The 43-year-old said on the TV chat show that he is taking legal action against the streaming platform over his show “The Man With 1,000 Kids”, describing it as “sensationalist”.
Jonathan Meijer claimed that the show helped him and hundreds of families to create, among other things, how many children his donated sperm was used to create.
The show’s title picks a round number of 1,000 and at one point says the actual figure could be as high as 3,000, which Meijer said was wrong, admitting that his own calculations may not have been complete.
“Five hundred and fifty, that’s the number I know for sure. Anything above that is just speculation,” he said “Eva” talk show on public broadcaster NPO 1 Tuesday Late Night with Eva Ginek. “That is why I have started a case to fight this lie.”
He said he wanted the documentary removed from Netflix’s website to protect the children from media trying to make a “spectacle” of the case, saying they were “identified on the street.”
A court last year ordered it to stop, with Dutch guidelines saying a maximum of 25 children per donor
Meijer made headlines in the Netherlands and abroad last year when. It threatened him with fines of up to €100,000 (about $110,000) per case if he failed to comply. That case settled on a minimum figure of 550 children but acknowledged the possibility of more.
Clinical guidelines in the Netherlands to limit the risks of adultery to offspring. However, since there was no central register for sperm donors, he was able to bypass these rules in many ways such as going to multiple clinics.
The court found that Meijer had misrepresented families about past donations, many of which were arranged on Internet forums rather than fertility clinics, giving the impression that not all sperm were his.
This meant that the children were “part of a vast kinship network with hundreds of half-siblings that they did not choose.” The court considered it “sufficiently plausible” that this could have psychological consequences for children such as identity problems and fear of accidental adultery.
Meijer said during Tuesday’s appearance that he became interested in the concept of sperm donation as a young man when he was around infertile people who wanted children. He started donating in 2007. He said that as of 2019, he had stopped donating sperm, except to families who wanted a second or third child with his help.
The show sought comment from two prominent Dutch lawyers, Gerard Spong and Peter Plassman, who said they believed their case was “completely hopeless”. They said the show served a clear public interest, among other things, by informing people about the case who might want to donate sperm in the future.
They also said that Netflix had done thorough research with sources that went on the record and that Meijer had waived their right to respond and offered to cooperate.
“I don’t want to cooperate with such a shady company,” Meijer said in a sometimes heated exchange with the moderator. “I can share everything myself on my YouTube channel.”
msh/jcg (AFP)
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