Black twins for a white family... and an infidelity that was ruined by a lollipop!

Imagine the shock that struck a British couple as they gazed at the long-awaited birth of their twins. The birth was anticipated, but the shocking thing was that they were black, unlike their parents!

The happy accident of the twins' birth occurred on July 9, 2002, and quickly turned into an unprecedented scandal after DNA tests revealed that the twins' father was a dark-skinned man from the Netherlands Antilles.

The white couple had undergone in vitro fertilization after years of infertility. The husband's sperm was combined with the mother's eggs in a laboratory, and then the eggs were implanted in the mother's uterus.

Investigations suggested that the error occurred either because the clinic used sperm from a Black man to fertilize the white mother's eggs, or because an embryo from a Black couple was accidentally implanted into the white mother's womb.

This unprecedented case garnered widespread international attention and sparked complex legal battles in Britain over the families' rights and medical ethics.

The white British couple expressed a strong desire to keep the Black twins, whose parents also underwent IVF at the same clinic. The biological parents maintained custody of the twins.

Amid the legal wrangling, a Supreme Court ruling prevented the disclosure of the identities of the families, the clinic involved in the scandal, or even the local health service.

Embryologists in Britain described the error as extremely rare and attributed it to human errors by medical professionals in examining sperm, eggs, or embryos during IVF procedures.

At the same time, the British National Health Service acknowledged the "extremely unfortunate error" and introduced new, more stringent classification protocols similar to those used for blood transfusions.

On the other hand, Sammy Lee, an embryologist at Portland Hospital, pointed out that identifying embryos based on ethnicity through pre-implantation screening is possible, but it is fraught with ethical issues.

Similar errors have occurred in IVF several times, the most notorious of which occurred in the Netherlands, when a white woman gave birth to mixed-race twins.

The scandal unfolded in the Dutch city of Utrecht on December 1, 1993. William Stewart and his wife, Wilma, were white and had a genetic record free of any foreign blood, and were awaiting their first child after six years of childlessness. To realize their dream, they resorted to IVF.

Things went well, and the twins were born three minutes apart. The first was named "Tion" and had fair skin, like his parents. The second, named "Queen," had dark skin and curly hair, and looked nothing like anyone else in either family.

Imagine the father's face when his sons were first presented to him! The situation was extremely difficult, and William immediately refused to acknowledge the children and even accused his wife of infidelity!

The couple's relationship deteriorated. They sought the help of a family psychologist, and doctors intervened to find out what had happened. Six months after the twins' birth, the mystery was solved.

A DNA comparison revealed that William Stewart was the biological father of only one of the twins, "Tion," who had fair skin. The father of the second, dark-skinned child was another man who had undergone in vitro fertilization at the same clinic and had given birth to a boy. This man was found to have been born on the island of Aruba, off the coast of Venezuela.

How, then, did another man's genes end up in Wilma Stewart's fetus?

Investigations revealed the secret, revealing that a nurse had simply forgotten to wash the pacifier when she took the substance from the two men, the unnamed Caribbean man and the Dutchman, Willem Stewart.

The two families entered into a legal dispute, but fortunately, the parents were able to reach an agreement. The Caribbean father relinquished his parental rights, while Willem adopted the black twins.

William Stewart and his wife appeared in all the local media outlets and, for a time, became a household name. They made this effort not out of financial gain, but rather to prevent neighbors and friends from whispering about their wife's infidelity when they saw twins with completely different skin tones!

Source: RT - https://ar.rt.com/108ny Published on 9-7-2025