AKRON, Ohio — It was August of 1991 when Jeanine and John “Mike” Harvey found themselves parents-to-be through an intrauterine insemination procedure in Akron.
They welcomed their daughter, Jessica, the following year.
“Harvey girls were very rare in the family, so we were so excited,” Jeanine said.
Years went by.
“We raised her in an Italian home and we were surrounded by the Italian neighborhood of family,” Jeanine said.
But then, an unexpected situation surfaced that the family says turned their world upside down.
“Leading up to Christmas in 2020, my husband and I were planning a trip to Europe,” their daughter, Jessica, said. “How cool we thought it would be to connect with distant relatives in the country that we might be visiting. My parents got us Ancestry DNA kits as Christmas gifts – and since then our lives have never been the same and never will be.”
Upon getting the DNA test results, the family says they learned that Jessica’s dad was not her biological father as they had believed all along.
“Shock. Disbelief. Doubt. Anger. Uncertainty. Grief," all words Jeanine used to explain their feelings.
“I still struggle sleeping at night thinking about it. … Her heritage has literally been stripped away from her.”
On Feb. 2, the family filed a lawsuit against Summa Health in Akron and Dr. Nicholas Spirtos for the alleged DNA mix-up. The law firm says Dr. Spirtos was serving as the Chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and In Vitro Fertilization/Embryo Transfer at Summa Akron City Hospital (now Summa Health System).
The Harveys and their attorneys held a press conference earlier this week to discuss the circumstances of their lawsuit, which you can watch below:
“This case involves an unsuspecting couple who sought the help of a trusted doctor at a trusted health system on their journey to parenthood,” said Adam Wolf, a partner with lawn firm Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise. “The Harveys’ objective was very straightforward. They needed help facilitating a pregnancy through an insemination procedure that would use Mr. Harvey’s sperm that would fertilize Mrs. Harvey’s egg.”
Wolf said what they got “was a devastating betrayal with life-altering consequences.”
3News reached out to Summa Health on Friday and received the following response:
"We are aware of an allegation that has been made claiming in 1991 a patient was artificially inseminated with the semen from a person who is not her husband. We take this allegation seriously and understand the impact this has on the family. At this point, we have not met with the family or conducted testing of our own. Given the very limited information that we have and the amount of time that has passed, it remains our hope that the attorneys representing the family will work with us to make that next step a priority." -- Mike Bernstein, System Director, Corporate Communications for Summa Health.
When the DNA results first came back, the family took another home test with a different company, according to Ashlie Case Sletvold, a partner at the law firm. Both Jessica and Mike also underwent separate paternity testing at an independent lab, she said.
“The results of these tests confirmed that Mr. Harvey is not Jessica’s biological father,” Sletvold said during the press conference. “Through extensive research of genealogy records, we identified Jessica’s biological father.”
Sletvold said the man confirmed that he and his wife were also patients of the same doctor during that time. After agreeing to a paternity test, Sletvold said the results confirmed that he is Jessica's biological father.
“He was just as shocked as the Harveys to learn this fact,” Sletvold said.
She said the family wants the truth about how this happened.
“Did Summa fail to properly clean its lab equipment?” Sletvold asked. “Was this result of Summa’s mixing up patients sperm samples?”
Sletvold said they first reached out to Summa Health and Dr. Spirtos regarding the situation in July of 2021.
“It has been almost seven months since we first advised defendants of our clients’ claims,” she said. “Summa Health System and Dr. Spirtos have offered no explanation for how Jessica was conceived using a stranger’s DNA.”
She also said Summa Health nor Dr. Spirtos have never asked to meet with the clients or offer any testing of their own.
“We will do everything in our power to ensure that this kind of misconduct never harms another family.”
The lawsuit, which was filed in Summit County Common Pleas Court, says the plaintiffs “have suffered severe emotional trauma as a result of this betrayal.”
“As a husband and a father, it’s extremely difficult to watch your family in pain,” Mike said. “And the source of the pain is something that I’ll never be able to change. Learning that your entire reality isn’t what you believed it to be is hard to explain. It’s like waking up in someone else’s life.”
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