicine was making great strides in the 70s and early 80s, and ethical standards and practices had not yet matured. It was not uncommon then for clinicians to use their own sperm, or samples from medical students and interns, as fresh specimens were preferred.
Often, samples were also mixed up, and the male donor's identity was a mystery.
Maralee and other hopeful moms were told not to ask too many questions and to count any pregnancy as a blessing, says Victoria who, after several heart-wrenching talks with her mother, acknowledges that Maralee 'did the best she could with the information that she had at that time.'
But the bombshells kept dropping.
Victoria learned that many families in the same area had used Caldwell, whose clinic was in nearby New Haven.
Victoria ultimately discovered that she had gone to school with at least four of her siblings without knowing about it at the time – her high school sweetheart being among them.
It transpired that her ex-boyfriend's mom had also been treated at Caldwell's clinic.
'He did 23andMe and then, within a few more weeks, he sent me the [message] that said: "You are my sister".'
The revelation was tough to navigate. Victoria and her former boyfriend had been 'inseparable' friends for years before enjoying an 'unconditional love' when they dated for about a year, she says.
'We now have to figure out how to turn that love into a sibling sort of love; we're both struggling with it,' she admits, adding that she still grapples with the 'attraction that pulls us together.'
'It makes sense why we were so incredibly comfortable together and unconditional with each other, especially at a high school age,' she says. 'I thought it was rare, but now I understand it's because we share 24 percent of our DNA.'
The shocking message Victoria Hill received from her high school boyfriend after he received his DNA test results
Victoria now worries about what will happen to her own kids when they grow up and start dating, with so many first cousins in the community
Victoria also struggles to manage her feelings toward her true biological dad, revealing that she felt compelled to knock on Caldwell's door at his Connecticut home seeking answers.
What she discovered was an old and infirm man but one who appears to have no regrets about fathering so many children.
He simply explained that was the role of a fertility doctor back then, she says.
'I think he's a narcissist,' she says. 'I spend my career psychoanalyzing people, and I can't do it for him.'
Caldwell had little interest in striking up a relationship with his new-found 'daughter', Victoria says.
'I'm grateful I'm alive. I love my blue eyes, my intelligence, my athleticism, and that's from him, because he thought he was this elite person,' she says. 'But, I also don't think that I should be a product of fraud, and my mother shouldn't have been subjected to medical abuse.'
Victoria's mother, Maralee, is among four patients who are suing Caldwell in two separate lawsuits, alleging that he used his own sperm to inseminate patients without their knowledge.
He's variously accused in the lawsuits of misconduct, inflicting emotional distress, assault and battery, failure to obtain informed consent, fraud, fraudulent concealment and other torts.
In January, state Superior Court Judge Robin Wilson ordered Yale to participate in discovery in the lawsuits by providing documents related to Caldwell from 1974 to 1984.
The Yale entities named in the ruling include Yale New Haven Hospital, Yale University, also known as Yale School of Medicine, and Yale New Haven Health Services Corp.
Caldwell, his lawyer, and Yale did not answer the Mail's requests for comment.
A Yale New Haven Health spokesperson said 'there is no evidence' of its 'involvement in the conduct alleged against Dr. Caldwell.'
The mom-of-two is a clinical social worker from southern Connecticut
Victoria says lawmakers and the courts need to get tougher on dodgy doctors who commit 'fertility fraud'
Yale School of Medicine (pictured) has been ordered to hand over documents about any work with Dr Caldwell
Such cases have become more common thanks to at-home DNA testing.
One in five Americans have taken a mail-in DNA test, recent YouGov polling shows. A quarter of them said the test results uncovered close relatives they previously didn't know about.
Victoria is now part of a groundswell of donor-conceived Americans seeking to expose what they say are shifty practices in the fertility industry.
About a dozen states have passed laws to tighten the rules on fertility clinics in recent years.
But Victoria and others say the legal landscape is still patchy, and the chances of winning civil suits against Caldwell and other practitioners are slim.
'It's crazy to me that it's so unregulated,' Victoria says.
Experts say that at least 80 doctors across the US has been caught or accused of secretly using their own sperm to impregnate patients. Among the most famous is Donald Cline, a former Indiana fertility doctor who provided sperm to father at least 94 donor children.
Victoria says she doubts Connecticut will bolster its fertility clinic laws or that Caldwell will face justice.
Instead, she worries about what will happen when her two young children start dating.
'We will be DNA testing people that they want to be serious with, because my kids have over 40 first cousins in this area,' she says.
