NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — A Connecticut woman and her mother are suing a New Haven fertility doctor for allegedly using his own sperm during insemination back in the 1980s.
"To think 10 to 15 years down the road from now, how many of us will there be?" said Janine Pierson, the woman who filed the lawsuit.
Pierson grew up as an only child, aware her parents went to a fertility doctor, but she said she thought her father's sperm was used. As Pierson grew curious about her father's heritage, she decided to take a 23andme DNA test in 2022, not knowing it would impact the rest of her life.
"I clicked on the relatives tab, and 19 half-siblings popped up," Pierson said.
Pierson paused and remarked on the pain of reliving the moment. At first, she didn't believe it, but she restarted her phone and found the same number: 19 half-siblings. (That number now stands at 22.) Pierson said her oldest sibling is 50, and her youngest is 35.
Pierson said a week later, one of her sisters reached out.
"She said, 'What you are going to hear may be very shocking,'" Pierson recalled. "Nothing could prepare me for the truth."
Talking to her sister, Pierson said she discovered her half-sibling's mothers went to the same fertility clinic in New Haven and saw Dr. Burton Caldwell. She said she then called her mother.
"That was the hardest conversation of my entire life," Pierson said.
The now 36-year-old and her mother filed a lawsuit where they allege Caldwell told her the sperm was coming from a Yale medical student with very limited offspring.
"To go to her doctor and have this kind of vulnerable, intimate procedure happen and leave not knowing what actually happened to her body," Pierson said. "My mother never consented to having her doctor's child."
Angela Mattie, a Quinnipiac University professor for the Schools of Business and Medicine, called cases like this "egregious" and "unethical." She also said there are no laws against it, federally or in Connecticut.
"It could be siblings marrying siblings, siblings having children," Mattie said. "It's time to do something about this."
Pierson said the consequences of fertility fraud have proven traumatizing. She said she recently learned that two of her half-siblings unknowingly dated in high school and were intimate.
"My siblings had absolutely no idea," Pierson said. "They weren't consenting to a relationship with their sibling."
Carrying a million questions, Pierson said she went to Caldwell's home and that he admitted to using his sperm.
"He also asked me how many grandchildren he had and how my grades were in school and where I went to college," said Pierson.
According to the lawsuit, Caldwell stopped practicing in 2004 and is now in his mid-80s.
Nexstar's WTNH reached out to Caldwell for a response, but he declined to comment.
