Netflix viewers have been left completely horrified by a ‘disgusting’ and ‘enraging’ new documentary, with many declaring that the three-part series is even worse than they had imagined.
The Man With 1000 Kids, which premiered globally on July 3, follows Dutch YouTuber and prolific sperm donor Jonathan Jacob Meijer, 42, who is believed to have fathered upwards of 500 children over nearly two decades.
Viewers expressed their shock on social media, with many in disbelief at Jonathan, who has insisted his compulsion to donate is an act of altruism.
‘The Netflix doc The Man with 1000 Kids is nuts,’ wrote one on X. ‘That dude need to be locked up.’
Another said: ‘Holy smokes!! The man with 1000 kids is just enraging. Jonathan and Leon deserve some kind of punishment. That’s disgusting on so many levels.’
A third added: ‘Ok. I knew The Man with 1000 Kids Doc was going to be wild, but this is insane and way beyond what I imagined.’
‘So, I just watched ‘The Man With 1000 Kids’ on Netflix and I honestly don’t know what to say,’ a fourth said.
‘I thought “Our Father” was bad but this…idek. I have no words. Every episode had a new twist that made everything even worse and I was just like…’
Addressing the implications of fathering hundreds of children, one user said: ‘The Man With 1000 Kids is insane. Like they are guaranteed to run into a sibling and not know. Smh.’
The Man with 1000 Kids hears from some of the mothers who revealed how Johnathan would bypass official sperm banks and sometimes even suggest they have sex to conceive.
Vanessa, from the Netherlands, recalled how she connected with Jonathan on a website where they arranged for him to visit her house and donate his sperm into a cup.
However, when he arrived at her house, she alleges he convinced her to conceive her child ‘naturally’ with him because it was the most ‘effective’ method of conception – and so she agreed to have sex with him.
Jonathan refused to appear in the documentary, which he branded ‘deceiving and misleading.’
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman Hour, he said: ‘They deliberately called [the documentary] The Man With 1,000 Kids, when it should be “the sperm donor who helped families conceive with 550 children”.’
Jonathan’s children are dotted all over the world. Around 375 live in the Netherlands, 80 in Germany, 35 in Belgium, four in Argentina, and two in Australia.
His mass donations first came to light in 2017 and he was banned from donating to Dutch fertility clinics, where he had already fathered over 100 children.
However, he continued to donate abroad, including to the Danish sperm bank Cryos which operates internationally, and offered his services through websites and social media, according to the Dutch news website Algemeen Dagblad.
The Cryos sperm bank sold his donations for around £1,100 each, but Jonathan claims he donates his sperm for free. He told German media: ‘I don’t ask for anything, but sometimes I receive £64, a plane ticket, or a camera as a gift.’
Jonathan also continued to offer himself as a donor on sites matching prospective parents with sperm donors, sometimes using a different name.
Some of his ‘victims’ have since set up a Facebook page with the sinister-sounding name Donor 102 – the number of babies he was found to have fathered in 2017.
In April 2023, a Dutch court ordered Jonathan to stop donating semen to clinics, or face being fined 100,000 euros ($1078,000) per infraction.
Judges also ordered him to write to clinics abroad asking them to destroy any of his semen they have in stock, except doses reserved for parents who already had children by him.
The decision came after a civil case was started by a foundation representing the interests of donor children and Dutch parents who had used Jonathan as a donor.
They argued that his continued donations violated the right to a private life of his donor children, whose ability to form romantic relationships are hampered by fears of accidental incest and inbreeding.
Incredibly, Jonathan continues to donate sperm, but, he claims, only to women who already have a child from him and want another, which the recent court verdict allows for.
The Man With 1000 Kids is streaming on Netflix