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Woman charges Boston fertility doctor used his own fresh sperm to impregnate her, rather than unfreezing some from the anonymous donor he promised
By adamg on Wed, 12/13/2023 - 2:54pm
A Maine woman today sued a now retired Boston fertility specialist after, she says, she learned that her daughter is actually his, because he impregnated her in his office in 1980 with his own sperm after promising he would use the sperm of a donor who looked like her husband, with whom she was unable to conceive.
Sarah Depoian says she learned of Dr. Merle Berger's deception when her daughter, eager to learn more about her background, had her DNA tested by Ancestry.com and 23&Me:
The resulting family-history reports, delivered to Ms. Depoian’s daughter in early 2023, did not yield a direct result for the biological father of Ms. Depoian’s daughter. But her daughter was intrigued by the fact that it listed numerous people to whom she is related on her father’s side of the family. Among those to whom she is related are Beckett Childs and Mindi Kleinman.
Ms. Depoian’s daughter subsequently found out that Beckett Childs is Dr. Berger’s granddaughter (the daughter of Dr. Berger’s daughter, Alix) and Mindi Kleinman is Dr. Berger’s second cousin. After speaking with one of her newfound relatives, Carolyn pieced together that Berger is her biological father.
Now, her complaint, filed in US District Court in Boston, alleges:
Ms. Depoian felt incredibly violated upon finding out that her doctor inserted his own sperm into her body. She feels like she is the victim of assault. And she is concerned that, if Dr. Berger violated her in this manner, he may have done so to other unsuspecting female patients. ...
Learning of Dr. Berger’s misrepresentations was and is greatly traumatic for Ms. Depoian. She has suffered - and continues to suffer - significant mental anguish, anxiety, stress from physical violations, and sleep disturbances including nightmares, among other injuries. She also has a newfound mistrust of the medical profession.
The Globe reports that Berger's attorneys said Depoian's allegations "have no legal or factual merit, and will be disproven in court."
Depoian's complaint formally accuses Berger, who founded Boston IVF, of fraudulent concealment, intentional misrepresentation - fraud and violation of the Massachusetts consumer-protection law.
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Complete complaint | 272.49 KB |
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Comments
Very circumstantial.
Very circumstantial.
Easy enough to prove
Court ordered cheek swab will resolve this.
No it's not
No it's not, there is DNA evidence that she is related to this doctor.
A 23andme printout is not
A 23andme printout is not "evidence"
im curious
how do you go about choosing sides with these stories? like, is there a rubric you go by?
Assuming the allegation is true...
... what's the statute of limitations on these violations? 1980 was 43 years ago.
And also ...
Any masturbatory emissions, where the sperm is clearly not seeking an egg, could be termed reckless abandonment
Elle Woods
A little light Googling
Suggests it is three years, starting when the plaintiff learns, or reasonably should have learned about the fraud. So when she got the DNA results back, I suppose.
yes, that's the usual rule
but see MGL c. 260 s 4
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIII/TitleV/Chapter260/Sec...
Will be litigated.
But is this any of that?
I'm certainly not a lawyer but I'd imagine there is an argument to be made that an intentional act such as what is described is not any of those 3.
The civil complaint is going after this as acts of fraud and violation of consumer protection laws, not acts of neglectful medicine.
Why they don't allow laymen to practice law
Statutes of limitations apply to criminal charges, not tort law. This is a civil lawsuit.
Cornell says otherwise
See this: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/statute_of_limitations
"Statutes of limitations exist for both civil and criminal causes of action" seems pretty straightforward.
(Are you, yourself, a lawyer?)
Law and Order: Season 5 Episode 15 - Seed
When Jerry O and Chris N were grooving together... it was disturbing then and now.
Scott Grimes on ER
He ends up fathering a mob of gingers on ER because of his "contributions" at the IVF clinic during his days as an intern.
(Every time he shows up on TV I picture him singing "I Believe" on Community Auditions as introduced by Dave Maynard).
"Arrogant is trying to start your own race of people!"
Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy
Maury Season (all) Episode (all)
Bring him back!
What comes on the Merle
You guys are all gross….
:/)
23&Me sure has turned over a lot of rocks
Lots of stories of people learning about infidelity in their family history, although a few about this sort of fraud as well.
(Honestly, I'm not sure I'd even want to know this kind of information. Certainly wouldn't want to give 23&Me my data.)
The tangled DNA web we weave
Like all information, this can be good and bad.
I have a relative who is technically a second cousin. Except she matched to me at the high end of a first cousin level. I'll call her Amy.
Amy's mother is my father's first cousin, and her father is unknown. For years I suspected that Amy's father came from another branch of my family given the amount of DNA she shares with me, but not sure what one.
My first cousin on my mother's side recently did the 23&me, and was surprised to match a woman with a surname from my father's family at a second cousin level - Amy. I introduced them. This means that Amy's unidentified father is likely to have been one of my mother and uncle's first cousins. Now the high match makes sense - she's a double cousin.
My mother's mother had twelve siblings, her father had three, and she has over 50 first cousins - about 30 of those are male. Age and known circumstances narrow that down quite a bit given a huge age range within that group, so we are now very close to identifying who Amy's father is, although we may never know which one exactly.
This has been healing for Amy, as my first cousin and I have started introducing her to the other side of my family. She may not have an exact name, but Amy is happy to have found the other half of her clan.
Also amazing
23&Me doesn't tell other people that they have similar data to yours unless you opt into that. So, not only did this woman's daughter have to want to use 23&Me but then the granddaughter and 2nd cousin of the doctor had to ALSO opt-in to the heritage sharing part for this to have come to light!
Well, that's just one option.
You can also hack in, apparently! (-:
Love Attorneys
It's always interesting to see the piling on of injuries in these types of cases.
Yea but f$#! this guy.
He owes them something.
I don't disagree
but I'm not buying after 60+ years this woman suddenly has a "newfound mistrust of the medical profession" or the infamous "other injuries"
Yea I hear ya.....
But I can see this causing someone some serious mental anguish.
I hate it more when someone has the simple slip and fall and can't ever work again because of the nightmares they keep having from falling.
You have to hand to him
if reproduction is the Darwinian biological imperative, then he won.
He didn't do this just once...
He's about to be a Netflix special...