The curious case of the sperm donor who had ‘1,000 children’ is coming to streaming

Jonathan Meijer is a 43-year-old Dutch musician who is not known for his artistic side, but for his prolific Don sperm which left hundreds of children scattered across the world.

His idea of ​​becoming a donor began to take shape when a college friend confided in him that he was infertile. After thinking about it, he signed up to a sperm bank in 2007.

He quickly decided to practice this activity privately and began sharing his identity and photos with interested people. “I knew that the people who received my sample would be super happy and start a family. It’s something meaningful and real.” he recently told the media The Independent .

A decade later, Meijer became publicly known when a court in the Netherlands ordered him to stop his donations: In this country alone, he fathered more than 100 children from 11 fertility clinics. while the law establishes that a maximum of 25 can be generated to avoid inbreeding.

However, the musician ignored this and continued to market his sperm in other countries for several more years. He offered himself as a donor on different pages and often used different names, according to the newspaper. General Day.

In 2023, the Donorkind Foundation filed a civil lawsuit against him for lying about the number of babies born from his sperm donations. They also asked that he be banned from continuing to do so.

Although Meijer insisted that he had only good intentions to help families, Many of them claim to feel deceived, since the musician has repeatedly lied about the real number of descendants.

“Sometimes I would think, ‘There are too many (children), maybe you should stop,’ but then I would get another message saying, ‘Wow, you are the donor we were looking for.'” It was hard for me to say no. You’re the guy who comes with the winning lottery ticket, that’s the feeling you bring to these people. It’s something magical. “, he explained to the same media.

The Dutch courts did not trust Meijer’s arguments. The same year that the civil suit was filed against him, a court again banned him from stopping donating sperm and told him that if he continued to do so, he would be fined €100,000 for each violation.

In addition, he had to write to fertility clinics to have his sperm stock destroyed. At this time, authorities suggest there may be between 500 and 600 Meijer children in the world.

17 years after the YouTuber also began to become one of the world’s most prolific sperm donors, Netflix has launched a documentary series about his case.

In early July, the streaming platform was launched The man with 1000 children, docuseries that depicts Meijer’s disturbing history as a sperm donor for more than a decade.

In three episodes, it is told how the man showed himself as the ideal donor due to his physical characteristics and deceived the families with the real number of children he had, in order to continue his activity without any control. The above is exposed with the testimonies of the same families.

“I’m upset because at that point he told me he was donating to five families,” said Natalie, one of the mothers involved. BBC .

The production also investigates the motivations that led the musician to not respect the limits of the donations he could make, why he felt so proud of his actions, the failures of the system and the series of future risks that could exist among people who do not know that they are parents and that they establish a romantic relationship.

One aspect to consider is that, although the series states that the subject has managed to procreate “a thousand children”, The Donorkind Foundation – the one that sued him – and the man himself say there were actually 550.

After Netflix launched, Meijer assured that he did not want to participate because he believes that the accusations against him are false, that he is not a “serial donor” and that they “take advantage” of families. He also assured that he would file a complaint against the platform.