Jonathan Meijer, a Dutch man known for his extensive sperm donations is the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, The Man With 1000 Kids , released earlier this month.
The true story of 'The Man With 1000 Kids'
The three-part docuseries explores Meijer’s journey into sperm donation and details how he has fathered around 550 children since he began participating in the practice in his 20s.
Several couples and single women who used Meijer’s services to conceive have expressed feeling betrayed and misled regarding the extent of his donations and how many families he has helped in the past.
A 2023 report from the Associated Press indicated that the Netherlands has a law limiting sperm donors to fathering 25 children with a maximum of 12 mothers. However, Meijer has provided services to significantly more recipients than permitted by the law.
What happened to Jonathan Meijer?
Following the musician and YouTuber’s actions, the Dutch Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology banned him in 2017 from donating sperm in the Netherlands. In 2023, the Hague District Court in the Netherlands further prohibited him from donating sperm, with each violation of the ban subject to a hefty fine of 100,000 euros (or about $109,000 in U.S. dollars) per case, AP reported.
Meijer insists that he did nothing wrong and never misled potential recipients about the number of children he has fathered.
“Technically I did not lie,” Meijer told NBC News in an emailed statement. “I followed the guidelines of every large commercial international sperm bank that does not inform the recipients about the amount of offspring one donor will produce,” Meijer wrote, adding, “I was doing a much better thing, I gave the parents an estimated number, this was better and more info than they would ever get at any clinic.”
Medical experts, activists, and women who were recipients of Meijer’s sperm have criticized him for exploiting a service intended to help women and families fulfill their desire to have children.
One Australian mother named Kate used Meijer’s services through Cryos, a Denmark-based organization recognized as the world’s largest international sperm and egg bank. On the show, she voiced her concern about how him fathering so many children could negatively impact the children.
“What happens psychologically to these children that have 700, 800, 900 brothers and sisters?” Kate said in the docuseries. “How are they psychologically going to be able to deal with this information?”
Meijer and his legal team dispute the docuseries’ allegation that he mixed his sperm with another donor before giving it to a recipient to see whose genes are stronger. He said he would file a slander lawsuit if Netflix did not remove the claim from the show, per NBC News.
Despite the controversy surrounding the show, Josh Allott, the docuseries director, stated that he approached Meijer several times to participate in the project, but he declined.
“We approached him a number of times to be interviewed and gave him a right to reply at the end,” Allott told Netflix’s Tudum . “He refused to comment on any of the allegations in the series.”
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