Woman sues Virginia fertility doctor for using his own sperm to impregnate her twice

A California woman has accused a fertility doctor of using his own sperm to impregnate her twice 40 years ago after an at-home DNA test revealed that he was the biological father of her two children. 

Katherine Richards, of Livermore, filed a lawsuit against Dr Michael Kiken on Wednesday in the US District Court for Northern California, alleging that the Virginia-based physician ‘medically raped’ her by using his sperm to inseminate her without her consent.  

Richards and her husband were newlyweds struggling to conceive when they sought help from Kiken in 1978, according to the lawsuit. 

They welcomed a daughter in 1980 before going back to the fertility clinic for another procedure that resulted in a son. 

Both times the couple signed on to use sperm from an anonymous donor whose traits matched the husband and who didn’t have any genetic conditions. 

It wasn’t until last year that Richards’ daughter, Julie Druyor, uncovered the true identity of her father after she received a 23andMe DNA test kit as a Christmas gift.

The results revealed that she is half-Jewish, contradicting what the family was told about the supposed sperm donor. They also revealed that Druyor was a carrier for a serious genetic condition called Tay Sachs because of Kiken’s genes.  

A genealogist helped Druyor trace her genes back to the doctor, who they learned had also used his sperm to conceive Richards’ son. 

‘I’m a product of my mother’s abuser,’ Druyor, who lives in Dallas, told FOX4. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever come to terms with that.’

Richards’ lawyer said the revelation left the mother ‘devastated’ and that she feels ‘violated’ by Kiken. 

‘Katie, like anyone, should have control and dominion over her body,’ San Francisco-based attorney Adam Wolf told The Mercury News. 

‘No doctor and no one else gets to decide what goes into Katie’s body besides Katie. She now has trust issues: She will never look at any doctor the same way ever again.’ 

Druyor said the ‘fertility fraud’ also had grave consequences for her, as she didn’t know until recently that she was a carrier for Tay Sachs, a disease which can cause seizures, mental and sensory disabilities. 

‘Now I have to deal with the fact that I’ve passed down his genes [to my own children],’ she said. 

‘Am I going to see him in my children? I hate that I even have to think about that.’  

Richards’ lawsuit describes how Kiken advised her to undergo artificial insemination via an anonymous donor in 1979 after trying for months to conceive with her husband’s sperm.  

Kiken allegedly promised that the donor would be a healthy medical student or medical intern between the ages of 22 to 28. The donor was supposed to resemble Richards husband in physical appearance and ethnic background, and would share the couple’s Christian faith.  

Richards’ husband, who died in 2000, was 5’1′ with an athletic build, hazel eyes and had Norwegian, Irish and English heritage. 

Meanwhile Kiken was significantly shorter and thinner with an olive complexion. His Jewish heritage meant that he ‘did not share the same geographic ancestral ties’ as Richards’ husband, the lawsuit states.  

The suit claims that when the couple went back to Kiken to have another child in 1981, the doctor claimed that he’d kept the first sperm donor’s number and would get a sample from him again. 

Kiken also allegedly instructed the couple not to tell anyone that they used an anonymous donor, the suit states. 

Richards’ lawyer raised alarm that Kiken may have violated numerous other women in the same way. The doctor stopped practicing medicine in 1998 but is still licensed in Virginia, The Mercury News reported. 

‘None of these doctors do it just once,’ Wolf told the outlet. 

An explosion in demand for at-home DNA tests has led to a number of similar cases involving fertility doctors using their own sperm to impregnate women in recent years. 

One of the most alarming cases emerged in Indiana last year, when Dr Donald Cline was found to have fathered more than 50 children by deceiving his patients. 

‘Sadly, it isn’t the first time we’ve heard about these types of cases,’ San Diego University law Professor Dov Fox told the Mercury News. 

‘We don’t know how common it is. But it is becoming clear that it’s not an aberration.’ 

Fox said its virtually impossible to track how many times ‘fertility fraud’ has taken place without individuals taking their own DNA tests because doctors didn’t keep extensive medical records when artificial insemination first gained popularity in the 70s, 80s and 90s.