14 | DECEMBER 24 • 2020 

MAYA GOLDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

IN 
THE
JEWS D
ON THE COVER

An Unknown

W

hen sisters Lynn Neher and Jaime Hall, 
then Lynn and Jaime Brown, were grow-
ing up in a non-Jewish household in 
Bloomfield Hills in the 1960s, they thought of them-
selves as polar opposites. 
Jaime had dark hair, pale skin and blue eyes. Lynn 
had blond hair, olive skin and green eyes. They had 
a running joke in the family that Jaime was the mail-
man’s daughter, Lynn told the Jewish News. 
Jaime, of course, wasn’t the mailman’s daughter. But 
decades later, she and Lynn found out that they were, 
indeed, half-sisters. They’
d both been conceived via 
artificial insemination at the Detroit practice of Dr. 
Philip Peven. Lynn’s sperm donor was then an intern 
at Grace Hospital. And Jaime’s biological father, as 
now suggested by DNA tests, was Dr. Peven himself. 

“A BIT OF A SHOCK”
Jaime, 61, and Lynn, 63, began to question their true 
parentage in 2008, when their stepfather passed away 
and their stepsister decided to spill the family secret 
she’
d promised to tell upon his death: Their dad 
wasn’t their biological father. 
“I just said, ‘Yeah, right. Like, I believe that.
’ I mean, 
just talk about utter shock after utter shock,
” Lynn 
said.
A few weeks later, Jaime got in touch with Dr. 
Peven, who she said confirmed he’
d helped their 
parents with fertility treatments. (Dr. Peven did not 
respond to multiple interview requests from the JN 

for this story, and his son Roger Peven declined to 
comment on his behalf.)
Dr. Peven told her that he didn’t have records of 
their births, but that he thought Lynn’s biological 
father had been a resident at the hospital. They often 
used interns or residents who looked like the dads as 
donors, Jaime says he told her on that first call. Jaime 
eventually got her mother to admit that Jaime’s donor 
had been a close family friend. 
In 2015, Jaime and Lynn’s mother passed away. 
Lynn ordered an AncestryDNA testing kit, but it 
didn’t lead her to any information about her biologi-
cal father. In 2018, she decided to provide a sample to 
23andMe as well — soon, she learned of a half-sister. 
She connected with the sister, who’
d been raised by 
their shared father. The sister told Lynn that her dad 
had, in fact, worked as an intern at Grace Hospital 
around the time Lynn was born. 
At this point, Jaime decided to do a DNA test as 
well. She’
d already connected with the family of her 
supposed donor. She’
d assumed her results would 
tell her she was nearly 100% Scottish. But that wasn’t 
what she found. 
“To see that I was 50% Ashkenazi Jew was a bit of a 
shock!” Jaime said. 
Through the other relatives who came up as close 
DNA matches on AncestryDNA and 23andMe, Jaime 
deduced that she was related to Dr. Peven in some 
way. When Dr. Peven’s grandson showed up on her 
platform as her nephew, she became more certain the 
doctor was her biological father. (Jaime shared her 
23andMe results with the JN.)
Eventually, Jaime connected with Dr. Peven 
again. She said he told her that her mom had 
brought in her own donor sample, but that he 
threw it away and used his own because he knew it 
was “pure and viable.” 
In her conversations with Dr. Peven, Jaime has 
come to think of him as a scientific man who was just 
trying to help families become whole. But she still 
wonders about the ethics of his actions. 

Longtime Jewish Detroit 
fertility doctor used his 
own sperm to inseminate 
patients, new DNA tests 
show.

Mishpachah

