Suzanne (left) and Natalie were victims of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, known as the ‘fertility fraudster’, who donated sperm to hundreds – possibly even thousands – of women across the globe (Picture: Netflix)
Scrolling through a sea of faces, Natalie found herself stopping on ‘Leon’. A a 35-year-old financial adviser, he described himself as ‘sympathetic and kind’.
A 28-year-old gay woman, Natalie was desperate to be a mum and had found a promising website called ‘Longing for a Child’, that listed a menu of sperm donors alongside a short description and email address.
Following an online chat with Leon, the pair decided to meet in a hotel bar.
Natalie, now 40, explains: ‘On paper he looked really good. But when I met him in person, I was horrified. He didn’t look like a banker or somebody with a good set of brains. When he started to talk, I thought, “This guy is weird”.’
So, she made her excuses and left.
Undeterred, Natalie – a teacher from Rotterdam – returned to the website and found a Danish man called ‘Maarten’. He was a handsome musician with blue eyes, shiny white teeth and long blond curly hair. After hitting it off online, they met up and the man introduced himself by his real name: Jonathan Jacob Meijer.
As they chatted in person, Natalie knew she had found her donor in this charismatic guy who said he had helped built orphanages in Kenya and travelled the world.
Jonathan Jacob Meijer was going by the alias ‘Maarten’ when he first met with Natalie (Picture: CEN)
‘When I met him, it was a very different experience [to meeting Leon]. He was open, talkative and checked all the boxes. He was a gentleman and I felt he was a good person. I had a good feeling about him,’ she tells Metro over a video call.
Over the next few months Natalie visited Jonathan’s home to pick up his semen in a jar with which to inseminate herself. However, each attempt failed. Eventually, she made the decision to invite him to her home to produce the samples so they could be inseminated more quickly. The method proved a success, but sadly Natalie miscarried at 12 weeks.
When the time felt right, she asked Jonathan to come over again to make another donation. This time it worked and nine months later Natalie had a baby boy.
‘I knew straight away. It felt like a butterfly going up in my body,’ Natalie remembers. ‘I gave birth to the loveliest little boy in the world. I was so happy.’
Natalie (right) sought the services of Jonathan again after meeting her partner Suzanne (Picture: Netflix)
That was 12 years ago, and when Natalie met IT worker Suzanne, now 44, in 2017 and fell in love, they decided to have a child together – again with Jonathan.
However, when they contacted him, he told the couple that he was pretty busy. He’d been flying all over the world, posting clips on YouTube of him speaking about a range of topics including eating raw meat, investing in crypto, learning foreign languages and why he doesn’t believe in science.
Eventually, Jonathan managed to find a window for Natalie and Suzanne – although he warned them that they would need to pick up his semen from a nearby shopping mall.
‘We used it, but thought it was weird and pretty disgusting that he was jerking off in a public bathroom while guys next to him were taking a piss or a dump,’ admits Natalie. After that, the couple agreed ‘no more’.
Sadly, the pregnancy failed and the pair gave up on their dream to have a child of their own.
Jonathan has a YouTube channel expressing various unorthodox opinions (Picture: CEN)
Then, in 2021, Suzanne made a horrifying discovery.
She had stumbled across a newspaper article about a prolific sperm donor who was impregnating women all over the world and lying about how many children he’d fathered.
‘It was a disturbing story, but my mind didn’t connect it to us at first,’ explains Suzanne. ‘I was thinking; this is horrible. It was only when I saw the picture, that I realised. I didn’t want it to be true.’
The man in the picture was Jonathan Jacob Meijer, from The Hague – and now known as the ‘fertility fraudster’ after donating sperm to hundreds – possibly even thousands – of women across the globe while misrepresenting how many donations he had made.
It’s a shocking tale set to be told in a new three-part Netflix documentary The Man With 1,000 Kids, which includes testimony from some of his victims.
Suzanne tells Metro that after reading the news report she called Natalie at work and asked her to come home, so they could start investigating their sperm donor.
Jonathan had told the couple that he was stopping at 25 babies, but the posts they found online suggested this was a lie.
‘We contacted other parents and heard so many stories. We had all the emotions you can think of. It was a lot to process,’ recalls Suzanne. ‘First we learned we had been lied to by a person we trusted enough to have a child with. Then there was the realisation that there were so many children, and what that might mean. It was unsettling. We questioned our own judgement, started asking if we could trust people.’
Suzanne and Natalie began to suspect children living in the same areas as being siblings with their son (Credits: Getty Images)
When they started to talk to other parents, the couple soon discovered photos of children who looked exactly like their son.
‘Suddenly your kid is not that unique anymore. They are like an Ikea coffee table,’ says Suzanne.
Then the pair started to notice a lot of children of the same age living in the their area, with similar features, hobbies and intelligence and even similar mannerisms. They were hit with the horrifying realisation that these kids could potentially all come from the same gene pool.
Suzanne explains: ‘It’s horrible, but when we are out, we scan all the children and wonder: “are they Jonathan’s?” Especially when they are with a same-sex couple.’
