The trail of deceit left by a Dutch doctor who secretly fathered more than 60 children with his own semen is the subject of an in-depth podcast that is being launched this week.

Jan Karbaat ran a fertility clinic in the Rotterdam suburb of Barendrecht for nearly 30 years until it was shut down in 2009 for failing to meet storage standards and administrative irregularities.

Until his death in 2017 Karbaat denied allegations that he had used his own semen to impregnate a number of patients at his clinic, breaching rules that set a limit of 25 offspring per sperm donor.

A group of 47 people conceived from Karbaat’s sperm had to go to court to gain access to his DNA so that they could test it against their own. Karbaat is suspected of having fathered at least 102 children and provided sperm samples to clinics in other countries including Belgium, Germany and Denmark.

Some of his children have developed rheumatism and lung disorders or have neurological conditions such as autism which they believe they inherited from Karbaat. They are taking legal action for psychological damage and stress, as well as to cover the cost of tracing their DNA and searching for relatives.

Immaculate Deception

The podcast, The Immaculate Deception, includes interviews with a number of Karbaat’s biological children, most of whom discovered the truth about their parentage only after he had died.

They have different responses to Karbaat’s unethical practices and the lies he told to their mothers in order to cover his tracks. One, Joey Hoofdman, told journalist Jenny Kleeman that the discovery that Karbaat was his real father was ‘shocking’ at first. But he goes on: ‘I’m no longer angry, but I am curious … He told a newspaper weeks before he died that there were no children, that we were seeing ghosts. He was still denying it until the end.’

Another, Inge Herlaar, said the revelation had been ‘terrible’ for her mother, she was unaffected by the news. ‘I don’t feel a connection with him,’ she said. ‘I have a father already, who raised me and loved me.’

Both of them visited Karbaat’s grave in Rotterdam recently, to try to close the book on the man who denied his part in their lives until his dying day.

I’m still not responsible for his wrongdoings and his actions but I need to forgive him to move on,’ said Joey. ‘I deserve that.’

The Immaculate Deception is being broadcast weekly from Wednesday, March 18 on Spotify, Apple and other podcast apps.