Family Discovers Sperm Bank Nightmare 21 Years After Daughter's Birth

[bananas]

Source: ABC News

A Utah family who used a sperm bank more than 20 years ago uncovered a nightmare when they performed DNA tests this year: their adult daughter's real father is a convicted felon who swapped his sperm with theirs.

<snip>

Paula and Jeff used a Salt Lake City area fertility clinic in the 1990s to conceive Ashley, but recently performed a DNA test and found out that Ashley's real father was convicted kidnapper Thomas Lippert, who worked at the clinic in the 1980s and 1990s, they told local news station KUTV. He died in 1999.

<snip>

"I felt my stomach just drop," Paula told the station. "When I called my daughter and my husband's DNA up next to one another they didn't share any DNA at all, and I just thought to myself, 'oh my God.'"

<snip>

The University of Utah is offering free paternity tests to parents who used the sperm bank during those years.

"The bottom line is that we are hoping that couples who used the Reproductive Medical Technologies Clinic in Salt Lake City (which they, like Paula, may have simply known as the University of Utah's fertility clinic) to conceive between 1986 and 1995 will hear about this story and reach out to Paula," Moore said in a blog post on her website this week.

<snip>

Paula told KUTV she believes Lippert's actions were purposeful. He kept a stack of baby photos at the desk of the clinic that he showed off as babies he "helped" to conceive, she recalled.

<snip>

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-discovers-sperm-bank-nightmare-21-years-daughters/story?id=21487231

[ZombieHorde]

1. I don't think I would have my children tested,

unless there was a medical need, such as a donor situation. My kids are my kids.

[yurbud]

23. yeah, unless you want to challenge paternity for a kid you've had no contact with

it can only cause problems.

[tblue]

36. Me neither, unless for health reasons.

It's a horrifying thought.

[jberryhill]

2. Great - Sperm Banksters!

[hollowdweller]

3. Wonder how the daughter turned out??

Just curious from a nature vs nurture perspective did she have any antisocial tendencies?

[SocratesInSpirit]

16. She probably turned out just fine

If she was raised in a stable family who loved her. People put way too much stock in "nature" and genetics. Environment plays a huge role in the way a person turns out - especially their environment in their most formative years.

For example, my husband's biological father was never much in his life (he last saw him over two decades ago) - but he was raised by his mother and a loving stepfather who provided a good home. My husband never knew much about his biological father or his family, and the information was kept from him for good reason - he just recently found out both his biological father has a long criminal history (theft, assault, etc.) and is currently serving a very lengthy prison sentence. His biological grandfather was also a criminal and a murderer. My husband is the most gentle hardworking, mild-mannered, law-abiding citizen you could ever hope to meet. He considers his true father to be his stepdad.

This girl's real father is the man who raised her. Hopefully she won't let this discovery tarnish her life. We are not fated to follow in our ancestor's footsteps.

[Thirties Child]

21. I think of nature as a switch

that can be turned on or left off by nurture. ln some cases - cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia - the switch is on and all the nurture in the world won't turn it off. However, much more often, what is inborn - nature - depends on the environment - nurture.

[greiner3]

25. My bipolar;

Was 'turned on' by a switch in my 20s.

[postulater]

4. Creating his own little horde - like Genghis Khan.

Sad story.

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. Unrelated I know, but

Sperm Bank Nightmare would make an excellent band name.

[davidpdx]

18. The Charles Manson Sperm Bank Clinic

I guess it could be worse.

[SoapBox]

6. So weird...

What? They didn't get Brain Surgeon sperm? And now they're, mad???

I wonder what their exact motive for having the "adult daughter" tested was.

[bananas]

9. They thought they used their own sperm

It was a fertility clinic as well as a sperm bank.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

12. That's the way I read it.

"When I called my daughter and my husband's DNA up next to one another they didn't share any DNA at all, and I just thought to myself, 'oh my God.'"

Why would they expect to see the father's DNA if he wasn't in the picture.

[bananas]

15. Also "swapped his sperm with theirs"

which is why I included the first paragraph.
They should have said "fertility clinic" instead of "sperm bank", it would be less confusing.

[SoapBox]

22. Ohhhhhhhh...

OK...I think I get it but still think it's weird and now...

creepy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. I think it's a badly written story - it seems to say they thought it was the husband's own sperm

and they were just using it as a fertility clinic, with, presumably, in vitro fertilisation.

. "When I called my daughter and my husband's DNA up next to one another they didn't share any DNA at all, and I just thought to myself, 'oh my God.'"

So I think saying 'sperm bank' is misleading. However, that then, as you say, raises the question of why they were doing the test in the first place. Were there rumours that sperm has been switched? Was there something about the daughter they thought couldn't have come from either parent?

This story seems to say they were just using a "find out about your ancestry" service for fun. But why bother for the daughter?

That also has more details - Lippert was actually a cousin of the adult daughter (I presume on her mother's side, since they say there's no similarity with her father).

On edit: that last sentence was wrong , but that's because of crappy LiveScience writing. The 'cousin' was just a cousin of Lippert.

When Ashley’s results came back at AncestryDNA, Paula immediately noticed that Ashley had a predicted 2nd cousin who was not from Paula’s side of the family. Paula’s family has deep Southwestern United States roots and 23andMe’s Ancestry Composition clearly distinguished between her genetic contribution to Ashley’s genome and this unknown significantly Eastern European biological father.

