Beware strangers bearing gifts. Especially if the gift is the sperm they’re offering to donate when they pop around to your house, sample-cup in hand. Such is the message of The Man With 1,000 Kids (Netflix from Wednesday) – a documentary in the hair-raising, brain-melting tradition of Tiger King and The Tinder Swindler.
The “man” referred to in the title is Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a Dutch citizen with multiple false names, surfer dude hair and a YouTube channel in which he eats raw meat. Would you accept a sperm donation from a raw meat-eating amateur surfer who looks like a paler cousin of Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons? Possibly, if they possessed the luxuriant hair that is Meijer’s most striking feature.
“He had a beautiful head of curls,” said one of his “clients”. “His hair was amazing.”
Killer curls weren’t the only unusual thing about Meijer. He fathered multiple children – 600 in the Netherlands, potentially upwards of 1,100 globally, including as far away as Australia.
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Meijer appears to have talked a good game. He told one woman he was “willing to help five families” – and that after that, he was done. However, his generosity carried an edge of menace. One woman recalled Meijer recommending it was “best to conceive the natural way”, adding that he “wouldn’t tell anyone else”.
The Man With 1,000 Kids is the latest entry in the Netflix genre of lurid documentaries, of which the highest profile example is the aforementioned Tiger King. That show was packed with “this can’t be happening” moments – and so, too, is The Man With 1,000 Kids, such as when Meijer turns up at one couple’s home and then vanishes to the loo to deliver his donation.
“He went to do his thing,” says the woman. “It was the longest 45 minutes of my life,” adds her still traumatised partner.
In the Netherlands, the law prohibits sperm donors from fathering more than 25 children. But 25 was just the start for Meijer, who would tell families that he “wanted to help”.
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The missing element from The Man With 1000 Kids is Meijer himself. He declined to be interviewed, and the series suffers for his absence. Why did he do it? For the sheer thrill? Because he enjoyed manipulating sometimes desperate couples? Ego – the urge to fill the world with his progeny?
Theories are offered. However, with the subject of The Man With 1,000 Kids missing, it’s ultimately just guesswork – a huge question mark at the centre of a film framed as a jolly look at a bizarre story but which expands into a horrifying tale of deception, manipulation, and ruined lives.
