Jonathan Jacob Meijer, the prolific sperm donor at the center of the new Netflix documentary “The Man with 1000 Kids,” has suggested that his many donor children could use a social media symbol to reduce the chance of them unwittingly having incestuous relationships with each other. The Netflix docuseries details how Meijer spent many years donating both to sperm banks and to women he met privately. In 2023, The Hague District Court banned him from sperm donation over fears of inbreeding after he admitted to fathering over 550 children globally.
During that trial, the Dutch judge asked Meijer about the risk of incest. According to court documents presented in the series, his lawyers responded: “The defense argues that if they are worried about incest, his donor children can use a social media symbol to identify themselves as one of his children.” One of the donor mothers, an Australian woman named Kate, dismissed the idea. “It was a horrible suggestion,” she says during the series. “A lot of children may not want to display a symbol. A lot of those children may want to maintain their privacy.”
Questioned about the suggestion by The Independent, Meijer at first claimed: “I forgot I said that!” before adding: “But it’s a serious point.” He went on to argue that he’d come up with the idea in an attempt to illustrate the possibilities presented by social media, adding that when he first started donating sperm in 2007 it hadn’t existed.
“I just wanted to emphasize that when I started as a donor there was no Facebook, no YouTube, Instagram. Maybe not even WhatsApp,” he said. “The world has changed so drastically. When Facebook came, I knew 100 percent that people would find each other, recipients and children. That’s what happened. People can so easily create a group for donor recipient parents in the Netherlands and they will talk. ‘My donor is from the Hague.’ ‘Oh, mine too!’ And they have my name.”
He added: “The symbol was more to show that in the digital world there are always solutions. I think people talk way too much about problems. It can be simple. If they want, they can put a symbol. You have to think openly and not see in every corner a problem.”
Earlier this week, The Independent spoke to Natalie and Suzanne, two of the donor mothers featured in the docuseries, about how their lives had been upended by the discovery of how many siblings their child has and their fears over potential inbreeding. Meijer also spoke to The Independent about why he feels the series was misleading, and the specific accusations he calls “total slander.”
Jonathan Jacob Meijer is a prolific sperm donor who is the focus of Netflix’s “The Man with 1000 Kids.” Meijer told a court in April 2023 that his many children should use a social media symbol to prevent incest. Jonathan Jacob Meijer, the prolific sperm donor who is the focus of the show “The Man with 1000 Kids,” said that his children should use a symbol on social media to avoid unwittingly having incestuous relationships.
The Netflix docuseries, which was released on July 3, details how Meijer donated sperm to different fertility clinics in his native Netherlands and around the world. The Hague District Court banned him from donating sperm in April 2023 after it was found he had fathered between 500 and 600 children around the world, Reuters reported. Meijer confirmed that he fathered 550 children during the 2023 court case, and it’s unclear why Netflix chose the title “The Man with 1000 Kids.” Representatives for the streamer did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The show has sparked debate about Meijer and the ethics of sperm donation. It’s the latest example of Netflix getting audiences talking. In April, subscribers became so obsessed by the true crime stalking drama “Baby Reindeer” that they tracked down the real person that the stalker character was based on.
The third episode of “The Man with 1000 Kids” details the 2023 court case that resulted in his ban and states that he’ll be fined €100,000 if he donates anywhere in the world again. This is because Meijer has so many children that they are at risk of inbreeding. During the court proceedings, the judge asked Meijer about the incest concerns. He suggested that his children should use a symbol on social media as a way of avoiding incest.
A narrator reading the court transcript in the docuseries said: “The defense argues that if they are worried about incest, his donor children can use a social media symbol to identify themselves as one of his children.” A woman from Australia identified as Kate in the documentary, who used Meijer’s sperm, told the show that his court statement shocked the mothers involved with the case. “It was a horrible suggestion. A lot of children may not want to display a symbol. A lot of those children may want to maintain their privacy,” she said.
In an interview broadcast on Wednesday on BBC Radio 4’s “Woman’s Hour,” the host asked Meijer if he really thought social media was a good way for his children to identify themselves. Meijer responded: “Just to make clear, it was not serious like ‘Oh they have to do this.’ Look, we’re in a new situation now, we’re in a new phase where children from donors with an open identity, they deal with a new situation. So for me I have 17 years as a donor, I know what I’m talking about, I think about it every day.”
He went on: “So the things that you bring here like all these outdated views like ‘Oh the fears of inbreeding, oh the identity crisis’ we’re now in 2024, we’ve seen lesbian couples everywhere, single mothers everywhere. We know that donors are helping families, so these outdated views, we should stop projecting them on these children.”
For many Dutch people seeking to be parents, Jonathan Meijer appeared to be heaven-sent. Tall, handsome, and blessed with a head of thick blond hair, Meijer’s profile stood out to those browsing private sperm donation sites where a prospective parent could search for potential donors. In his initial correspondences, Meijer claimed that he only intended to donate sperm to a handful of families — but in time, it became clear that he’d lied to many of them.
“The Man with 1000 Kids” is a three-episode docuseries that takes on the monumental task of trying to piece together the havoc wreaked by Meijer across several countries and continents — in addition to 11 sperm banks in the Netherlands and private donations, Meijer had been donating sperm all over the globe. “You get one life on this Earth — why has he chosen to use his charm and his intellect and his creativity in order to try to procreate on a mass scale and deceive all these people?” director Josh Allott asks. “Speaking to lots of different parents that have met him and people that know him well, it seems like it almost became an addiction for him.”
