They went to a renowned fertility doctor. He secretly impregnated them with his own sperm

WARNING: This article contains graphic content and may be upsetting to those who have experienced​ ​​​sexual violence or know someone who has. 

Jan Karbaat was a renowned fertility doctor in the Netherlands from the 1980s to the 2000s. 

When it was first offered in the country, artificial insemination with donor sperm wasn't a regulated procedure. "It took place in backrooms," said Hein Bruinse, emeritus professor of gynecology, in the documentary Seeds of Deceit. "And it was restricted to a limited number of clinics."

"If you failed to conceive as a couple, you weren't going to publicize it. Infertility in men was perceived as a little shameful."

Many hospital administrators thought donor insemination should only be available to straight couples, but Karbaat was willing to work with single women and lesbian couples. 

"In that sense, he was ahead of his time," said Bruinse. "He was a pioneer in the field of donor insemination. I think he started doing it from a sense of idealism."

"[Karbaat] seemed like a sensitive idealist — a sensitive man who had started a clinic from idealist motives," said Diana, a former patient.

Decades later, it was revealed that Karbaat had regularly used his own sperm when he was supposed to be using sperm from a donor. He had done this in secret: his patients were provided with extensive profiles about their anonymous donors, or told that their husbands' sperm had been used, which was often a lie. 

Karbaat died in 2017. In 2019, a group of people who had been conceived with sperm from his clinic won the right to have their DNA checked against his. In those tests, Karbaat was confirmed as the father of 49 children. Karbaat had previously confirmed that he fathered 22 children. The total number of children conceived with his seed is impossible to estimate, as many of his offspring might not even know they were conceived with donor sperm. Some estimate the number is at least 200. 

In Seeds Of Deceit, Karbaat's former patients — the mothers of "Karbaat children" — discuss their longtime wishes for a child. In intimate interviews, translated from the Dutch, they describe the impact of finding out that their children's father was not whom they were led to believe it was, and they share what it was like to visit Karbaat's clinic when they were trying to get pregnant. 

What emerges isn't a story of a sensitive, idealistic doctor, but of an arrogant narcissist who sexually intimated and abused his patients. He left them with living, breathing reminders of his actions. 

Yvonne

Yvonne always wanted a big family. "Lots of kids and lots of pets," she said in Seeds of Deceit. "I would have liked as many as 10 children. [Karbaat] said I was made for it.…

"You felt he really wanted you to have your child.… [He was] a bit on the chummy side: 'No worries, we're going to fix this.'"

Karbaat told Yvonne that he could treat her with her husband's sperm. "We wanted to get pregnant together," she said. "That's what we were promised."

But Karbaat didn't use her husband's sperm; he used his own. Yvonne had a son, Joey, and when she returned to Karbaat for help getting pregnant with a second child, he used another donor's sperm. Her husband is the biological father of their third child, a daughter. None of the siblings knew they had different biological fathers until they were adults. 

"I was doubly cheated. It's as if my husband never existed," she said. "I don't want to know that [Karbaat] passed on genes to Joey. The very thought of Karbaat gives me the shivers. [Joey] is not a Karbaat. My husband is his father. I don't want to meet any of [Joey's] half-brothers or half-sisters. His brothers and sisters lived in our home. It's called a family."

Anne-Miek

Anne-Miek was one of Karbaat's single patients. "I don't think a desire to have children necessarily has to be a shared wish. 'Boss of your own belly,' after all. I strongly felt I could do it by myself," she said in the documentary. "Karbaat was also one of the few doctors … who treated unmarried women in his fertility clinic. It was unusual at that time."

Anne-Miek remembered one particular unsettling comment by the doctor: "During one of the early inseminations, the first or second time, I was lying on the stretcher when Dr. Karbaat said to me, 'Many a woman in her 30s would be jealous of the way you look. If you look like that on the inside too, well ..." 

After Anne-Miek's daughter was born, Karbaat asked for a birth announcement card and to see the baby. 

"That's when he asked if he could take her photograph. He thought she was a beautiful baby," she said. "But looking back at it now, I see it in a different light. 

"Those photos were like his trophies. 'This is my work. Behold these trophies.'"

Tanja

"I was helped there as a lesbian," said Tanja. 

"My partner at the time was pregnant. We said, 'Wouldn't it be great if they could be born at the same time?' I knew at once that this [was] what I wanted."

The insemination process was painful for Tanja. "Karbaat was so rough about it that I asked him if someone else could do it," she said. "When he had inseminated me, I would be bleeding afterwards." 

It took Tanja three years to get pregnant. "I started doubting my own body. Why should it have to take so long?" she recalled. "The longer it went on, I started wondering. I did wonder at some point if the sperm was pure.…

"I did have my doubts. I wonder if [Karbaat had used his own sperm] when he said, "Now, you're pregnant.'"

Anonymous patient 1 

One former patient also remembered how Karbaat would make "strange comments."

"'Looking nice down there.' Things like that," she said in the documentary. "That was for starters when he inserted the speculum.… Then he wanted to touch my breasts. I held him off like this: 'Hands off.' Or he would say I was hot." 

"And he rubbed the inside of my thighs upwards. And he said, which was worst of all, 'I bet I'm much better than your husband.' That was the very worst comment."

"What could I do?" she said. "I wanted children so badly that I had to let it slide. I was determined to endure it.…

"The next time, I was so nervous that I threw up in the waiting room. It was so terrible, but I had no choice. This went on for 16 months, five times a month. I was afraid to say anything."

Lidia

Karbaat told Lidia that they'd find an anonymous donor who looked like her husband. "It sounded like a fairy tale," she said. "So that's what I chose."

But Lidia didn't feel at ease with Karbaat. "I thought he was a creep," she recalled. "The way he looked at you was creepy — the way he talked, the way he behaved."

There were few other options available to her though. "No way was I going to tell my husband," she said. "What if he told me to stop going there? Then I wouldn't have a baby. So I left it at that."

Decades later, her son Peter called her in tears, saying, "I'm Karbaat's son!"

"I didn't ask for [Karbaat's] semen," she said. "The idea that I was lying there and he was jerking off next door. The mere thought of it! I felt dirty, so dirty.…

"[It's] unbelievable. I'm glad my husband didn't live to see this. He would have died of a cardiac arrest instead of cancer."

Henk

Henk and his wife went to see Karbaat after discovering he was infertile. "It took me a while to get used to the idea," he said. 

"Both our GP and Karbaat and everyone in between said, 'To the outside world, it will be a regular pregnancy. No one has to know [about the donor sperm]. Why should you tell anyone?'"

"My wife and I had agreed to keep it a secret to the world, but we would tell the children at an appropriate age."

After their son, Martijn, was born, they returned to Karbaat for help conceiving another child. "My wife was fairly quick in saying, 'I think he does it himself,'" Henk recalled. "When we came for our second child, we noticed people in the waiting room with the same kind of blond hair as Martijn. So we thought they might well be Martijn's siblings."

Henk and his wife did have a second child, a boy named Ivo. But Karbaat used another donor's sperm for that pregnancy. 

"My main grudge against Karbaat is that Martijn and Ivo are not full brothers as I would have liked," said Henk.

Support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You can access crisis lines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. ​​If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or the safety of someone you know, call 911.

Watch Seeds of Deceit on CBC Gem.