A prolific sperm donor who has fathered 550 children worldwide is facing legal action in the latest attempt to prevent him from making contact with his offspring.
Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a 43-year-old YouTuber from the Netherlands, is being taken to court by one of the mothers of his donor children, who accuses him of not adhering to an alleged agreement to maintain distance.
The donor children’s organisation Stichting Donorkind also reportedly wants him to stop attempting to get in touch with his offspring.
“Jonathan presents himself as some kind of uncle, but in reality, he is taking on a parental role from afar. He is attempting to become involved in our family,” said Natalie Dijkdrenth, the plaintiff in the case, in an interview with Dutch publication de Volkskrant.
The mother says that Meijer, a former high school teacher, is trying to influence her son and other children, ‘advising them to look for a partner who looks like them and thinks the way they do’.
‘He dismisses certain parenting styles and promotes large families,’ she said.
Meijer hit back yesterday in a new video on his YouTube account, following him as he walked in the woods in silence, overlaid with the text ‘Attack on my FREEDOM OF SPEECH’.
Meijer faced a lawsuit in 2023 requesting court action over fears of unintentional incest and inbreeding between his children, and because he had gone well past the Dutch limit of fathering 25 donor children.
The donor was found to have fathered at least 102 children in 2017 before a court ruled in 2023 that he must stop making donations or face fines of 100,000 euros (£88,0000) per infraction.
Clinics were also ordered at the time to destroy the samples they had. Meijer continued to donate abroad regardless, including to a Danish sperm bank that operates around the world.
Jonathan Jacob Meijer filmed himself walking in silence after the legal action was announced
Jonathan is a 43-year-old former high school teacher and YouTuber
Meijer’s video shared yesterday was filmed in silence, with accompanying text hitting out at Stichting Donorkind ‘and Nathalie from the Netflix serie [sic]’ who he said ‘want me to SHUT UP’.
‘So let’s see how a vlog will be without me telling what my opinion is.’
He asked for financial help with the legal fees before shushing the camera and continuing his walk for nine minutes, only stopping to shush the camera again.
The video ended with a message asking for support on his channel.
Dijkdrenth said that the parents worry that ‘some children are extremely open to influence’ because of their age, and that as a donor ‘he has a certain attraction for them’.
Meijer has a public persona on YouTube, has appeared on Loose Women, dubbed ‘the man with 1,000 kids’, and has been the focus of a Netflix documentary he says has affected his relationships with his children.
Last year, he posted a video on his own YouTube channel titled ‘IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL MY DONOR CHILDREN’ in which he lamented how, in light of the court case, his relationship with some of his fathered children had changed and soured ‘overnight’.
The sperm donor was previously the subject of a Netflix series, ‘The Man With 1000 Kids’
In April 2023, a Dutch court ordered Meijer to stop donating semen to clinics, or face being fined 100,000 euros (£88,000) per infraction
He said that he blocked some of the parents after receiving abuse from ‘a very aggressive few’ of the children.
He insisted that he had ‘always been respectful towards them, always respected their privacy, always listened to what they want’, but was hurt when he was ‘verbally abused’.
He said that he had said that the children would always be entitled to contact him, when of age, if they wanted and regardless of how the parents had spoken to him.
But in some videos, Meijer also criticises what he calls ‘bully mums’ and has slated their parenting styles.
Meijer slammed the Netflix documentary – ‘The Man With 1000 Kids’ – when it was released last summer.
He said the docuseries was ‘misleading’. It included claims from parents who said they felt ‘betrayed, sad and angry’ when they learned how many other children he had fathered.
They argued that Mr Meijer’s 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
The Man With 1000 Kids investigated ‘the murky world of the fertility industry,’ as well as how the Youtuber allegedly defrauded dozens of parents and eleven clinics across the globe
Meijer said most of the families knew and were happy with him.
He told the Independent at the time that he ‘never had the idea to have 100 children or 500 children’.
‘It happened step by step. Many donors want to be in the news, but for me if nobody knew about me that would be absolutely fine. Now they do know about me, so I want to explain my side of the story.’
Meijer began donating sperm in 2007, aged 25.
