VIDEO: IVF embryo mix-up discovered 30 years later

SASHA SZAFRANSKI: It's always been mum, my sister and I, just the three of us. 

ELISE KINSELLA, REPORTER: Growing up in Coffs Harbour Sasha Szafranski never really felt like she belonged.

SASHA SZAFRANSKI:  I came home, I think I was seven or eight and I sat down with mum and my sister and I looked at them and I said, “I know I'm adopted. Just tell me, you got to just tell me.”

And I think they spent about 45 minutes convincing me that I was not adopted. And I just remember thinking, fine, fine. Okay, I'm not adopted. I'm just weird.

ELISE KINSELLA:  Years later as Sasha approached 30, she wanted to find out more about her father’s Polish heritage.

She sent her DNA away to a genealogy tracing website. It found no link to Poland.

SASHA SZAFRANSKI:  I just thought no, they’ve got the wrong spit

ELISE KINSELLA:  But that wasn’t the only surprise. According to the site, she had relatives she’d never known about.

SASHA SZAFRANSKI: I've clicked the matches and then first thing, boom, full sibling, full sister.

It wasn't just the sister, there was someone else that came up under that. It came up as a maternal aunt. 

AUNT:  I see you’re a close DNA match with me. Do you know how we are related? 

ELISE KINSELLA:  They started chatting online. The new aunt also lived in Coffs Harbour. 

SASHA SZAFRANSKI: Which was a bit like, oh okay, weird.

ELISE KINSELLA:  Then came this message.

AUNT:  You wouldn’t happen to be IVF babies?

SASHA SZAFRANSKI: Then the penny dropped and I was just like, oh, there were words that I used and then it all started to kind of sit with me for a minute.

ELISE KINSELLA:  Sasha and her twin sister were born in 1995 via IVF. Her parents struggled to conceive and went through multiple rounds. 

PENELOPE SZAFRANSKI: I'd sort of given up. I'll just have one more go. I'll just try it one more time. And if it goes, if it works, it works and if it doesn't and then I think we're done.

ELISE KINSELLA:  On that final attempt, Sasha’s mum Penny fell pregnant with twins. 

PENELOPE SZAFRANSKI: All of a sudden you've got these, these little babies. Not just one, but I've got two, you know, gorgeous girls.

My girls are everything.

ELISE KINSELLA:  But the DNA website connected Sasha to a different family. Sasha’s newfound maternal aunt had further questions.

SASHA SZAFRANSKI:  She asked, did you match with this person who was on the paternal side as well? And that's when I went, oh God, it's, it's two. It's the egg and the sperm. It’s embryo.

ELISE KINSELLA: Further DNA tests confirmed Sasha’s new family tree.

Another couple, also from Coffs Harbour, were the biological parents of Sasha and her twin sister.

They had another daughter years later who showed up as Sasha’s full sibling.

PENELOPE SZAFRANSKI: They just, they just sort of said, um, there was a mix up, mum, we're not, we are not your biological children. I said, “What? You know, what are you talking about? I know you are. I was there.”

And then they tried to explain. They had known for a while and they tried, hoping against hope that what they found out wasn’t right. So they’d all the tests and they’d had DNA and they said we’re sorry but they knew that they weren’t mine. 

ELISE KINSELLA:  Both couples had IVF through the same hospital, Royal North Shore in Sydney in 1995.

Only Penny’s transfer was successful, which resulted in the twins.

PENELOPE SZAFRANSKI: I didn't think about any checking things and worrying about it. And is that definitely my embryo? I don’t know why you'd think otherwise that Well, now maybe, but back then, why would you think otherwise?

ELISE KINSELLA:  Both families have hired lawyers to investigate what went wrong and who was responsible, but they still don’t have any answers 

SASHA SZAFRANSKI:  If you have the ability to create life, you should have the ability to put it in the right person. 

ELISE KINSELLA:  In the early ‘90s the IVF Clinic at Royal North Shore was public, run by the state government.

But the local health district told 7.30 that in August 1994 a company called North Shore A.R.T took over the hospital’s fertility clinic.

That’s nearly a year before Penny’s transfer took place. 

North Shore A.R.T was later acquired by a company that eventually became part of Virtus Health – one of the country’s largest IVF providers. 

In a statement Virtus Health also denied responsibility. 

Has anyone apologized to you?

PENELOPE SZAFRANSKI: No. Because no one's owning up, no one's accepting responsibility for it. No, one’s said anything to us

MARK BUTLER, HEALTH MINISTER:  The idea this is being buck passed between a state government department and a private provider, while these families frankly languish without answers and without any support or counselling support, is completely unacceptable and it’s got to change quickly. 

ELISE KINSELLA:  The NSW Health Minister Ryan Park declined to comment with a spokesperson saying it would be inappropriate while enquiries continued.

The Szafranski’s case is now the second known embryo mix up where a child was born to a separate family.

Last year, Monash IVF admitted a child had been born to a family they were not related to after an embryo mix-up in Brisbane.

When approached by 7.30, Federal Health Minister Mark Bulter said it was the first he'd heard of Sasha’s discovery.

MARK BUTLER:  One of the real concerns that we've identified in the sector today, let alone the sector 30 years ago, is a lack of transparency around the mistakes that are made. The fact is serious mistakes are not reported transparently, not even to me as Australia's health minister. And that's got to change. 

ELISE KINSELLA:  For decades, two families lived side by side in Coffs Harbour, unaware of the connection between them.

SASHA SZAFRANSKI: Right over there is where the biological family are. So we were 15 minutes separated for something like 24 years.

ELISE KINSELLA:  Last year, Sasha took the short drive across town to meet her biological parents for the first time.

SASHA SZAFRANSKI: It's like walking into a house you've never been in, but knowing where the light switches are, like I know how to talk to these people.

They're not ready to speak publicly. There is no roadmap. There's no guide. 

For now, we're just still getting to know each other. It's kind of like a really awkward first date.

My mum's still my mum. She birthed me. She looked after me. She's cared for me. I'm, I'm her daughter. It erases nothing. But it does change everything. And I, I just hope that we can all get to a point where we can heal. 

PENELOPE SZAFRANSKI: The mistake that they made 30 years ago is just our life now. We just have to get on with it somehow. But it shouldn't be, we shouldn't have to do that.