He told me once,
“6,000 children are on Earth because of our clinic.”
It's already done...
I’m letting a little bit of air in.
There was something very wrong in this clinic in Barendrecht.
Jan Karbaat was a famous fertility doctor from the Netherlands
who, especially in the 70s,
was one of the most important people in the fertility industry.
There were rumors about
more and more people complaining about the standards in the clinic.
People were discovering their parents were not their biological parents.
There were people who were discovering they have half-siblings.
She wouldn’t be surprised if there were 1,000 of them.
An only child for 44 years, and all of a sudden this happens.
The challenge lies in making it work.
It's really like hunting.
[INVESTIGATORS]
My name is Kamil Bałuk.
I’m a Polish journalist,
and I’m the author of the book
about Jan Karbaat’s fertility clinic.
I read about Jan Karbaat in a Flemish newspaper,
There was this half Surinamese, half Dutch sperm donor called Louis,
and he was the donor in Karbaat’s clinic.
There were a lot of people conceived with his sperm.
I didn’t really plan that it would be a book.
I was just looking for one story from the Netherlands.
So I started to look for people to interview,
and I contacted first
donor children who already knew that their donor father is Louis.
But everybody I interviewed told me something about Jan Karbaat
because all the mothers who had those children
at some point went to the clinic of Karbaat in the 70s or 80s.
He was like a superstar.
There’s a lot of articles about him and with his photos.
I also interviewed some people
who worked at that time in the Netherlands,
also doctors,
and all of them recommended Karbaat
because he was well-known as the best doctor.
It’s sort of a challenge,
and you try to fulfill the wishes of the women
so that they can have the baby they want.
But I heard some rumors
that there are people who say that
Jan Karbaat did use his own sperm.
-The sperm goes in there? -Yes.
It's nice to hold it for a while so that it can stay warm.
If you need any magazines, they’re in here...
with some ladies in them.
And in here, there’s a videotape.
Yes, a lady being busy.
Also very interesting was that
from the very beginning, he was convincing people that
anonymity is the only option.
There were no DNA tests.
In the 70s and 80s,
it was completely legal not to tell anyone
about who the donor is,
technically even if the donor was the doctor himself.
I became more curious about what Jan Karbaat actually told people
about the identity of donors.
I'm Martijn. I'm 42.
And I’ve known that I’m a donor child of Dr. Jan Karbaat
for four and a half years now.
My name is Annerie, and I'm 47.
I've known for three years now that Jan Karbaat is my father.
When I was 16,
my mother told me that my legal father
wasn’t my biological father.
One day when I was 34, I got a call from my dad.
“Could you stop by this Friday? Your brother will be there too.
I need to tell you something.”
It turned out that my dad was infertile,
and that’s why they used a donor.
A month after my mother died, Joey came on television.
A guy who suspected that Dr. Karbaat might be his biological father.
They showed pictures of Jan Karbaat.
When he was young, in the military,
that could have been me when I was that old.
It was a spitting image.
My husband said, “Jeez, you really look like this guy.
I’m willing to bet anything that he’s your dad.”
I was born in what used to be called the Zuiderziekenhuis.
My parents had to sign a statement issued by Dr. Karbaat
that it would be in my best interest as a child
to never ask who my biological father was.
Half of who you are is missing.
When we select a donor, we try to be careful to pick somebody
where all the relatives say, “It simply has to be his child.”
I was really surprised that
there were no journalists who would just confront Karbaat about it.
What I learned later was that at a certain point, he just declined
all the interviews.
The clinic itself was already closed in 2010,
so especially in the 90s, 2000s,
there were children who would just show up at the gate
because he was still living in the place where the clinic was.
If you would approach him as a donor child from the clinic
asking if maybe he’s the father,
he would compare his hands to your hands.
I've got real Karbaat hands. Really small hands.
The palm of my hand is fairly large with short fingers.
It's a peculiarly course hand.
When I was pregnant, people asked me,
“Is your child also from here [the clinic]?”
And I loved telling people that it’s also from here
because it’s from him.
I think she has her father’s hands.
Short, broad fingers and broad nails,
while mine are very different.
