A Dallas woman is struggling after learning that not one, but two men she believed to be her biological father were not; instead, she learned she had been fathered by her mother's fertility doctor without her mother's knowledge.

Key Takeaways:

Eve Wiley was 16 years old when she discovered the man she had known as her dad was not her biological father. He had died when she was seven.

She was told a sperm donor named Steve was her biological father, and when she was 19, the two met in person.

The two began bonding over the years, with Steve even officiating her wedding.

After undergoing DNA testing, however, she learned Steve wasn't her biological father either, leaving Wiley stunned.

She eventually learned that Kim McMorries, her mother's fertility doctor, was her biological father.

The Details:

In an interview with the "No Filter" podcast, Wiley, who is now 38, spoke about the trauma of discovering she was conceived by her mother's fertility doctor. She began by discussing how she learned she was donor-conceived.

“My mum was a nurse at my school,” Eve said. “I had this little habit where I would go into her emails and find all the juicy gossip on my cohorts. That’s when I found the emails in my mum’s personal inbox from California cryobank and I saw my birth date on it."

Originally from a small town, Wiley's grandfather had a farm, and she assumed it had to do with artificial insemination regarding his cows. Her birth date, however, made her realize that she was the one who had been donor-conceived.

"I went to bed, and I woke up the next morning, and my mom was in the bathroom getting ready, and I just barged in, and I was like, 'Mom, I know that Doug isn't my dad,'" she said. "And I just remember her looking at me in the reflection of the mirror and just turning around like, 'What are you talking about?' And she starts bawling. And at the time, as a naive 16 year old, I was excited. For me, I didn't understand the complexities of donor conception, in a social sense, but also in an ethical sense. I was like, I still have a dad, I probably have half-siblings."

Her mother explained that the man who raised her, Doug, was not her biological father; he had died when Wiley was seven. Her mother had been advised to never tell her the truth about her parentage. Instead, she planned to tell her later, and presented her with a folder full of medical information.

"There definitely was a lot of grief, and there was a level of trauma of not having that father figure growing up," Wiley said. "But for me, I think it was just trying to look at it in more of a positive sense."

Eve Wiley’s Father Was A Serial Sperm Donor…And He’s Not Alone

Zoom In:

Wiley's mother and father had struggled to get pregnant, and doctors believed it was due to Doug's medical problems. They were advised to use a sperm donor, which they did, although four months after Wiley was born, her younger sister was conceived naturally.

"When we sat my sister down and we told her, she started crying," Wiley said. "And the only thing she said before she ran out of the room was, 'Well, at least you have a dad.' And that was it. And that hurt because then it was like, now I feel guilt."

Eventually, Wiley was able to track down a man named Steve, who she believed to be her biological father. After over a year of filing requests, the cryobank eventually contacted him, and he learned he had a daughter, which had shocked him; he had donated sperm for research, and forgotten all about it. And though he had three young children, he still embraced Wiley. They eventually met in person, and began to build a close bond over the years. They became so close that he even officiated Wiley's wedding.

But that façade began to crumble when Wiley had children of her own.

"When he was a baby, he was vomiting a lot and he wasn't eating real food," she said of her son. "And there were all of these things that all of our doctors were like, you know, these allergies, and no one could really figure out what it is. And so at about three years old, I was like, we got to do something different. And so they recommended looking in more into like genetics. I was working with this functional medicine doctor, and he was like, 'Let's get some info on your DNA.'"

So Wiley took a commercial DNA test and gave her doctor access to the raw data, which helped them make a diagnosis for her son: celiac disease. But because it is a hereditary, genetic disease, that led to more questions.

Through the commercial DNA platform, she was able to connect with some of her half-siblings, who told her the disturbing truth: their father was Kim McMorries, the fertility doctor who had treated Wiley's mother.

The hardest part, she said, was breaking the news to Steve. “We just cried and cried and cried," she said. "At the very end of the conversation he said, ‘It changes some things, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re my daughter.’ That was all I needed to hear.”

She has since discovered she has at least 16 half-siblings.

The Big Picture:

McMorries didn't retire until 2021, and maintained a medical license until he voluntarily surrendered it in 2024. But knowledge of his illicit practices has been public for years.

“When this occurred, it was not considered wrong,” McMorries told Wiley in an e-mail in 2019. “No one ever considered the effect of genetic testing 32 years later."

McMorries claimed Wiley's mother, Margo Williams, had consented to an anonymous donation, which justified him impregnating her with his sperm. "I thought she understood this," he said. But she denied the claim, saying they intentionally chose a donor who was not local.

“(McMorries) was our doctor, not our donor,” Margo Williams told the Texas Medical Board. “We would never have agreed to him being the biological father of our child. Because we live in a small town and concerned about biodiversity and accidental incest among offspring, we chose two donors through California Cryobank and refused a local donor."

Other women impregnated by McMorries likewise said they never consented, and yet, the Texas Medical Board still did not strip him of his license to practice medicine.

Up until he retired, he was able to continue practicing, despite the Texas Medical Board being aware of what he had done.

“There’s a lot of secrecy, it seems, behind the Texas Medical Board,” Jessica Stavena, another woman impregnated by McMorries, said. “They're there to protect us as patients, as the ones being treated by doctors. But it feels more like they're there to protect the doctors and hide the lies and deception behind some of their practice.” 

The Bottom Line:

Wiley has begun campaigning on behalf of victims of fertility fraud. But the sad reality is, fertility fraud is allowed to happen because the fertility industry remains unregulated, and prioritizes the wants of adults over the needs of children.