In “The Man with 1000 Kids,” the call for Meijer’s accountability begins when one parent of a child conceived with Meijer’s help figures out a curious number of half-siblings lived around town. Meanwhile, at Isala Fertility Center, a doctor receives an anonymous email alleging that one of their donors had possibly fathered more than 150 children in the Netherlands. The donor worked directly with families and donated to other banks, in violation of a signed agreement with Isala. The docuseries features interviews with a number of parents who are still grappling with the repercussions of Meijer’s actions, as well as the lawyer, fertility activist, and medical professional who work to try to stop him.
When communicating with the parents of the children he would go on to help conceive, Meijer used several names including Jacob, Ruud, Walter, and Maarten. He said that he worked in education, and he also maintained an active YouTube channel that showcased everything from his opinions on cryptocurrency to his attempts at a raw-meat diet, all with an ever-changing backdrop as he traveled around the world. When the true extent of Meijer’s actions came to light, the devastated families learned he also was capable of great deception.
Patricia, a friend of Meijer’s, appears in “The Man with 1000 Kids” to shed some light on his early years. With seven siblings of his own, she says that as a young adult, he struggled to find his own identity, cycling through various looks and jobs. The prospect of fathering an unlimited number of children coincided with his long-haired small-time guru persona — perhaps representing a “God-like complex,” as one of the mothers in the doc terms it.
Jonathan has “said that he can always tell instantly if that child is his own, and we do know that Jonathan asked for pictures from the parents when a child is born,” Allott tells Tudum. “It may be that he’s just become totally addicted to this feeling of having children, this innate weird biological thing that’s got completely out of hand. And then there’s all the affirmation that comes from parents who will tell him about how amazing they think their child is and the incredible features that their child has. It must be this incredible ego boost for him.”
“Children who haven’t been brought up together are more likely to get attracted to each other because they see some familiarities in the face of the sibling,” says Natalie, a mother featured in the doc. That feeling of attraction can result in romantic love, a phenomenon known as the “Luke and Leia complex,” named for the characters in Star Wars. As explained by clinical embryologist Dr. Max Curfs in the series, limits on sperm donation exist in order to protect the resulting children from the risk of consanguineous relationships, or unwitting incest. “What happens psychologically to these children that have 700, 800, 900 brothers and sisters?” asks Kate, an Australian mother who found Meijer through Denmark-based Cryos, the largest international sperm and egg bank in the world. “How are they psychologically going to be able to deal with this information?”
While Kate claims that every country has a limit on how many children a given sperm donor can father, Eve Wiley, a fertility fraud activist, says there’s no international limit. If a donor maxes out the number of children they can conceive in one country, international sperm banks like Cryos can simply send their donations to prospective parents in another country. While sperm banks like Isala Fertility Center require donors not to work with other banks, there’s no way to enforce these guidelines, which allowed Meijer to continue his global deception.
A number of families deceived by Meijer appear in “The Man with 1000 Kids” to share their stories. Suzanne and Natalie, from the Netherlands, thought that they were one of only a few couples he was helping to become parents. Joyce and John are a Dutch couple who are unable to conceive due to an irreversible vasectomy that John had during his first marriage — Meijer helped them have two children. Laura and Kate are a Sydney couple who learned of their donor’s actions in a Facebook group. Vanessa, a single woman who hoped to have a child on her own, initially felt grateful to Meijer as she also believed that she was one of a small group utilizing his sperm. Nicolette, a single mom and preschool teacher, learned that a colleague had also given birth to one of Meijer’s children — and eventually found several more half-siblings within her own community.
Despite the best efforts of the families to get Meijer to tell the truth, he continued to refuse to admit the total number of children that he’d fathered. Wiley ventures a guess in the series: “So with Jonathan and Cryos International, he’s going to Copenhagen once a month for four days for four years. That’s roughly 200 donations, and you can get about 15 straws of sperm per ejaculation. If every straw makes a baby, that could be 3,000 potential children,” she explains. “That is just one sperm bank. And we know that he was in at least 11 sperm banks.”
“Obviously, the children are affected, and the children’s children are affected,” says executive producer Natalie Hill. “But every cousin is affected. Everyone who becomes a partner of those children is then affected. Jonathan’s brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, everyone that is connected or becomes connected by making a new family will be affected by his actions.”
Meijer continued to lie and refused to stop donating sperm or inform other parents of his actions, so the parents sought other methods to check him. When Mark de Hek, a lawyer from the Netherlands, received a call from one of the mothers asking for his help, he had to weigh the consequences of entering what he calls a “legal no-man’s-land.” De Hek decided to take on the case, but the court date was postponed as Meijer continued to travel — this time to Kenya, where it appears that he met with a group of men like himself who pride themselves on fathering as many children as possible.
When Meijer finally took the stand, he shocked spectators by suggesting that his children could avoid incest by using a symbol on social media to indicate that they have his genetics, among other bizarre statements. In the end, a Dutch court banned Meijer from donating sperm to new parents under penalty of 100,000 euros for each violation. He’s also required to “request that sperm banks destroy any of his semen available to new parents.”
“I did meet [Jonathan] in order to speak to him about being in the documentary,” Allott tells Tudum. “We approached him a number of times to be interviewed and gave him a right to reply at the end. He refused to comment on any of the allegations in the series.” As for what he’s been up to recently? “A couple of weeks ago, he was in Zanzibar,” Hill tells Tudum. “He’s been very transparent about where he is in YouTube videos. And from what we know, he’s not had a steady job of any sort.”
Source: The Independent, Business Insider, Tudum
