The documentary The Man with 1000 Kids tells the story of four couples and a single woman who gradually discover that their sperm donor has fathered hundreds of children. The Netflix documentary tells how Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a Dutch musician, told those who used him as a sperm donor that he had only helped a handful of families.
But when parents in the Netherlands notice that their children, conceived with the help of sperm donors, look strangely similar, it becomes clear that this is not the case. It later emerges that he has donated sperm all over the world. Families quickly become fearful of the potential dangers to future generations if half-siblings unknowingly have children together.
The man who identifies himself as John, one half of a couple who used Meijer, said, “We thought, ‘Oh shit. What if these kids meet and maybe have a connection or fall in love and they don’t know they’re related?’ That was the moment the real panic started. That’s when we realised the real danger of this thing.”
In April 2023, Meijer was banned from donating sperm to fertility clinics by the Hague District Court in his home country after it was revealed that he had fathered over 500 children, The Independent reported.
The court ordered that for each violation, he must pay a fine of €100,000 (Rs 90.41 lakh) if he donates again. An anonymous sperm donor also claimed on the Netflix show that Meijer and another man identified only as Leon ran a website called “Longing for a Child” to try to father as many children as possible. The anonymous donor claimed that Meijer and Leon mixed their sperm samples to play “sperm roulette” to see what the child would look like. In an email to Business Insider, Meijer denied running the website.
“I never ran a website, there is no evidence of that. I had my advertising on this very website during the first few years of my fundraising (2008-2014),” he wrote. “What Leon did is unclear to me, I met him 4-5 times in my life, and he passed away two years ago.”
Meijer added, referring to Netflix, “I will take legal action for defamation, this is truly insane! I will take legal action not only for the mixing but also for some other claims.”
Netflix did not respond to a request from BI for comment. The docu-series describes Meijer as travelling a lot for work, which is why some of the mothers involved were unable to speak to him in person when they found out how many children had been conceived using his sperm samples.
On his YouTube channel, he regularly posts videos about his thoughts on various topics such as spirituality, traditional wives, raw meat diets and his reaction to The Man with 1000 Kids. On May 5, he uploaded a video from Tanzania in which he explained that he decided to leave the Netherlands because it was overpopulated and he wanted to be closer to nature.
In his last video, uploaded on July 3, Jonathan Jacob Meijer was on a beach in Zanzibar, on the east coast of Africa. He explained that he spent “over 50,000 hours” as a sperm donor until he stopped donating to clinics in 2019.
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