DNA Family Secrets: Who Is My Sperm Donor Father?

Описание: Podcast: Mel's story    • DNA Family Secrets: Who Is My Sperm Donor ...  
Over 6000 sperm donor babies were born in the 1970s. 46-year-old Mel, only found out as a teenager that she is one of them. Mel wants to discover if testing her DNA might reveal her donor's identity and find any potential family.

After my parents divorced, I think it was hard for my mum to tell me, but I'm so glad she did.
I didn't ask much about the donor’s sperm because doctors were like gods then, you never questioned them, you just did what they told you.

Fast forward a couple of decades, there are all these children…

Yes, that don't know where they originate from.

I just think it's appalling, the clinic's not there anymore, I think it's a car park now and so I'm just hoping that we'll get some answers, and it'll just make everything all right. I just need to know, who's my sperm donor father?

Hello.

Hi.

Nice to see you again.

Nice to see you.

Come on in.

Okay, I know you're probably really nervous.

Yes.

So, what we did was take your DNA and analyse it, against the nearly 30 million people who are in databases. And what we're doing is, we're looking to see where you get DNA matches to, and because we know about your mum's side, we can park that to one side, and have a look and see where we're getting matches to for your biological father.

Okay.

Now with sperm donation, I can tell you from my own experience, it tends to be a bit of a long shot, but sometimes you can have some really unexpected surprises that come up.

Okay.

And we got really lucky. We've found matches that are from your biological father's side.

Wow.

And they're close. It's a case of looking at where you're getting the matches, building family trees using, birth, marriage, death records and that allowed us to kind of triangulate in really quite quickly. So let me draw you a family tree.

That research led us to Lily Agnes Leeming, and she married a chap called Harry Ridyard. They're from Cheshire, they are your paternal grandparents. And we know that they had three sons, Alan, Gerald, and Richard.

So, we know, Alan did not do any sperm donation. We know that from the DNA analysis that Richard is your uncle. So that leads us to Lily and Harry's middle son, Gerald Ridyard, and we believe he is your biological father.

Really? Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, and he was born in 1935.

Oh wow, thank you. I can't believe it, thank you.

You're welcome, how are you doing?

Yeah, no good, yeah.

Good.

Over the moon.

Yeah. Okay so this is as far as the DNA can take you, but I know Stacey has got some more information for you.

Okay, thank you, thank you so much.