'I did a DNA test for fun. It showed my dad wasn't my biological father.'

Emily Fae has always been interested in her family’s history. During the COVID lockdowns in early 2020, when she was stuck at home with her toddler, she decided to pay for an online DNA test.

“Finding out more about my ancestry was exciting to me,” Emily tells Mamamia.

“My best friend was interested too, so we both did the test and sent off our samples at the same time. Six weeks later, I got my results.”

At first, Emily, then 27, says everything was normal, apart from a few mysterious discrepancies.

Watch: Amy Tam on SBS Insight in 2020 talks about her experience of being donor conceived. Post continues after video.

“The results said I was half Welsh which was weird as I knew my dad’s family was from Cornwall, not Wales. Also, no one had my dad’s surname but it didn’t occur to me there was anything wrong. I just thought it was cool. Then I received a direct message on Instagram from a teenager in Victoria who said we were related.”

Emily cross checked the results with Ancestry DNA, which confirmed the person was either a first cousin or half sibling. 

“I was like, ‘wow’ and I was excited to find out I had a new relative. She told me she was donor conceived and so I thought my dad or one of my uncle’s must have donated their sperm at some point in the past. It was about 10 or 11pm at night and I called up my mum to tell her my news and it was that phone call that changed my life forever.”

Emily’s mum told her that she was conceived by a sperm donation and the man she had called dad her whole life was not in fact biologically related to her.

“I completely disassociated,” Emily recalls.

“It was the same feeling I had after discovering someone close to me had died. It just didn’t feel real. I had to sit down and end the call with mum almost immediately. I rang a friend to come over as I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep or manage my toddler the next day.” 

Over next few days, Emily exchanged a few messages with her mum to find out more details.

“She said that they had used an anonymous donor and didn’t know all that much about him. She also said that they had ‘completely forgotten’ they had even used a donor but when they found out I was doing the DNA test, Dad had some concerns I would discover the truth.

“I decided to go and visit them in Perth and see my dad face to face. There were tears and a lot of difficult conversations and then I returned home. Things were hard for a couple of weeks afterwards.”

Emily spoke with her new found half sister about how to move forward and decided to put all of her grief and emotion into finding their biological father. The sisters soon discovered this would not be an easy process.

“I began by calling the clinic where I was conceived and they were not happy to hear from me. They referred me to a WA government organisation that provides assistance to donor conceived people and adoptees. 

“It was during a two hour phone call with them I discovered that as I was born prior to 2004, I had no legal rights whatsoever to find out who my biological father was. He was anonymous and that was it. I managed to get the ‘donor code’ for him and nothing else. I quickly realised I was on my own searching for information.”

By joining various Facebook groups for donor conceived people, Emily found out that it was easy to find biological parents using the commercially available DNA test results. 

“The closest match that I could find to my biological father was a third cousin of his and I tried to do a lot of the work myself in building the family tree up, out and down to find possible contenders. But I needed help and that’s where an online DNA search group came into it. 

“I posted my story on their private Facebook page and I immediately had about 20 people willing to help. Within two weeks one of them had three candidates for me to consider.”

One of the three men had lived his whole life in Wales which immediately ruled him out, but he had a pair of cousins, brothers who were born in Wales but lived in Perth. Emily realised that her biological father was one of these two men.

“I began looking into them online and finding out more about them via Google and Facebook. At this time they were both in their late 40s with families of their own. One of them seemed very different to me, whereas the other seemed to share a lot of similar characteristics. He was very loud and controversial with his views - like me - he was ‘a lot’. 

“I knew it was a risk to reach out so once I felt sure I was contacting the right brother, I sat down and wrote him an email. I looked at it over and over again and then pressed ‘send’. I just kept moving as fast as I could.” 

Emily’s biological father received the email immediately and as she later found out, was shell shocked. After a follow up message on Facebook, he replied to her a couple of days later.

“I discovered he lived about 20 minutes away from me and it was entirely possible I had walked past him many times while growing up. We emailed back and forth about his family and his life and while he knew it was him, he had an Ancestry DNA test to be 100 per cent sure which confirmed our connection. 

“We decided to meet up in January 2021 at a pub with his wife. It went really well and they were as welcoming as possible for such a complicated situation, but it was very emotional.”

While the meeting went well, Emily says they all understood the need to tread carefully. 

