With the help of the Donorkind Foundation, donor children found ten fertility doctors in the past five years who used their own

With the help of the Donorkind Foundation, donor children found ten fertility doctors in the past five years who used their own sperm without permission to conceive children with women who wanted to have children. Not all those cases have appeared in the media, board member Ester de Lau of the foundation told NU.nl.

Some cases, such as those of well-known sperm doctors such as Jan Karbaat, Jan Wildschut or Jos Beek, have been extensively in the news in recent years. These doctors used their own semen instead of the intended father's to father dozens of children. For example, Karbaat has at least 81 offspring, which increases the risk of love relationships between siblings.

Donorkind Foundation searches for fathers of donor children in commercial DNA databases. Over the past five years, they found a total of 150 to 200 fathers of thousands of children. De Lau finds it "difficult" that especially the donor doctors and their descendants receive a lot of attention in the press. "It is always very much about the abuses, while Monday (the Day of the Donor Child, ed.) is a day to celebrate."

At the same time, the abuses also generate more attention, concludes the board member. "Every time a doctor is in the news, we get a flood of applications from donor children." The attention also ensures that parents start talking to their children.

'Being the doctor is an extra handicap'

According to De Lau, the media attention for things like that of Wildschut also has negative sides. "As a donor child, you are not waiting for the whole world to think something of your donor father. Because you are the person who has to relate to that person. 'Being the doctor' is an extra handicap."

That is also the reason that the foundation and donor children deliberately keep some new 'cheat doctors' out of the media. According to De Lau, this allows the children to remain in control and they can first find out for themselves whether they want contact with the father, any siblings and other new family members.

Finally, De Lau would like to emphasize that "everyone has the right to know who his or her parents are" and that the sperm doctors they find are "bycatch".

If you need help finding a donor or would like more information, please visit donorkind.eu .

The Donor Detectives

They call themselves the Donor Detectives, the eight volunteers who help donor children trace their biological fathers in closed Facebook groups.

De Lau and her colleagues, who are all donor children themselves, use international DNA databases such as MyHeritage to trace family connections. Sometimes that is quite a puzzle, but in the end "we will find them all", says De Lau.

According to her, the method is a lot more effective than that of the Fiom foundation, which only matches fathers and children if both have registered.

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