‘The Man With 1,000 Kids’: Alleged donor plans to sue Netflix

Dutch YouTuber Jonathan Meijer is suing streaming platform Netflix for the creation of the three-part hit documentary, The Man With 1,000 Kids. He described the doccie as “sensationalist”.

Speaking on a TV show, Meijer said the documentary claims that he could have fathered up to 3,000 children and this is incorrect.

“550, that’s the number I know for sure. Anything above that is just speculation,” he said in a report by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The doccie

Released in July, The Man with 1000 Kids details the efforts of a group of families trying to piece together the havoc wreaked by a Meijer, who allegedly donated sperm in various parts of the world. This included 11 sperm banks in the Netherlands alone.

Meijer had claimed that he only intended to donate sperm to a handful of families, but in time, it became clear that he’d lied to them.

“That’s why I have started a case to fight against these lies,” he said in a recent interview.

Last year a court ordered him to stop donating after he had helped produce 550 to 600 children since starting as a donor in 2007.

Dutch clinical guidelines say a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families.

The court said Meijer had misinformed families about past donations, meaning that the children were “part of a huge kinship network with hundreds of half-siblings they did not choose”.

The court considered it “sufficiently plausible” that this could cause psychosocial consequences for the children, including identity problems and fears of accidental incest.

Meijer said that he had stopped donating sperm in 2019, except to families that wanted a second or third child with his aid.

He said he wanted the documentary taken down for the sake of the children “who are being recognised in the street”.

Meijer never availed himself for the documentary according to director Josh Allott. “I did meet [Jonathan] in order to speak to him about being in the documentary,” said Allott.

“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.”

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Living his life

The eccentric Meijer has continued living his life as he has been, posting videos of himself on YouTube from different parts of the world.

In his latest video shot on a beach in Zanzibar, Meijer gives his viewers lessons in spirituality.

 “Worshipping the sun is something very natural; you can see here people in the water making pictures of the sunset, because they deem it as something beautiful, as something  unique, something special even though it happens every day, every day is a miracle.”

His videos range from commentary on his life as a donor, his spiritual standing, financial advice and the benefits of eating raw meat.

“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,” said the producer of the Netflix documentary, Natalie Hill told media.

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