Netflix viewers are demanding the arrest of a man involved in the streaming platform's latest documentary.
The Man With 1000 Kids is a three-part docu-series that hit Netflix on July 3 and follows the story of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a prolific sperm donor who has aided in the birth of over 500 children with multiple different women.
In the series, he's portrayed as a man who wants to "spread his seed", much to the shock of social media users who have slammed the Dutch man on X, formerly Twitter.
"The Netflix doc The Man with 1000 Kids is nuts. That dude need to be locked up," wrote one user, while another added: "Watching the Man with 1000 Kids on Netflix... I’m flabbergasted! How are they not locked up! And if you watched it, you know why I said they! I’m so disgusted and sad for those kids!"
Another also added a screenshot of a tweet that read: "I think all men should start off in jail and prove their way out" alongside the caption: "After watching the man with 1000 kids all I can say."
While Meijer doesn't actually appear in the documentary, some of the women he connected with - oftentimes outside of the professional regulations surrounding sperm donations - spoke out against him, with one woman even alleging that the 42-year-old convinced her to have sex with him instead of just donating through artificial means.
Vanessa, from the Netherlands, recalled how she connected with Jonathan on a website where they arranged for him to visit her house and donate his sperm into a cup.
However, when he arrived at her house, she alleged that he convinced her to conceive her child "naturally" because it was the most "effective" method of conception so the two of them had sex to do so.
His sperm was used in hundreds of IVF pregnancies. Credit: SEBASTIAN KAULITZKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images
There are other alarming themes that are also raised in the documentary including incest, inter-breeding, racism, and violence against women.
It must be said that Meijer has denied the rumors going around about him on multiple occasions, even going as far as branding the Netflix doc as "misleading and deceiving."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Woman Hour, he said: "They [Netflix] deliberately called [the documentary] The Man With 1,000 Kids, when it should be 'the sperm donor who helped families conceive with 550 children.'"
He also spoke to the Independent, telling them that he wants to give his side of the story since it has allegedly been misrepresented.
“At first it was really great,” he recalled, talking about his first donation aged 25. “I knew that the people who got my sample would be super happy, and they’d create a family. That’s something meaningful and real.”
As he became more at ease with the idea of being a donor, he began to see it as a shame that he had to remain anonymous.
"I thought it was a pity I couldn’t meet people and see the smiles on their faces,” he continued. "Then I read about websites where you could donate privately, and I realized it was something I wanted to do as well. It felt more complete to me."
He said that he uploaded photographs so people could see what he looked like and read more about his motivations, which gave him an "overwhelming" response from women who came across his page.
Despite his apparent love for the attention and his 'work' - I use that term lightly - he confirmed that sometimes he got "carried away."
"Sometimes I think I got too carried away," he told the Independent after he was questioned about "misleading" women. "I should have told myself that [a smaller number of children] is fine. It would be best if I had been open, but I chose to follow the international guidelines.”
When asked about the donor named Anthony who wrote that he wanted to donate sperm in Kenya in order to “bleach Africa”, he denied ever having such motivations.
"That’s just disgusting," Meijer said. "I distance myself a million miles from this guy. He’s horrible. I’ve heard that these right-wing guys want to spread the white gene or something, all this c**p."
Meijer emphasized that his motivations were solely to help those who wanted to conceive, but he admitted that he should have had better "boundaries" in place.
“I don’t think addiction is a good word for it, but if I was addicted to anything it was to being valuable to people and having a great time with them," he said before adding: "Now, looking back, I can say that I should have set more boundaries for myself, and realized when I was reaching my limits. I shouldn’t have waited until people started to scream and shout at me."
The Man With 1000 Kids is now available to watch on Netflix.