Featured Image Credit: Netflix / LADbible
Topics: Netflix, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin
A new ‘insane’ Netflix documentary has dropped on the platform, detailing allegations against a serial sperm donor who has hundreds of kids.
The documentary, titled The Man with 1000 Kids, alleges that a man by the name of Jonathan Jacob Meijer was hiding his identity when donating sperm across multiple countries.
Meijer was banned from donating in Dutch clinics in 2017 and, in 2023, he lost a civil lawsuit which stated he had ‘deliberately misinformed’ recipients on the number of children he had fathered.
The donor has come out swinging against Netflix though, calling the documentary ‘misleading’ and stating that it does not properly portray the issue.
One of the big issues raised in the documentary is fears of incest, as his hundreds of children may come into contact with one another – unaware that they are biologically related - and date or have kids of their own.
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In an exclusive chat with Jonathan Jacob Meijer, we asked him about this risk – and whether he sees his large numbers of donations as unethical.
He responded: “Not at all. I've thought about it. I'm a donor for 17 years now, and I thought about it, of course, every day and it would be a problem if a donor was fully anonymous, because then the child will never have the option to find out.”
The documentary claims that Meijer would create fake profiles to donate, and obscure his identity from donors. This is, again, a claim he refutes.
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He said: “I've never donated anonymously. I'm opposed to it. I think it's very good if donors are open.”
He says he operates under ‘open identity’, saying: “Children would have the chance to know my identity, plus they get informed by the parents that they're from a donor, and most of them are from, like, lesbian couples. So, that's very obvious.”
“Besides the international clinics, the commercial clinics also ship to very different countries over the world, and they also have a maximum per country, but not like on the donor, so the donor can help up maybe to 1000s of children over the whole world, but they keep the respect to the country.
“So that's what people should be aware of, that it's not very uncommon. Maybe you can give the argument that in the Netherlands, I have helped in that regard too much. Then, then you can say, OK, maybe that will be a situation.”
Meijer declined to speak in Netflix’s documentary. The serial donor claims that, when he was first contacted, he was told it would be a general documentary on donors – before it became one solely focused on him.
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He said: “It’s like ‘OK, we go from this interesting could be an interesting, documentary'.
“No, this is just pure sensation, and it's no good for the children and the parents.”
Multiple donor parents speak in the documentary, however Meijer claims this represents a quiet minority and majority of the families involved are ‘very happy’.
LADbible has contacted Netflix for a comment.