Woman’s Suit Against UCI Alleges Boy Is Her Offspring

UC Irvine’s legal troubles stemming from the human egg-swapping scandal at its once prestigious clinic continued Wednesday as a Sacramento woman filed a lawsuit contending a 7-year-old boy is the offspring of eggs and embryos stolen from her.

Gloria Allred and Michael Maroko, the Los Angeles attorneys who represent Renee Ballou, 38, and her ex-husband, Wesley Eugene Presson, said the number of lawsuits now ranges between 30 and 40 but that Ballou’s is one of several known to involve a live birth.

“This event has forced me to relive all the heartbreak of the past and compounded the reality that someone else has my son,” Ballou said Wednesday in a statement, noting that she and Presson were unable to conceive “the child that we longed for.”

Former UCI physicians Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone are under investigation by state and federal authorities in the far-reaching scandal. The doctors have denied any deliberate wrongdoing.

Allred said Ballou sought treatment as far back as 1987, one year after Asch and Balmaceda opened a clinic in Garden Grove. Ballou said she initially saw Stone at UCI, who then recommended Asch and Balmaceda.

She alleges that in May or June of 1987 either Asch or Balmaceda took eggs from her body that were then fertilized with the sperm of her ex-husband. She claims to have been asked if she wished for her extra eggs to be donated to other women--and declined.

Thus, “it came as a shock,” Ballou said, when she learned only last October that “without her knowledge or consent, at least one of her eggs had been fertilized and implanted in another woman, who became pregnant and gave birth to a boy,” according to the suit.

Allred said that Ballou would like to see the boy, who’s believed to be living in Southern California, but that she hasn’t decided “what would be appropriate” in terms of custody.