How The Man With 1000 Kids shattered the life of one Aussie mum – and triggered her campaign to change the law to stop anyone else suffering the same fate
An Australian mother who unknowingly used the rogue “serial sperm donor” at the centre of a new Netflix documentary has broken her silence about the way he destroyed her life.
Sydney mum Laura has revealed how devastated she and her partner Kate were when they discovered the true identity of their sperm donor, Jonathan Meijer.
The Dutchman is accused of fathering more than 500 children worldwide and defrauding vulnerable families, starting in the Netherlands and then worldwide.
The shocking story has now been revealed in The Man with 1000 Kids, the Netflix documentary that explores Meijer’s backstory and how he got away with it.
Sydney couple Laura and Kate have now revealed how they paid for his donation in Australia, which led to their first child after a successful insemination.
It should have been the happiest time of their lives, but when the couple started wondering if their child had any brothers or sisters elsewhere in the world, they discovered something terrible through a Facebook group.
They realized that they were among the thousands of suspected parents who had been defrauded by Meijer and who had left a trail of unnoticed people all over the world.
“When I was told my child was one of thousands, it was a huge loss for both my partner and me,” Laura told Nine’s Today Extra program on Friday.
‘But over time, the shock turned into a motivation for us to bring about change in the sector.
“We have regained control and power over our family. Not only that, we are also helping the donor child community to implement a major change in the law.”
In April 2023, several parents filed a civil lawsuit against Meijer at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands to ban Meijer from further donating sperm.
The judge agreed, citing the spiritual well-being of the families and the “psychosocial well-being” of the children who would discover they had “hundreds of half-brothers and sisters.”
‘Serial’ sperm donor Jonathan Meijer, who is currently the subject of the popular Netflix documentary The Man With 1000 Children, is pictured
Sydney couple Laura (left) and Kate (right) were devastated when they discovered Meijer had fathered more than five hundred children
Many parents emphasized the risk of incest and psychological problems in children who discover what happened during their birth.
The court ruled that he is no longer allowed to donate sperm and that previous sperm samples in clinics must be destroyed.
The court also fined him €100,000 (approximately $160,000 AUD) per instance if he violates the ban.
“It has given us a lot of power and made a huge contribution to the donor community that we didn’t even know was going to happen,” Laura explains.
In the Netherlands, a sperm donor is only legally allowed to donate sperm to 12 different mothers, for a total of 25 children.
It is conservatively estimated that Meijer fathered at least 500 children.
In 2017, Meijer already exceeded the limit of 25 children set by Dutch law.
It is believed that he had already fathered around 100 babies by that point, leading to a donor ban from the National Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
But these babies were only those registered in the system. Meijer had many more included in private arrangements.
He continued to donate by offering his services online and to clinics around the world, Meijer claims he did so without breaking any rules.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that he may be the father of as many as 1,000 children on several continents.
The ‘serial’ sperm donor who is the subject of a new Netflix documentary claims the film miscalculated his number of offspring
Unlike donations made in institutions, donations made through private arrangements via the Internet are completely unregulated.
The 41-year-old YouTuber and cryptocurrency trader started donating sperm in the Netherlands in 2007 and continued to do so for at least ten years, until he was confronted by his mothers.
Despite the families’ best efforts to get Meijer to tell the truth, he continued to refuse to admit the total number of children he had fathered.
He described the documentary as “sensationalist and misleading” and said he believed the number “1,000” was untrue.
I want to talk freely, I want [a say] “In my own story,” he said in a YouTube video explaining why he didn’t participate in the Netflix documentary.
‘I saw the trailer, someone sent it to me because I don’t watch Netflix. I don’t have Netflix, I think it’s bad.
‘I help people, that’s it. But I’m even sadder that they decided to change the lives of all my donor children […] It is not right to create sensation.
They should have asked all the parents and children [before making the documentary].
According to Meijer’s YouTube channel, he still travels the world.