An extraordinary new paper tells the story of how a woman discovered she has at least 40 siblings – and possibly over 100 – after discovering her father had secretly donated sperm to dozens of women.
Chrysta Bilton, who grew up in Los Angeles, was only 23 and had just graduated in 2007 when she made the extraordinary discovery that her father Jeffrey Harrison, who had donated sperm to her lesbian mother himself, had fathered many more children .
Her amazing new book, A Normal Family: The Surprising Truth About My Crazy Childhood (And How I Discovered 35 New Siblings) is published in the UK this week and takes the reader through the dramatic turns of her unique life from a chaotic childhood to living with a Mother involved in pyramid scams and cults – leaving the family in both poverty and wealth – until discovering in her 20s that she had “possibly over a hundred” siblings.
Chrysta Bilton, 37, grew up in Los Angeles with her mother Debra — a lesbian who flitted between cults — and younger sister Kaitlyn
Jeffrey Harrison, also known asspender 150, received $2,000 for his sperm from Bilton’s mother, Debra, in the early ’80s
Harrison played a role in his two daughters’ lives with Debra … but continued to give through California Cyrobank, making between $300 and $400 a month
The book is described as a “love letter” to her mother Debra, now 75, who only told her daughters the truth about her father, Jeffrey Harrison – who was known as “Donor 150” – and the families he had started after she had noticed that her eldest daughter Bilton might be dating her own half brother.
The memoir details how the author and her younger sister Kaitlyn spent their childhoods oscillating between periods of “extreme wealth and extreme poverty,” and said the siblings lived in both mansions and on the streets when their mother lived with different ones went out with women and joined several cults. trying to make millions through dubious pyramid scams.
Debra, now 75, put her daughters together at 23 and broke the news that the sisters may have “a couple of siblings” after reading an article about their father, Jeffrey Harrison’s sperm donation (Image: Chrysta Bilton with her mother during their childhood).
Debra, Harrison and Bilton as a baby; More than two decades later, Debra discovered that Harrison had fathered many more children
Bilton, with her younger sister Kaitlyn, right, during their messy childhood. When she found out her father had donated 150, she said: “My sister and I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, it was all so absurd.”
As a single gay woman, she wanted to have children of her own, Debra had paid Harrison $2,000 for his sperm and asked him to play a role in her daughters’ lives, which he did… but didn’t reveal to the family that he did continued to sell his sperm to other women.
With the California Cryobank, Harrison would make between $300 and $400 a month from sperm donations, and it’s estimated he has about 100 biological children — with Bilton in touch with at least 40 of them.
She recounts how her mother finally broke the news of her potential extended family to the sisters, telling them, “Your father was a secret sperm donor and you have a couple of biological brothers and sisters.”
Bilton is now a mother herself and has children aged five and seven with her husband Nick, a British journalist
One of Bilton’s half-siblings shared a photo of the extended family gathering on Instagram
Debra, now 75, pictured in a recent Instagram post on Bilton’s account, approves of the book – with her daughter saying the memoir is a “love letter” to her mother
She told The Times this week: “My sister and I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh, it was all so absurd. If that would happen to anyone, it would of course be us. That was just the crazy life we lived.’
Bilton’s book, out this week, documents her childhood and the discovery of donor 150 in her early twenties
In an interview with Woman’s Hour, Bilton also explained that she feels differently now about her extended family and has even invited many of them over to her home for dinner.
She told the BBC Radio 2 show ahead of the book’s release that her father was a “complex man” who struggled with mental health issues and periods of homelessness.
Bilton told the show that her brief relationship with her half-brother after graduation “is what happens when sperm donation isn’t regulated and you have a lot of half-siblings.”
The mother-of-two says it took her 10 years to get over “the trauma” of revealing her father’s insemination of so many women – but says she now accepts her unconventional family structure.
“I invited them all to visit me at my house and my attitude towards that has changed — now I see them as this extended biological family.”
A Normal Family: The Surprising Truth About My Crazy Childhood (And How I Discovered 35 New Siblings) by Chrysta Bilton is published by Monoray and costs £16.99