Netflix viewers have been shocked by a ‘disgusting’ and ‘infuriating’ new documentary, with many saying the three-part series is even worse than they imagined.
The Man With 1000 Kids, which premiered worldwide on July 3, follows Dutch YouTuber and prolific sperm donor Jonathan Jacob Meijer, 42, who has reportedly fathered more than 500 children in nearly two decades.
Viewers reacted in shock on social media, with many unable to believe Jonathan, who continued to insist that his urge to donate was an act of altruism.
“The Netflix documentary The Man with 1000 Kids is insane,” someone wrote on X. “That guy needs to be locked up.”
Another said: ‘Holy smokes!! That man with 1000 children is just furious. Jonathan and Leon deserve some sort of punishment. This is disgusting on so many levels.’
A brand new three-part docuseries has left Netflix viewers ‘disgusted’
The Man with 1000 Kids tells the nerve-wracking story of serial sperm donor Jonathan Jacob Meijer (pictured)
A third added: ‘Okay I knew The Man with 1000 Kids Doc would be wild but this is insane and goes way beyond what I imagined.’
“I just watched ‘The Man With 1000 Kids’ on Netflix and I honestly don’t know what to say,” said a fourth.
‘I thought “Our Father” was bad, but this…idek. I have no words for it. Every episode had a new twist that made everything worse and I just thought…’
One user had this to say about the implications of fathering hundreds of children: ‘The guy with 1000 kids is insane. Like they’re guaranteed to meet a sibling and not even know it. Smh.’
The man with 1000 children hears from some mothers who reveal how Johnathan bypassed official sperm banks and sometimes even suggested having sex to get pregnant.
Vanessa, from the Netherlands, shared how she connected with Jonathan on a website where they arranged for him to come to her home and donate his sperm in a cup.
However, when he arrived at her home, she claimed that he convinced her to conceive her child with him “naturally” because it was the most “effective” method of conception, and so she agreed to have sex with him.
Jonathan refused to participate in the documentary, which he called “misleading and misleading.”
The Man With 1000 Kids has captivated viewers as it exposes the dark side of sperm donation
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Woman Hour, he said: ‘They deliberately [the documentary] The man with 1,000 children, when it should actually be “the sperm donor who helped families conceive 550 children”.
Jonathan’s children are spread all over the world. About 375 live in the Netherlands, 80 in Germany, 35 in Belgium, four in Argentina and two in Australia.
In 2017, his massive donations first came to light and he was banned from donating to Dutch fertility clinics, where he had already fathered more than 100 children.
However, he continued to donate abroad, including to the Danish sperm bank Cryos, which operates internationally, and offered his services via websites and social media, according to the Dutch news site 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 get £64, a plane ticket or a camera as a gift.’
Jonathan also continued to offer himself as a donor on sites that matched prospective parents with sperm donors, sometimes under a different name.
Some of his ‘victims’ have since set up a Facebook page with the sinister name Donor 102: the number of babies he was found to have fathered in 2017.
Vanessa, who appears on screen, revealed she secretly arranged to have a child with Jonathan, 42, who suggested they conceive ‘naturally’
Jonathan and his lawyer Richard van der Zwan will appear in court in April 2023 when he is ordered to stop donating sperm to clinics.
In April 2023, a Dutch court ordered Jonathan to stop donating sperm to clinics or face a fine of 100,000 euros ($1,078,000) per violation.
The judges also ordered him to write to clinics abroad asking them to destroy all the sperm they had in stock, except for doses reserved for parents who already had children by him.
The decision came after a foundation representing the interests of donor children and Dutch parents who had used Jonathan as a donor filed a civil lawsuit.
They argued that his continued donations violated his donor children’s right to privacy, and that their ability to form romantic relationships was hampered by fear of unintended incest and inbreeding.
Incredibly, Jonathan continues to donate sperm, but he says only to women who have already had a child with him and want another. The recent court ruling allows this.
The Man With 1000 Kids is available to stream on Netflix