Women being exploited by unlicensed sperm donors offering 'supermarket-style' delivery services on Facebook

Our investigation has uncovered cases of lesbian couples being pressurised to have sex with prospective donors and families served with contracts banning them from future contact - even though these documents hold no legal weight.

Perhaps most astonishingly, LBC has seen evidence of donors offering supermarket-style sperm delivery services where ‘the product’ is shipped to them in parcels encased by frozen vegetables and passata.

In many cases, couples who are ineligible for NHS fertility support resort to the "wild west" of private Facebook groups, where unregulated donors regularly offer sperm donations.

Although many of these men initially claim to offer their sperm for free, some later insist on couples forking out thousands of pounds for travel expenses, hotels, sperm deliveries and other incentives, such as Amazon gift cards.

Families we spoke to also said they felt they were being used for the donor's sexual gratification.

One of those couples was “Kelly and Lauren” (not their real names) – a married couple from Merseyside.

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They don’t qualify for NHS fertility treatment because Kelly already has children from a previous relationship. As a couple, they cannot afford a private clinic.

“We put a picture up of ourselves and said we were looking for a donor via artificial insemination (AI)," Kelly said.

“Then you get people messaging saying, 'will you send me a picture? Will you help me get off in the room? Will you give me a little kiss and tell me that my girlfriend’s gorgeous?'

“The method we wanted to use was AI”, she said. “They do the deed in a pot and we syringe it. We made that clear at the start, but men have been contacting us wanting to do natural insemination (NI) or partial insemination (PI), but I think they’re only doing it for their own gratification.

“It feels like because we’re in a same-sex marriage they want to get involved. They ask us to do things in the room together - to egg them on, basically. It’s disgusting. There are probably men out there who think they can turn lesbians. I do think there’s a lot of that.”

Lauren admitted in her desperation to become a mother, she entertained offers she knew were not genuine:

“We got mainly a lot of people who were abroad, saying, 'we can help you, would you like to see pictures of my children?' But are they real? Some of the pictures look like they’ve come out of a magazine, modelling clothes - we don’t think they’re their real children.

“We asked for up-to-date STI checks, but at the same time it’s a panic - you’re thinking, 'Is it real?' One person said they were a doctor.

“We got one who was from down south and we had to pay his hotel to come here, he said that’s it – and then before handing the sperm over he asked for another £80, then we had to sign a contract to say no contact in the future, and he took copies of our driving licenses as well.

“At first you think they have your best interests at heart, but then it feels dodgy. I dread to think how much we’ve spent. One wanted travel expenses of £180 per time coming from down south, but he wanted it in Amazon vouchers, he didn’t want money going in his bank – why doesn’t he want cash?

“It felt very dodgy. But, when it comes to desperate measures, it’s like your sense goes out of the window. You go home after the deed is done and think what have I done? But, also hoping it works.”

Once accepted into these groups on Facebook, users have access to a network of potential donors who express how they are “willing to travel” and boast about having “a good success rate”, with some uploading images of positive pregnancy tests and baby scans.

Intertwined with these posts are messages from women looking to find a sperm donor to kickstart their family. Many explain the background behind why they are looking, others keep it simple and merely stipulate their rules of engagement.

“Sam” (not her real name) is unable to have children with her husband after he was diagnosed with cancer. She told LBC she has used multiple donors found on Facebook - so far without falling pregnant - and at a cost of around £9,000.

She told us: “These men are very much aware of what they’re doing and how to manipulate things. For a woman who’s desperate to have a child, I don’t think you care as long as you’re getting the sperm.

“We started the process where he [the first donor] would come to the house, and we’d do artificial insemination.

However, Sam explained, the donor then said his car had broken down and instead sent his sperm by post.

She added: “You receive sperm in a box by the Royal Mail no later than 1pm and it comes in a bag with tomato passata frozen to keep it cool. We did that for four months and it didn’t work, and on reflection I think, 'what on earth did I put inside me?'

“You’d message them with your cycle, work out your fertile days, transfer £100 via Amazon gift card, or via bank transfer – although it was never his bank account, it was a female’s – and then the following day by royal mail special delivery you’d receive a box, a bit bigger than a teabag box, you’d get a medicine bottle with sperm in, a Calpol syringe [for application], and in the top of the box would be sieved tomatoes which would be frozen.

“The first time I opened it I was like ‘why is there passata in my box?’

“There seemed to be an awful lot of sperm, but he would say it had a fluid in it to keep it going, looking back there was far too much of it to be one amount.”

In her desperation for a baby, Sam admits she also resorted to natural methods.

“Somehow, after the four months of doing that we ended up going down the natural route and I’ll never forgive myself for doing that.

"It was the one thing I said I wouldn’t do, but I got trapped in the cycle of this man offering me my dreams.”Cara Nuttall, head of family law at Brabners in Manchester, insists there are many donors who are genuinely motivated to help families, but recognises this is not always the case.

“A lot of donors who go into this don't do it for the money," she said, "but other people have much more sinister intentions and it is about multiplying, fathering lots of children, and potentially then causing harassment to some of the families they create

“It's very understandable that people need to explore all of their options to find the right donor and the right circumstances for them. I think the main concern is that this side of donation is completely unregulated."

Ms Nuttall points out that this means families have no idea how many children prospective donors have fathered, and that sexual and genetic health checks have not been carried out.

There are other potential unintended consequences, too:

“One of the main things to understand is that legal parenthood is assigned by operation of law, not intention,” she warned. "If you're not going through a licensed clinic, it's entirely possible that your sperm donor might actually be the legal father and therefore have parental rights and responsibilities as well.”

Tim Jones has been an artificial insemination sperm donor in Sheffield for 30 years. He told LBC that his intentions have always been to help people who need donations for free.

“Some people have been in such financial dire straits they’ve remortgaged their homes, taken extra jobs, gone to loan sharks - and they’ve messaged me so broken because they’ve been scammed.

“No recipient wants NI. Natural means desperation, so I stipulate to all recipients that my sperm is only good enough for artificial insemination.

“Usually we meet for a coffee, I explain the logistics, and if they agree to use me a donor I accept the challenge. I’ve got references - I come recommended.”

Tim admits he is unsure exactly how many children he has fathered, but believes it to be around 35.

“Some have had one donation and I’ve not seen them since, but what I do geographically is – the areas they travel from – I don’t do it again in that area for genetic reasons. Some ask me back because they want their siblings to share DNA.

“The public are, by-and-large, repulsed by it because they think it’s a sexual element or you must be highly sexed because you’re a sperm donor. It’s taboo.”

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is the regulator of fertility treatment in the UK.

Its spokesperson, Clare Ettinghausen, told LBC that unregulated sites are exposing people to "serious medical, legal and emotional risks".

“It is always safer to have treatment at a licensed clinic, where there are laws and guidance to protect and support patients and donors," she said.

“Clinics are required by law to ensure that donors, patients, and any future children are protected by carrying out rigorous health tests, ensuring legal parenthood consents are in place, and offering everyone involved counselling to ensure they are completely informed and comfortable with their decision."

Facebook’s owner, Meta, has been contacted for comment.

Free and impartial information about donation can be found at the HFEA website: www.hfea.gov.uk.