Jonathan Meijer, man at the center of 'The Man With 1000 Kids,' slams Netflix docuseries, threatens suit
Jonathan Meijer, the prolific sperm donor who became the subject of Netflix’s latest hit docuseries, lambasted the show’s portrayal of him and said he is preparing a slander suit.
Jonathan Meijer, the prolific sperm donor who became the subject of Netflix’s latest hit docuseries, lambasted the show’s portrayal of him and said he is preparing a slander suit.
Released Wednesday, “The Man With 1000 Kids” interviews various couples and individual women who discovered that their sperm donor, Meijer, had fathered hundreds of children around the world through multiple sperm banks and private donations — giving rise to a risk of inbreeding among half siblings who may have no idea they are related.
Meijer, who did not participate in the docuseries, has claimed he has fathered approximately 550 children, not 1,000 as the title suggested. But the documentary alleges he lied to many families about the number of offspring he had produced.
Jonathan Jacob Meijer in "The Man With 1000 Children."Courtesy NetflixResponding to the docuseries online, Meijer said in a YouTube video last week that when he first began donating, he did tell families the exact number of children he had helped create. But he later chose to stop giving out the real estimate.
“Technically I did not lie,” Meijer told NBC News in an email Monday. “I followed the guidelines of every large commercial international sperm bank that does not inform the recipients about the amount of offspring one donor will produce,” Meijer wrote, adding, “I was doing a much better thing, I gave the parents an estimated number, this was better and more info than they would ever get at any clinic.”
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