Other parents who spoke to the documentary about their experiences, include Joyce, whose husband John had a vasectomy during his first marriage. The couple are fearful for their two children who came from Jonathan.
‘Imagine ten years down the line, they are going to university, they are meeting someone that they feel this connection with. They think it’s love. And then you have incestuous children…It is really disgusting,’ says John in the film. ‘Jonathan is really f***ing with people’s lives.’
‘Suddenly your kid is not that unique anymore’ (Picture: Getty Images)
Nicolette, a Dutch preschool teacher, talks about how she discovered suspected donor siblings in her workplace, in her family and in her friendship group. She tells the documentary crew: ‘My daughter knows a lot of [donor] brothers and she really liked one of them because they have the same interests, the same humour. They really connect. My daughter was saying “Maybe I love him.”’
Meanwhile, Kate and Laura, from Sydney, had two sons via a sperm bank to which Jonathan had donated. When they researched him and realised he could have fathered thousands of children, they drew the blinds, cancelled everything and didn’t leave the house for four days, as they cried their eyes out.
Today, parents all over the world who have used Jonathan’s sperm have been left fearful that their children could be at risk of incest via ‘genetic sexual attraction’, also known as the ‘Luke and Leia’ complex, a phenomenon of intense attraction between biological family members that can occur after close relatives are reunited after a long period apart.
Siblings have been found across the globe; in Canada, Mexico, Russia, Romania, Kenya, Argentina, Kenya, South Africa and all over Europe.
When a man donates to a sperm bank he is bound to an agreement not to donate to other banks or women (Credits: Getty Images)
The story only came out because sperm banks operate with a written agreement from donors that they will not contribute to other banks or women. So when clinics in the Netherlands started to realise that Jonathan was active at a number of sperm banks, they had to inform patients.
As word of Jonathan’s prolific insemination grew, the parents involved formed an alliance and begged him to stop donating, but they say he ignored their pleas.
And, as if their situation wasn’t disturbing enough, they discovered a harrowing new twist to his exploits.
An anonymous donor got in touch to tell the group he had been involved with the ‘Longing for a Child’ website and that despite the menu of men and different emails, just two men were behind the many profiles; Jonathan and Leon – the bald man who had given Susanne and Natalie the creeps.
The donor explains in the documentary: ‘Jonathan and Leon operated like a cartel, dividing up territory, but in their case, dividing up women, who thought they had a choice, but actually didn’t.’
Suzanne and Natalie soon discovered Jonathan and his associate’s sick scheme (Picture: Netflix)
Patricia, an associate of Jonathan and Leon’s, reveals a further dark twist in the film. ‘It was just a game for them,’ she explains. ‘Leon told me they met each other at a parking place, put their sperm together, mixed it, and gave it to women. Like doing a sperm roulette to see who wins.’
Suzanne says: ‘I don’t know what is more unsettling; that these men run a website, pretending that they are 30 or 40 people, or that they would collaborate and mix their sperm. That is very, very disturbing and unethical.’
After tireless campaigning from the group, Jonathan was finally brought to court at The Hague’s Palace of Justice last year where he admitted to having ‘nearly 600’ children.
However, with both private and sperm bank donations, estimates suggest the number could be as high as 3,000 and Jonathan has been ordered to stop donating.
‘He portrays himself like an angel figure, a Good Samaritan, helping poor women who can’t have any children,’ says Natalie. ‘He lied and made out like it wasn’t a big problem, but it is a huge problem.
‘There are probably a bunch of mums that are still unaware about all of this. He continues to post videos from all over the world so we know he is still travelling. We just don’t know if he is still donating.’
The couple now have to think carefully about how much they tell their 11-year-old son.
‘He needs to understand the seriousness but he also needs to understand that these are real siblings and he can have contact with them,’ adds Suzanne.
‘We didn’t ask for this. We want our son to have as good and as carefree a life as possible. That has been taken away from him, but also his grandchildren for generations who will have to be really careful with who they procreate. You can’t even imagine if one of them becomes a donor themselves.
‘It’s very messed up.’
‘I gave families what they longed for’
In response to the claims made in the documentary and this article, Jonathan admitted donating to the families spoken to in the documentaries but denied promising that he wouldn’t donate to more than 25 families. He said he helped with 450 children privately and 150 through sperm banks and argues that ‘there is zero chance of in-breeeding’ following his actions.
He told Metro in a statement: ‘I follow the policies of the international sperm banks; they also do not inform recipients about the amount of offspring they conceive with one donor.’
Jonathan denied running a website for donors, although said he had a Facebook group for German recipients and donors.
Jonathan said: ‘I am one of the best donors one can wish for. I gave them a healthy child. I did not cost any money and I had records that I am healthy.’
He also denied Patricia’s allegation that he mixed semen with Leon, adding: ‘I have never done such a heinous act and there is also zero evidence for this.
‘I gave families what they longed for. These few ungrateful parents stand in a very tiny group; the other hundreds of mothers and families are grateful to me.’
The Man With 1000 Kids is available on Netflix from 3rd July.