Netflix’s three-part documentary on Jonathan Jacob Meijer, the Dutch serial sperm donor drops this week
Meijer — who describes himself as a musician and has a YouTube channel — was banned from donating sperm in the Netherlands in 2017 after it emerged he was the father of 102 children in 11 different clinics around the country.
He’d also fathered at least a further 80 children via private arrangements. The legal limit on donor children in the Netherlands is 25. This didn’t put a stop to Meijer’s gallop.
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He carried on donating sperm all over the world, including to enormous Danish sperm bank Cyros International, up until last year, when a Dutch court, acting in response to a civil lawsuit by the Donorkind Foundation, ordered him to stop and warned him he’d be fined €100,000 for every further infraction.
But the basic facts don’t hint at the pain, anguish, deep sense of betrayal and, ultimately, fear felt by the victims of Meijer who appear in the three-part documentary The Man With 1,000 Children (Netflix, from Wednesday, July 3).
That title may well be an understatement. It’s likely Meijer, who posted video blogs from numerous locations and seems to have been to any country you can name, including Ireland, has in reality fathered thousands of children, who have hundreds of half-siblings.
The first episode initially adopts a jaunty, serio-comic tone as several women describe the faintly surreal experience of going on a shopping trip (which is essentially what it is) through various sperm donor sites to find a suitable candidate among the hundreds of men who’ve posted their pictures and profiles.
For couple Suzanne and Natalie (the one who would be carrying the child) a guy called Leon seemed like a good prospect. His photograph was on the fuzzy side, yes, but he seemed reasonably good-looking, while the personal information he’d provided suggested he was kind and very intelligent.
Vanessa shares her story. Photo: Netflix
Natalie arranged to meet Leon and found the photo had flattered him. He was bald and thuggish-looking, with a deep scar on the back of his head that ran from ear to ear. The conversation suggested he wouldn’t be entering whatever the Dutch equivalent of Mastermind is any time soon.
But Martin was different. Martin was handsome. He had blue eyes, perfect white teeth and long, thick blond hair. He was eloquent and well travelled. Martin was, of course, Jonathan Jacob Meijer, who went by various aliases. In the Netherlands, he was Martin, Jonathan or Jacob. In Australia, he was Ruud.
Meijer insisted he wasn’t interested in making money, which is why, he said, he didn’t donate to big sperm banks (a lie). All he wanted was the satisfaction of helping people who were desperate to have children (another lie). There were limits, though; he was willing to help no more than five families (yet another lie).
Suzanne and Natalie weren’t the only ones taken with him. Vanessa, who’d never found a man who wanted to have children, was also bowled over.
So was Nicolette, who’s gay, and married couple Joyce and John – wJohn had a vasectomy after fathering three children in a previous marriage.
Kate and Laura. Photo: Netflix
All of them ended up with children fathered by Meijer, and all of them were delighted. At first. Joyce and John were so overjoyed with their beautiful child, they had a second using Meijer’s sperm.
Dr Max Curfs, a Dutch clinical embryologist, says the no-more-than-25 rule exists for a reason: to prevent a donor child unwittingly becoming sexually involved with a close relative and committing incest.
When Curfs received an email tip-off about Meijer, the clinics began comparing records and were horrified at what they found. As the truth about Meijer became public, some of the women he’d impregnated formed a Facebook group, which just kept growing.
Nicolette recalls the chill she felt when scrolling through hundreds of pictures of children who all looked uncannily like her daughter. This was just the tip of the iceberg.
What Meijer did was immoral, though not illegal. But a grotesque revelation in episode two plunges a deeply disturbing story into the realm of depravity.
The Man With 1000 Kids is on Netflix from Wednesday July 3