Dutch 'mass sperm donor' himself also doubts number of children
Back in 2017, Dutch fertility clinics stopped using Jonathan Meijer's donor sperm after it was revealed that he had donated to 11 clinics. This is illegal in the Netherlands. He also allegedly donated for years through the commercial Danish sperm database Cryos, where he was registered as “Ruud” and praised as a “volunteer, musician and someone who likes to help people.
To all the wishing parents, he said the same thing: that he would not exceed the legal limit of 25 donor children. But in reality, the Dutchman kept on donating seed, to the point that he would have thus now conceived more than 500 children. And that offends many parents. Meijer stood trial in the Netherlands after being sued by a Dutch mother and the Donorkind Foundation.
Court forced him to stop
The court ruled in April that Meijer may no longer donate sperm. Jonathan M. may no longer contact or help new wishing parents. If he does, he must pay a penalty of 100,000 euros.
'The man with 1,000 kids'
The Dutch man who fathered as many as 550 children through sperm donation is now demanding that Netflix take a documentary about his life offline. He says he is doing so to protect the children. According to Netflix's documentary about his life, the Dutchman had as many as 3,000 children. But so the prolific Dutchman doubts that number.
Netflix made the documentary “The man with 1,000 kids” about Meijer, to the dissatisfaction of the man himself. According to Meijer, the film damages him, the donor children, and their parents. And so he also claims that the documentary is not based on accurate figures. By filing a lawsuit against Netflix, he says he wants to “protect the children from the media's lust to make some kind of spectacle out of this.” He is demanding that the streaming service take the documentary offline.
(FVDV for Tagtik/Illustration picture: Unsplash)