Dutch ‘superdonor’ who claims to have fathered 550 children using sperm donation says he is suing Netflix over hit documentary The Man with 1000 Kids(The Man with a Thousand Children), which he describes as “sensationalist”.
Jonathan Meijer, who declined to participate in the documentary, said on Dutch public television NPO1 on Tuesday evening that the series was not based on exact figures.
The documentary claims the 43-year-old donor fathered up to 3,000 children, a figure Mr Meijer denies.
“550 is the number I know for sure. Anything after that is just speculation,” he defended himself on a television show.
“That’s why I started a lawsuit to fight these lies,” and to make the platform remove the documentary, he added.
A court last year barred Mr Meijer from continuing to donate sperm.
Dutch clinic guidelines set a limit of 25 children per donor to avoid inbreeding, incest and psychological problems in donor children.
The court found that the “superdonor” had deliberately misinformed the prospective parents about the number of children he had fathered in the past, causing risks to the children.
Mr Meijer believes the documentary portrays him in a bad light and harms the children he fathered and their parents, who are “drawn into a sensationalist Netflix film that causes damage because they are recognised on the street”.
Mr. Meijer said he stopped donating in 2019, except to families who wanted a second or third child from him.
By suing Netflix, he wants to “protect children from the media’s desire to make them into a kind of spectacle,” he said.