But of course, if you’re emotional, if it’s your identity, your story,
you’re not going to be that efficient
as a journalist who is just interested in this particular topic.
I knew where he lived, so I decided to give it a try.
The person who used to work with him and later became his fourth wife
answered the doorbell,
and she asked Jan Karbaat whether he would like to talk to me.
And he was very happy,
and he almost shouted, “Yeah, of course!”
I think the key to success was,
first of all, that I came from Poland.
He didn’t associate with Dutch media who are hunting on him.
And second of all, I’m not an aggressive journalist,
very investigative.
First important question I asked
was about the limits of children per donor in his clinic.
The answer was very weird.
You were allowed to use 18 patients per donor.
And then the donors were gone, forever.
“And what about documentation?”
And he was like, “Erm, 18.”
So at that point, I knew that he’s lying.
I remembered that the ministry controlled the paperwork
after they closed it down in 2010.
And they realized it’s just impossible to tell
which donor and which child are connected.
The so-called documentation was just like nothing.
I asked him also about the whole discussion,
identity discussion,
so people who are trying to get this information:
who is the biological father?
And he told me that he didn’t think about it.
My only purpose has ever been to give a child to a woman.
I never thought about half-siblings.
And we only ever used anonymous donors.
That’s easier.
So when I ask him about using his own sperm,
he said, “No. End of the story.”
I asked him about the financial side of the story
because I knew it was a big business.
I’ve heard stories about millions of guilders and euros.
We did this for a fee that people thought wasn’t possible.
But we did this for the lowest possible fee.
He told me that a lot of treatment was just free of charge.
I was like, “Really?”
I saw the receipts of people paying for that for months and years.
I just realized this guy wouldn’t tell me anything more.
He’s just a liar.
I always had a father,
so I wasn’t really looking for a donor.
That wasn't necessary for me.
But I was curious if I would have any half-siblings.
And we saw Eva Jinek with Joey again.
At the end he said, “If you think you came from a clinic or Jan Karbaat,
send an email to the address because we can offer some DNA tests.”
I found Stichting Donorkind, who had a database for donors and children.
I sent off my DNA,
and six weeks later, you receive an email.
The DNA results came six weeks later.
On that list there were seven half-brothers and sisters.
Twelve hundred pages,
and the first page was filled with: half-brother, half-sister,
and then suddenly you think, “Oh shit. What’s all this?”
That was intense.
Many people suspected that he might have acted as a donor himself,
so they were trying to obtain his DNA through a court order.
They wanted to compare their DNA to that of the doctor's.
The DNA of Karbaat
is the last piece we need to really know if he’s our father.
So if there’s a person alive,
you cannot force him to do this paternity test
against his will.
So in 2017,
they were all waiting until Karbaat dies
to use the material and check if he was the father of those children.
And actually the day of publishing of the book was also
the day of Karbaat’s death.
What I thought is, “OK,
so we’re going to know the answer pretty soon.”
The person concerned has agreed to fully cooperate with a DNA test.
That was a real relief for all the children.
That was a Eureka moment.
It took a huge burden off my shoulders.
Now it's certain and clear. It was a relief.
I’m not happy at all with what he did.
I think it’s horrible.
He really crossed all boundaries.
He used sperm donors that were never supposed to be used.
But I’m sincerely happy to have this man as my father.
He was a very intelligent man with strong genes.
He lived to be 89, which is quite old for a man.
So that’s good for me. I could have done a lot worse.
But I do have 76 half-brothers and half-sisters by now.
I could have entered into a relationship with a half-sister.
You tend to look for certain characteristics in a partner
that match yours.
The likelihood may not be very big,
but if we had children, they would have been handicapped.
I think documenting the story
made me realize that the law is always outdated,
that we can work together towards making a good law,
but we will always lose
because people are constantly testing the limits of our society.
And also, he was the child of a certain era—
no DNA testing,
Dutch law, which had its flaws.
A lot of people wanted to have a child,
and in the 70s and 80s in the Netherlands,
what was emphasized was women should decide.
You don’t need a man.
You can just have a child.
I went through the whole career of Karbaat.
I really think that he was not a very good person,
but he did help quite a lot of people.
It’s just deeper than one doctor lying to patients.