In what sounds like a storyline straight out of an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Moniek Wassenaar is confronting the widow of recently deceased fertility doctor Jan Karbaat who bragged about using his own sperm to inseminate his patients.

Together with 22 other donor children and parents Wassenaar is going to court to get answers and to try and find out if Dr Karbaat is their father or fathered their children. In the 1980 and 1990s, Karbaat’s Bijdorp clinic was the one of the biggest in the country, with an excellent reputation and attending to thousands of patients.

Some mothers say that Karbaat had told them to wait while he went to get ‘fresh sperm’ in the room next door, anonymous tips have come in over the years and there’s also children that look a lot like their alleged father walking around. Dr Karbaat even told Wassenaar over tea at his house once that he fathered 60 children, an encounter Mrs Karbaat claims not to remember.

The plaintiffs are trying to get Karbaat’s body exhumed to extract DNA and perform testing to get clarity. Karbaat’s window seems to be fighting this request, denying the entire situation. Mrs Karbaat’s defense lawyer is saying that the children have no right to know who their father is because they are the result of a sperm donation, which to me would mean anyone with criminal intent could get away with this sort of practice without ever being accountable and that can’t be legal. On the other hand, we told you in 2013 about local governments pressuring single mothers to reveal the name of the fathers of their children for alimony purposes, including fathers who were sperm donors, which sounds like a double standard on the face of it.

(Link: ad.nl)