Dutch judges on Tuesday ordered a man suspected of fathering more than 550 children through sperm donations to stop criticizing children or parents who took part in a Netflix documentary about him.
Jonathan Meijer, 43, was dragged before The Hague District Court by a foundation for donor children and the mother of one child allegedly fathered with his sperm.
Meijer was portrayed in the Netflix documentary The Man With 1,000 Kids released last year and later made comments about the mothers of donor children who participated in the film.
Photo: EPA
Meijer said parents who spoke in the documentary had “delusions,” calling them “bully moms” and suggested they received money for taking part, papers before the court said.
“He characterized the parents as being ‘ridiculously bad who damaged their donor children’ and called a specific parent ‘strange and a narcissist’ and accused her of bad behavior towards her ex-partner,” it added.
Meijer also displayed photographs of parents on his YouTube channel, the court papers said.
A judge ruled that Meijer’s comments “which ... had no or insufficient support in facts violated the honor and good name of these parents, and infringed on the personal privacy of these parents and their children.”
Meijer therefore “may no longer make public statements about his donor children and the parents of these children,” the judge said.
He also had to remove videos from his YouTube channel where negative statements were made, the judge said.
Meijer in September last year said he was suing Netflix over The Man With 1,000 Kids, which he described as “sensationalist.”
He said the number of children the documentary said he could have fathered — up to 3,000 — was incorrect.
“Five hundred and fifty, that’s the number I know for sure. Anything above that is just speculation,” he said at the time.
Meijer started donating sperm in 2007, but made headlines in 2023 when a court ordered him to stop. Dutch clinical guidelines say a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families.
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