“We were all very cautious about people’s feelings and making sure that everyone was okay and respectful. I was happy because I have always been different from my own family but when I met my biological father, it made complete sense. 

“There were parts of me that I had been so ashamed of, for being so different, that I could finally forgive myself for because it was inevitable. There was no way I was going to be anyone different as this man's biological child.”

Emily Fae. Image: Supplied.

Since finding and meeting her biological father, Emily has become very involved in advocacy work for Donor Conceived Australia (DCA), a national organisation that assists and advocates for donor conceived people. 

She has also decided to try and track down other members of her extended donor family and siblings.

“I found out from the clinic that according to the sperm distribution records I was allowed access to, there were 26 recipient families in four years out of a possible 14 years. I found two children from one recipient family and my half sister in Victoria found another 15 children. That means there are 17 of us half siblings with the same biological father - that we know of. 

“When I asked the clinic for an estimate of how many more there could be from the decade we don’t know about, they said it could be up to 100 as they were sending his donations all over Australia.”

While this type of distribution is no longer legal since the laws changed in 2004, Emily says that even when she was conceived, the clinic told her parents and donor that there would be no more than five recipient families in WA, which was false as the distribution lists show.

“Since getting involved with DCA I have heard many similar stories about donor conceived people, including those born after 2004, who have found numerous half siblings. 

“The clinics might say they will only create five families in WA but that doesn’t stop them sending the donations elsewhere in Australia. It horrifies me to think how many sibling cohorts of anonymous donors there are, and the issues this could create if they ever hooked up.”

When Emily relayed the news of her large extended family to her biological father, he was understandably shocked.

“I don’t think a 20 year old university student really thinks about the long term implication of donating and I think the clinics have a lot to answer for by recruiting young men - especially when they used to pay them.

“I think too that because my biological father was only 20 he was ‘healthy’ in that he was young enough not to have any known medical conditions, but since then medical things have come up for him that may have implications for me and the other half siblings. 

“There’s the other side too - my parents were vulnerable in wanting to conceive and they were told by the clinic at the time to not tell me the truth of my donor conception unless they wanted to ‘traumatise me’ which is just bad advice. And in the donor conceived community it is an incredibly common experience.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Donor Conceived Australia (@dc_aust)

Emily is slowly rebuilding her relationship with her parents through open discussion and empathy.

“At first, I felt very betrayed by my parents for not telling me the truth and I was resentful. But after the many conversations that I've had, I have such empathy towards them, especially towards my dad for raising me knowing that I wasn't his biological child. 

“I was not the easiest child or teenager either and they have never stopped supporting me in anyway that I needed. They have always been there no matter what I have put them through or thrown at them. And I feel like it's my duty to do the same for them. I can't fault them for following their doctor's advice.”

The relationship with her biological father and his family is a little more complicated.

“We chat every month or so on social media and his kids are not interested in getting to know me or my half sister just yet. I totally respect their choice as they are still young, but I’m hoping eventually they change their minds. My mum and dad will always be my ‘mum and dad’ but it is clear this man is my biological father.” 

Emily’s unexpected journey to discovering who she really is, has been life changing and there are many things she wants people to know about donor conception and being a donor conceived child.

“I am currently going through my own fertility issues in the quest for a second child, but knowing what I know about the industry, my partner and I have decided we could not use a donor. I am not against donor conception but I don’t agree with anonymous donations, and my fiancé and I don’t feel it is the right pathway for us.

"It’s just so complex and sometimes just because we can do something scientifically or medically amazing, doesn’t mean we should. Fertility clinics are not just making cute little babies, they are creating humans, not products." 

Emily believes that things are getting better with donor conception and the industry generally, but that it is far from perfect. 

“This industry has to be as ethical as possible because there are so many vulnerable people involved; from the young donors to the recipient families who desperately want a baby and the resulting babies conceived from donations.

“At the end of the day, it’s a human right to know who we are and where we come from. It's intrinsic to our identity and it’s all we want.”

Donor Conceived Australia is a national, not for profit charitable organisation led by donor-conceived people offering support, education and advocacy on behalf of people conceived via Assisted Reproductive Treatments (ART) - including sperm, egg and embryo donation throughout Australia.

To find out more about Donor Conceived Australia visit their website. 

Feature Image: Supplied.