Sperm donor sues Netflix over The Man with 1,000 Kids documentary

Jonathan Meijer, Dutch subject of streaming service’s programme, insists he fathered only 550 children

A prolific Dutch sperm donor who was the subject of Netflix’s The Man with 1,000 Kids documentary is suing the streaming service, insisting that he fathered only 550.
Jonathan Meijer, 43, will take the streaming giant to court over the documentary that alleged he fathered up to 3,000 donor children after deceiving dozens of women.
Mr Meijer announced the lawsuit on Wednesday night, saying that he wanted to protect his offspring from the “media’s lust to make some kind of spectacle out of this”.
The Netflix documentary, which premiered in July, claimed he had fathered between 1,000 to 3,000 children since 2007 after donating to at least 13 clinics, 11 of which were in the Netherlands, and separately by approaching prospective parents online.
“Five hundred and fifty, that’s the number I know for sure. Anything above that is just speculation,” he told the Dutch broadcaster NPO 1, accusing Netflix of not conducting proper research.
Mr Meijer continued: “That’s why I have started a case to fight against these lies. I gave these parents what they couldn’t get.”
The documentary also included allegations that he mixed his sperm with that of another serial sperm donor before giving it to a recipient in a bid to see whose would “win”.
Mr Meijer denies this claim and wants it removed from the show.
Asked why he refused to be interviewed in the three-part documentary, he said that he would not “co-operate with such a shady company”, instead preferring to share his perspective on his YouTube channel.
Mr Meijer, a musician, travel blogger and self-styled personal finance influencer, claimed that he stopped donating sperm in 2019, except to those who wanted a second or third child from him.
Last year, he made headlines in the Netherlands after a court ordered him to stop donating his sperm.
Dutch law prohibits sperm donors from fathering more than 25 children or impregnating more than 12 mothers, to prevent unintentional incest, inbreeding or possible psychological issues associated with having scores of unknown siblings.
Mr Meijer had circumvented the law by using pseudonyms at clinics and advertising his sperm on the internet, promising that his only intention was to fulfil people’s dreams of having children.
The court ruled that Mr Meijer had lied about his number of sperm donations and deceived couples whose children had become “part of a huge kinship network with hundreds of half-siblings they did not choose”.
Judges said it was “sufficiently plausible” that his actions could lead to psycho-social consequences for the children.