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Jonathan Jacob Meijer
Women are a disease.
They need to be contained.
Even when she was searching online for a sperm donor, Vanessa wanted her children to know their father. In 2015, she was 34, the right partner hadn’t come along and fertility treatment “would have bankrupted me”, she says.
A website listing dozens of Dutchmen willing to donate privately seemed to answer her prayers. Though no photographs were posted, Vanessa was drawn to one profile in particular. The man – Jonathan – wrote that he’d been inspired to sign up after friends of his had struggled to conceive. “I thought: ‘That’s nice – he wants to help’,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa
Most important, for her, was that he was open to a relationship with his offspring. Under Dutch law, donor-conceived children may only learn their donor’s identity when they turn 16.
“He wanted to be somewhat involved with the kids, to know how they were doing … I really wanted my children to have that.” She laughs without humour. “That’s all gone now – and it won’t ever, ever get better.”
Not long after her daughter was born in 2015, Vanessa’s path to parenthood was blown up by a discovery on Facebook: Jonathan Jacob Meijer was a serial sperm donor, and her daughter had at least 100 half-siblings.
Last year Meijer was ordered by a Dutch court to stop, having been found to have fathered as many as 600 children in the Netherlands since 2007. Some mothers of his offspring – based as far away as Australia – believe the true number globally is closer to 1,100. Moreover, they don’t believe that Meijer has stopped.
The bizarre and unsettling story is the subject of Netflix’s new three-part docuseries, The Man With 1000 Kids. The series unfolds like true crime, each episode revealing yet another level to Meijer’s international operation. But its focus is on the women he deceived, the alliance they forged against him, and the families forced to live with the consequences of his actions.
Executive producer Natalie Hill came to the story in 2020, when Meijer had been investigated by Dutch authorities but not publicly named. Having connected with a group of “resilient, strong, passionate” mothers who had conceived with his sperm, Hill spent two years developing the idea before bringing in director Josh Allott. “It really mattered to me that they knew they could trust me,” she says.
Some decided not to appear on camera, while some interviewees are given pseudonyms. It was a difficult decision for them to go public, says Hill – “but they wanted to try and stop him.”
When we speak via Zoom, weeks from the series’ launch, Vanessa is nervous and fearing judgment. “I’ve been in the media before, but this is a whole new level,” she says as her two children – aged five and seven, both fathered by Meijer – clamour for her attention.
She did her due diligence, Vanessa says. Searching Meijer’s name online, she found his YouTube channel, sharing his passion for music, travel and philosophical musings, but no cause for concern.
Meijer was handsome, with long, strawberry-blond curls. But for Vanessa, looks were less important than shared values and approach to family. “I fell for his profile.”
After messaging for more than a week, they met at Central Station in The Hague – Vanessa’s choice. She’d wanted to be safe, she explains, her tone heavy with irony: “You never know what a man can do.”
They talked for over an hour. “There were no alarm bells whatsoever,” says Vanessa. Meijer seemed “like the guy next door”: easygoing, engaging, polite. She paid him €165 (£140) for his sample and covered his travel costs.
Two years later, when Vanessa was trying to reach Meijer about a second sample, she saw a post on a Facebook group for single mothers in the Netherlands and joined the dots: Meijer had not been honest about the extent of his donation. “I was like, ‘Shit – what the hell did I get into?’”
Meijer had told Vanessa that her child would be his eighth. Not only was this not true, but he had also donated sperm to multiple Dutch fertility clinics – at least 11 by 2023, according to court records – lying to them all about his activities elsewhere.
Vanessa had wanted her children to be full siblings, to grow up with that common link. Having learned that Meijer could not be trusted, “I really struggled with what to do,” she says. Fearing being misled again, she decided to pursue Meijer for a second sample – this time with her eyes open.
Vanessa recalls Meijer’s indifferent response after she confronted him: “Why are you surprised? If I’d been honest with you, would you have chosen me?”
Probably not, Vanessa agreed – but at least she would have had all the facts. “I didn’t have a fair choice. That’s what hurt the most.”
Vanessa cherishes her children, but Meijer’s betrayal upended her life. “My trust in people was gone, pulverised almost beyond repair.”
If I ever met this bitch, I would turn on my iPod and start blasting Bob Seger at her.
A group of families learn the charismatic man they had trusted is the sperm donor to hundreds — or perhaps thousands — of other children across the world.
The Man With 1000 Kids premieres 3 July, only on Netflix. pic.twitter.com/9Gce53u88N
— Netflix UK & Ireland (@NetflixUK) June 25, 2024
