A sperm donor from the Netherlands is reportedly taking legal action against a streaming platform over the show”The Man With 1,000 Kids”, describing it as “sensationalist”.
In addition to overstating the number of children created with his donated sperm, Jonathan Meijer said the show maligned him and the hundreds of families he had assisted in creating.
Though Meijer acknowledged that his personal tally could not be complete, he noted that the show’s title, which chooses the round number of 1,000, is inaccurate at one point stating that the real figure could be as high as 3,000.
“Five hundred and fifty, that’s the number I know for sure. Anything above that is just speculation,” he said on the “Eva” talk show with Eva Jinek last September 3. “That’s why I have started a case to fight against these lies.”
He said he wanted the documentary to be removed from the streaming platform’s website in order to shield the kids from attempts by the media to turn the situation into a “spectacle” since they were “being recognized in the street.”
Last year, Meijer was given an order to cease donating by The Hague court which made headlines in the Netherlands as well as the rest of the world. In the event that he disobeyed, it threatened him to pay a fine of up to €100,000 (approximately 6.2 million pesos) every instance. While acknowledging the possibility of more, that case settled on a minimum number of 550 children.
According to Dutch clinical guidelines, a donor should not father more than 25 children among 12 different families in order to reduce the likelihood that the offspring may experience incest. However, he was able to get around these regulations in a number of ways, such as visiting several clinics, because there isn’t a central registry for sperm donors.
The court determined that Meijer had provided false information to the families on previous donations, many of which were coordinated online rather than going through fertility clinics, creating the false impression that not all of the sperm was his.
This meant that the kids were “part of a huge kinship network with hundreds of half-siblings they did not choose.” The court considered this to be “sufficiently plausible” in order to raise concerns about identity issues and unintentional incest as well as other psychological repercussions for the kids.
The said case is “completely hopeless” according to well-known Dutch attorneys Gerard Spong and Peter Plasman claiming that the show has served a clear public interest for anyone considering sperm donation in the future. They also added that Meijer had declined the request for cooperation and the right to respond, and that the streaming service had conducted an extensive research using individuals who were willing to go on the record.
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