'The Man with 1000 Kids' donor Jonathan Jacob Meijer denies mixing sperm to see who babies would resemble. He's demanding Netflix retract the claim.
Jonathan Jacob Meijer/YouTube.
- "The Man with 1000 Kids" claims that Jonathan Jacob Meijer mixed sperm samples with another donor.
- Meijer denied the claim in several YouTube videos.
- Meijer demanded that Netflix remove the allegation from the docuseries, and threatened legal action.
The prolific sperm donor at the center of Netflix's "The Man with 1000 Kids" has denied claims that he mixed his sperm with another donor's to see who the babies would resemble.
The three-part docuseries, which was released on July 3, details how parents who used Jonathan Jacob Meijer as a sperm donor brought a case against him in his native Netherlands for fathering 550 children.
In April 2023, Meijer was banned from donating sperm to new parents worldwide, and he faces a fine of €100,000 for every future violation of the ban.
In the second episode of the series, a woman called Patricia, who says she is Meijer's friend, claims he and another donor named Leon mixed their semen samples together before giving them away to unsuspecting couples on several occasions.
Patricia described it as a game. Describing the pair's alleged approach, she said: "Let's do a sperm roulette and see who wins."
Since the docuseries was released, Meijer has denied the claims in several videos on his YouTube channel.
On July 3, Meijer appeared in a livestream interview with Patricia on the Down the Rabbit Hole YouTube channel and challenged her accusation that "he swapped sperm with Leon." Patricia said that she only recounted what Leon told her, but accepted she couldn't prove the claim.
"I didn't say that. I said it was mentioned by Leon and it could be possible. I never said… Because I wasn't there. I wasn't there to witness it," Patricia said.
On July 4, Meijer said in a YouTube video that he planned to take legal action against Netflix.
"I filed the report against slander for the statement that I swapped or mixed sperm with another donor, Leon. I've never done that," he said, without clarifying what "the report" referred to. "It's a blatant lie, and Netflix will have to remove it, or I will make a legal case. Money money!"
It's the second time this year that the subject of a high-profile Netflix project has threatened legal action against the streamer.
In June, Fiona Harvey filed a defamation suit against Netflix over the abuse she faced online after audiences identified her as the person stalker Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) is based on in "Baby Reindeer."
Meijer's response to "The Man with 1000 Kids" has been watched on YouTube over 100,000 times since July 5, which indicates that audiences want to know the truth about the sperm-mixing allegations. If Meijer can prove that it didn't happen, he may have grounds for a similar defamation case.
Netflix did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.