Paula bravely told her story to Ashley’s new cousin via AncestryDNA’s messaging system and waited for a reply. It took about a month, but when the reply came, it was not what had been expected. Cheryl* told Paula that her first cousin, Thomas Ray Lippert (his real name), had lived in Salt Lake City and had mentioned to the family that he was a sperm donor. A sperm donor? That was a strange twist since Paula and Jeff had never requested donor sperm. Further discussion revealed that not only had Tom claimed that he was a sperm donor, but he had actually worked at the fertility clinic Paula and Jeff had used.

http://www.yourgeneticgenealogist.com/2014/01/artificial-insemination.html?spref=tw

[bananas]

14. Wow - he tried to brainwash a woman into loving him

Coming to terms with her biological parentage may be even more difficult given another revelation about Lippert: In 1975, he pled guilty to two counts of conspiring to kidnap after the abduction of a Purdue University student who said Lippert and another man stripped her, forced her into a large black box and threatened her with electric shocks in an effort to brainwash her into loving Lippert. Lippert was sentenced to six years in prison, according to a 2007 article in the alumni magazine of Southwest Minnesota State University, where Lippert was a business professor at the time of the arrest. He apparently served only two of those six years.

[LisaL]

20. Looks like he got a slap on the wrist there.

[d_r]

30. kidnapping story from 1975

http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20065774,00.html
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It was a sundrenched afternoon at Purdue University. In the parking lot behind Creative Arts Building No. 5, Susan Wells Cochran and fellow students in a ceramics class bent over a hay-fueled kiln. They were firing "raku" pots, occasionally exclaiming over an especially successful glaze or a cracked disaster. To all intents, Susan, 21, seemed like any other coed with nothing more on her mind than pottery.

There was. Within a few days she was scheduled to appear in court as the first witness in a bizarre kidnapping case. According to the charges, Susan, a fine-arts major at Purdue, had been abducted by Thomas R. Lippert, 25, a law professor at Southwest State College in Marshall, Minn., and a companion. Lippert, according to an assistant U.S. district attorney, then attempted to "brainwash her into falling in love with him." During the alleged kidnapping, Susan, the daughter of an affluent engineer from Little Falls, N.J., traveled through more than half a dozen states with her abductors. Among other inducements to love, she was subjected to electric-shock treatment, confined in a mysterious "black box," threatened with injury to her family and forced to sleep in the same bed, but not to have sex, with Lippert.

It all began last February, when Sue Cochran left a yellow "ride-wanted" card on a student bulletin board. She hoped to go to Boston to visit her boyfriend, Doug Grant, a student at Tufts. Meanwhile, Professor Lippert had conceived his "experiment in love" and persuaded a student, Harold Ross Tenneson, 21, to assist him. "We came to Purdue on February 19," Tenneson has since admitted, after turning state's evidence and pleading guilty to kidnap charges, "to find a girl, preferably good-looking, for his experiment." They spotted Sue Cochran's "ride-wanted" card, made contact and picked her up that night at the Alpha Chi Omega sorority house. "We got 30 miles out of town," Sue recalls with a shudder. "And, well, that was it."

(snip)

[Tumbulu]

34. Why do these violent people get such light sentences

this was a bizarre thing to do- he should have gotten 20 yrs minimum for such behavior. Why out in 2 years no less, this would not have happened if he had been kept in prison!

[LisaL]

19. Yes, they are mad. Considering her husband was supposed to have been the father.

[jberryhill]

28. How angry should the daughter be?

[LisaL]

31. Why don't you ask her?

[jberryhill]

32. If the sperm wasn't swapped, she wouldn't exist

So there is no point in her being upset about it.

[LisaL]

33. So it sounds like you approve of what this convicted criminal did?

How would you like to carry those genes?

[jberryhill]

35. Get your hearing checked

Lets see... I carry genes from thousands of generations of humans, tens of thousands of generations of pre-human mammals, yet more generations of non-mammalian vertebrates, and a long long line of invertebrates before that. It is unlikely they were all of fine moral character, but I take comfort in the fact that human moral character and behavior has zip to do with genetics. Those who believe such things are often racists.

Of the thousands of humans from which I have descended, it is a certainty that there were murderers, thieves, and all manner of criminals. If you would like to know what sort of people come from criminal parents, then consider the nation of Australia - a good many of whose inhabitants can regale you with the specific crime that led to their forebears being sentenced to live there. I was having dinner with two Australians one night and was informed they had come from a horse thief and a forger, respectively.

The daughter cannot rationally be angry with the dipshit who did this, as the recourse on her part to rectify the situation is presumably to kill herself in order to discontinue the benefit to her of what he did. That would also be consistent with the type of thinking that considers moral defects to be genetic.

[Gormy Cuss]

8. ABC's use of real father vs. biological father is odd.

I sincerely hope that the parents don't use this terminology. The slimeball is nothing but the DNA contributor.

[JI7]

10. i would think the "real father" is the one who raised her and hopefully loves her no less

[bobGandolf]

11. What a nightmare!

Once the shock is over, just keep loving her. She's still your lovely daughter.

[KewlKat]

17. I believe the couple were using their own egg and sperm

She was comparing her husband's DNA to the daughters and there was no way the husband was their daughter's "biological" father. Not all those that use fertility clinics use donor sperm/eggs. They may have used theirs and then maybe in vitro or something.

[Mnpaul]

24. Hello, police

This is the sperm bank and we want to report a robbery.

[Fumesucker]

26. So they then went and told the daugher evidently

As a parent I think I would probably have kept something like that to myself and my spouse, there was no need to tell the adult daughter, all I can see coming from that is pain for her.

[jberryhill]

27. I don't understand "nightmare" in the title

What tragedy occurred here?

It was a shitty thing to do, but was raising her a "nightmare"? Do they not love her? Would she prefer never to have existed?

[Boudica the Lyoness]

29. I think the nightmare part might be

the daughter has many unknown siblings in town. She might ended up having a baby with her half brother.