The court also ordered Jonathan to write to clinics abroad asking them to destroy any of his semen they have in stock (Photo: Screengrab/Jonathan Jacob Meijer YouTube channel)
Sat 29 Apr 2023:
A Dutch court has ordered a man to cease donating his sperm after a lawsuit accused him of fathering over 550 children since 2007.
The fertility scandal, which shocked the Netherlands and the rest of Europe, came to light after a foundation and the mother of one of the children filed a lawsuit in The Hague, suspecting incestuous links between the hundreds of children allegedly fathered by Jonathan M.
The court also flagged the “huge kinship network”, helmed over by Jonathan, “with hundreds of half-siblings” in many countries.
The clinical guidelines in The Netherlands say a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families. However, the judges found that the man had helped produce between 550 and 600 children since he began donating sperm in 2007.
The court has “prohibit[ed] the defendant from donating his semen to new prospective parents”, judge Thera Hesselink said on Friday.
Jonathan M has also been ordered not to contact any prospective parents “with the wish that he was willing to donate semen… advertise his services to prospective parents or join any organisation that establishes contact between prospective parents,” Hesselink said in a written judgment.
The court warned Jonathan that if he continues with donating his semen, he would face a fine of €100,000 [over ₹90 Crores], for each future donation.
The mother of one of the children said she was thankful to the court for stopping the man from “mass donations that have spread like wildfire to other countries.”
“I’m asking the donor to respect our interests and to accept the verdict, because our children deserve to be left alone,” she said in an official statement.
According to a report in The Guardian, over 100 children fathered by Jonathan M were born in The Netherlands. But a clinic also dispatched his semen to other private addresses in various countries.
“The donor deliberately misinformed prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered in the past,” the district court in The Hague reportedly said.
“All these parents are now confronted with the fact that the children in their family are part of a huge kinship network, with hundreds of half-siblings, which they did not choose,” it added.
The case is the latest among a host of fertility scandals to hit the Netherlands.
In 2020, a gynaecologist was accused of fathering at least 17 children with women who thought they were receiving sperm from anonymous donors.
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