An Idaho woman is suing her fertility doctor after learning he is the father of her now 34-year-old daughter, accusing him of using his own sperm to inseminate her.
Sharon Hayes, 67, sought fertility treatment from obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. David R. Claypool in 1989 after she and her then-husband learned they could not conceive, according to a civil complaint filed in Washington state Superior Court on Wednesday.
Claypool, now 81, allegedly charged her $100 for each of several artificial insemination sessions, telling the woman the money was to compensate the donor. The candidates, he said, were selected from a pool based on genetic characteristics such as eye and hair color that Hayes had chosen.
“Claypool … informed Plaintiff Hayes that he would obtain donor genetic material from an anonymous donor such as a college and/or medical student who physically resembled … Hayes’ then-husband,” reads the suit filed in Spokane County and reviewed by Fox News Digital.
Sharon Hayes, right, pictured with Brianna Hayes and her second daughter, is suing former OB-GYN and fertility doctor David Claypool for allegedly inseminating her without her consent instead of using an anonymous donor. AP
Hayes told The Seattle Times that she “felt uneasy” around the doctor at one point, but dismissed her feelings and continued to see him for treatment over a six-month period.
Hayes has accused Claypool of fraud, failure to obtain consent in violation of state medical malpractice laws and violations of Washington’s consumer protection laws for “his scheme to charge cash for his own sperm, while he represented it was donor sperm.”
According to the lawsuit, Claypool’s “physical characteristics are materially different from Hayes’s husband.”
Sharon Hayes, pictured with her daughter Brianna, said she felt like a “science experiment” after a home DNA test revealed her daughter’s real father. Brianna Hayes
Hayes is seeking damages not only for her physical and emotional injuries, but for “loss of her daughter’s love and friendship, loss of her daughter’s emotional support and injury to the parent-child relationship.”
Last year, Hayes’ daughter Brianna told the Associated Press her family learned that the donor process was poorly known after receiving genetic profiles from genealogy services 23andMe and MyHeritage.
Claypool is her father — and she has at least 16 half-siblings on her side who live in the Spokane area, she told the AP.
Brianna Hayes said her family learned that the donor process is little-known after receiving genetic profiles from genealogy services 23andMe and MyHeritage.KGW8
It was not immediately clear whether the mother of Claypools’ other alleged children was pursuing legal action; according to viewers of the Spokane County Court case, the doctor has faced nine other lawsuits since 1986, but documents from cases before 2005 are not available online.
Brianna uses the site to help explain health issues that “don’t work [her] mother’s side of the family,” including childhood leukemia diagnosed at age 4.
Hayes was unable to find contact information for Claypool to obtain medical information about his donor at the time, he told The Seattle Times.
Brianna Hayes is pictured with one of at least 16 half-siblings, Darci Clark, and mother Sharon Hayes in the Spokane, Washington area. Sharon Hayes
Later, in college, Brianna was diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr virus, which can cause months of fatigue and fever, telling the outlet she “barely passed, [she] very sick.”
Brianna has had five hip surgeries at just 34 years old, she told the outlet, and has been diagnosed with a serious sleep disorder that has severely affected her life.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
