The donor who featured in one of Netflix's latest documentaries has denied the streamer's claim that he fathered as many as 1,000 children.
The Man With 1,000 Kids is a three-part docu-series that hit Netflix earlier this month and follows the story of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a prolific sperm donor who has aided in the birth of hundreds of children with multiple different women.
Check out the trailer:In the series, which has been slammed by social media users and critics alike for containing distressing themes such as incest, inter-breeding, racism, and violence against women., Meijer is portrayed as a man who wants to "spread his seed", but he's wildly denied those claims.
Instead, he emphasized his need to "help" families.
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.' So already from the start they are deliberately deceiving and misleading."
He continued: "I think Netflix did a great job at selecting five families [who are unhappy] out of the 225 families that I've helped, and they [the other families] will definitely tell you something else."
In the documentary, it was alleged by a handful of Meijer's victims that there were sinister tones in his approach to being a donor.
In one case, one woman alleged that the 42-year-old convinced her to have sex with him instead of just donating through artificial means - as it would be at a clinic.
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 said 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.
Natalie Hill, the executive producer of the series also spoke out on behalf of the victims.
"I've spent the last four years speaking to families who have been impacted by Jonathan's lies. I've personally spoken to 45 or 50 families," she told the BBC.
"Fifty families made impact statements to the court about his lies, and pleaded with the judge that he stop. So this continued platform for Jonathan to talk about it being a handful of women is completely untrue," she added.
However, Meijer remained unwavering in his stance, telling the Independent that all he wanted was to see the smiles on the faces of those who he was helping.
“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 added.
The Man With 1,000 Kids is now available to watch on Netflix.
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