A sperm donor who rose to fame in a new jaw-dropping Netflix documentary once gave a 'horrible' suggestion for overcoming accidental incest.
The much-anticipated documentary is the latest engrossing watch released by the streaming platform in recent times, preceded by the likes of Tell Them You Love Me and Six Schizophrenic Brothers.
The three-part docuseries is called The Man With 1000 Kids and with this one, the clue is very much in the name - but there's a lot of murky details.
The doc follows the stranger than fiction tale of the now 43-year-old Jonathan Meijer, a Dutch musician and sperm donor who first began his donation journey in 2007.
Sperm donation is a wonderful thing that allows a lot of people to fulfil their dreams of having a family - but Meijer's journey has long been hailed controversial.
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The documentary reveals the bombshell that Meijer's donations spanned 11 sperm banks in the Netherlands - as well as several other countries and continents.
There are strict rules on sperm donation, which Meijer flouted.
The national limit of children a person can supply sperm for is 25 in the Netherlands alone.
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Meijer is thought to have fathered 1,000 globally.
The documentary hears from clinical embryologist Dr Max Curfs who stresses that the limits exist in order to prevent the children born from the sperm donation from unwittingly getting involved in consanguineous relationships (dating people descended from the same ancestor), or incest.
To add insult to injury, it has now emerged that Meijer, at his trial in 2023, had his own gobsmacking suggestion to 'protect' his offspring from ending up in incestuous situations.
His lawyers suggested: "The defence argues that if they are worried about incest, his donor children can use a social media symbol to identify themselves as one of his children.”
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Yep, that's right - an emoji to denote that they are related to Meijer.
An Australian woman, named as Kate, said of the suggestion during the documentary: “It was a horrible suggestion. A lot of children may not want to display a symbol. A lot of those children may want to maintain their privacy.”
The Independent then questioned Meijer about his idea.
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He responded: "I forgot I said that! But it’s a serious point.”
He added: "I just wanted to emphasise that when I started as a donor there was no Facebook, no YouTube, Instagram. Maybe not even WhatsApp."
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He continued: “The world has changed so drastically. When Facebook came, I knew 100 percent that people would find each other, recipients and children. That’s what happened.
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"People can so easily create a group for donor recipient parents in the Netherlands and they will talk. ‘My donor is from the Hague.’ ‘Oh, mine too!’ And they have my name.”
He then concluded: “The symbol was more to show that in the digital world there are always solutions. I think people talk way too much about problems. It can be simple. If they want, they can put a symbol. You have to think openly and not see in every corner a problem.”
The Man With 1000 Kids is available to stream on Netflix.
Topics: Netflix, Documentaries, True Crime, TV And Film
Kya Buller