A sperm donor in the Netherlands, linked to more than 550 children fathered by sperm donation in at least 13 Dutch and foreign clinics, will be brought to court by one of the inseminated mothers and by the Donorkind Foundation, which defends the interests of people born by this method.
The foundation itself announced that it will initiate legal proceedings to try to stop the behavior of this 41-year-old Dutch donor, accused of deceiving women around the world, having lied and minimizing the number of times he had donated his sperm, since Donorkind He counts that he has helped father more than 500 children.
The donor has delivered his sperm to at least 13 clinics in the Netherlands and abroad, and “also approaches prospective parents looking for a donor for their home insemination through meeting platforms and social media, and lies about the number of children he has had”, points out the foundation.
Clinic guidelines require a sperm donor to do so a maximum of 25 times successfully or help 12 families in total, to avoid inbreeding, incest and psychological problems for people born by this method.
“Now that this man has indicated to mothers that he does not want to stop his behavior and has recently approached new fathers-to-be, he is asked to be banned under sanction from further donations, required not to contact new fathers-to-be, and to write to clinics to request the destruction of their stored sperm,” warns Donorkind.
Eva, the mother who is now initiating the complaint in court against this subject, assures that he had promised not to father more than 25 children, when she chose him as her donor in 2018.
“If I had known that he had already had more than a hundred children, I would never have chosen him. When I think about the consequences that this could have for my son, I am left with a bad body and uncertainty about his future: how many more children will there be? In conversations with the donor, many mothers have asked him to stop, but nothing helps”, says Eva.
His lawyer, Mark de Hek, warns that the donor is acting illegally “by putting his reproductive impulse first” and recalls that “this behavior is dangerous for the mental well-being and health of children born by donation.”
The Dutch association of gynecologists NVOG first warned about this man, a musician, in 2017 when it emerged that he had fathered at least 102 children in the Netherlands through 10 different clinics.
The donor was blacklisted in Dutch clinics, but continued to donate in other countries, such as Denmark and Ukraine.
It is not clear when the case will be heard in the Dutch Justice, but Donorkind hopes to have more details “in the coming weeks”.
In addition to this case, the foundation has already identified at least ten Dutch gynecologists who have used their own semen without the knowledge of women who wanted to get pregnant in fertility clinics in the Netherlands.
At the same time, a record number of 1,415 people born by sperm donation sought genetic information about their biological father in 2021, after these scandals were made public.
