Original subtitles

The average couple has 2.3 children in their lifetime.

But the record that one couple have had is thought to be over 40.

But what if I were to tell you that there is a man alive today

who may have fathered over a thousand children.

And is still going.

What kind of man would do that?

I got to know him on the Internet.

When you look at his video,

he has beautiful blond hair with a big smile,

and I'm ready to have beautiful babies.

He said, "I'm willing to help five families." He lied.

There weren't four or five families.

There were already hundreds.

Overseas, a Dutch man is facing legal action

for allegedly fathering at least 550 children.

Holy sh...

Why are you putting so many children on this earth? Why?

It's become an addiction for him. He actually can't stop himself.

He wants to have the most children in history.

I know he traveled to a lot of countries in the world.

And the question is, how big is this? How many kids are there?

What happens, psychologically, to these children

that have seven, eight hundred, nine hundred brothers and sisters?

We were determined to stop him.

This man has really fucked with the wrong women.

♪ The night we met I knew I... ♪

I always knew that I wanted to be a mom.

I wanted to have the baby growing in my belly.

♪ I'd never let you go... ♪

I want to have the same experience my mother and grandmother did.

♪ Say you love me... ♪

I was 28, and I was living in Rotterdam with my ex... ex-girlfriend.

- We don't talk about the ex. - No.

Don't get me fucking started.

- No. No. - Whoo.

♪ Be my baby... ♪

And we wanted to have children.

You felt ready.

Yeah, there's an expression, um, in Dutch that je eierstokken rammelen.

That means your ovaries are starting to... to wiggle.

♪ I'll make you happy, baby ♪

♪ Just wait and see... ♪

Everywhere I looked, I saw babies.

Women getting pregnant. Babies, babies, babies.

If you want to have a baby, everywhere you see people with babies.

♪ Oh, since the day I saw you... ♪

From a very young age, I always wanted to be a mom.

It's difficult to describe.

It's just something that is... It's just there.

♪ So won't you, please ♪

♪ Be my... be my baby ♪

♪ Be my little baby... ♪

I didn't find a man that would have kids with me,

and the older I got, the desire to have kids became very strong.

What went on in my mind, it's just crazy.

I had three kids from a previous marriage,

and I had a vasectomy after the third child.

And then, of course, I married a wife that's younger than I am.

And then we went back to the doctor to see if I could have my vasectomy undone,

and that turned out that was impossible.

When you're a lesbian, you're not... Yeah.

It's not like you're gonna have sex someday,

and then you're gonna get pregnant.

And I'm not, not, not, not gonna have sex with... with a guy.

There are the sperm banks you can go to,

but you can't meet the sperm donor in person.

I want to look the sperm donor in the eye

and see if this personality also fits with my personality

because a sperm donor is making up 50% of your child.

There are websites online with donors

who are willing to provide in private,

not to go through sperm banks,

but going privately to a house and donating there.

And I found a website called Verlangen naar een Kind.

Longing for a Child.

And when I opened it, I saw sperm. Everywhere was sperm.

There were many, many, many profiles.

You couldn't see pictures, but you could see

just a little description.

I was like, "Wow, there are so many guys here who are willing to donate sperm."

I hit enter and then...

All of a sudden, in your mind you... you start creating a profile,

a real image.

It's like, um, when you go to an ice-cream seller,

and you want to buy an ice cream,

and you see all the different types of flavors,

and you can choose from it.

At the bottom, you see an email address, and you can email the person directly,

and I found it perfect.

Then I, uh, write some of the donors. uh, an email, uh, with our, uh, story.

There are weird people out there

who wanted to make the baby, uh, at a natural way.

So not with a cup, but only natural.

- Just actually have sex. - To have sex. To have sex.

So I was like, "No, thanks. I have a husband and I, uh...

I have enough, so..."

The first donor we found was Leon.

He was 35 with a good set of brains,

and that he had, um, a job as a financial advisor at a big bank,

and that he is sympathetic and kind.

He suggested that we should meet.

First time, he sent me pictures of him when he was a child.

So I ask him right away,

"Can I have a recent picture of you?"

Because if you are going on a "date" with somebody,

you want the picture of the guy or the girl.

He sent me a picture of him with half of his face on it,

and I found that a bit sketchy.

But I was like, "Okay, let's go ahead. Let's meet him."

And when I met him, I was horrified.

He didn't look like a banker.

He didn't look like somebody who has a good set of brains.

He didn't have any hair on his whole body.

And then he had a scar from his left ear to his right ear on the back of his head.

So I... I... I saw the scar, and I was like,

"What is wrong with this guy?"

And I thought, "No, not with you, not with your genes."

"You're not gonna procreate with my genes. No, no, no, we're not gonna do that."

"But there probably is another guy."

If you're gay, you're not able to have a child

with another woman, of course,

so I used the website Verlangen naar een Kind,

Longing for a Child.

It's really weird. It's like a shop.

So I went online, and I found another guy.

Twenty-nine, good-looking, good set of hair, good set of brains.

A teacher.

And I thought, "Okay, it's worth to message this guy again."

And the next one, uh, called himself Maarten.

In the first email, he sent pictures of himself.

Not baby pictures, but actual pictures of how he looked just now.

With his... with his hair all curled up and pretty

and nice and looked in the camera.

And it was like a day-and-night difference

between the first one and that one.

He made a connection with you.

Maarten was attracting because he was an artist.

He likes music, playing music, making music.

He had curly hair. That was very nice.

Um, yeah, they were points that I really liked.

And then I responded on his, uh, profile.

He put it in brackets that his name was an alias.

After two emails, he said, "I use Maarten as an alias,

and my real name is Jonathan."

The person that spoke to me was Walter.

Then he replied to me with Jacob.

I phoned him, and, uh, all of a sudden I heard another name.

And that was Jonathan, and that was weird.

Because first time he was Walter, and then it was Jacob,

and then it was Jonathan.

He explained that Jonathan was his first name

and Jacob was his second name,

and Walter was just a fictive name.

Because of his sperm-donor life and his personal life,

he wanted to keep them separate.

It made total sense.

We texted. He was so easy to talk to.

Just the guy next door and, like, he could be a friend.

I wasn't looking for looks.

I wanted to have a donor who had the best interest for the donor child.

So it felt really good.

Of course, I googled him.

I looked him up, and I saw his YouTube channel.

Jonathan has a YouTube channel,

and he's posting, uh, videos, maybe two a week,

about his lifestyle and about his way of living, uh, and music.

He is just posting from beautiful places and beautiful hotels.

And he was very confident and happy in those videos.

Say hi to my, uh, video blog.

For the people that haven't seen my blogs before,

they're mostly about food, sports, educating yourself, learning new things.

We did think it was a little... a little bit peculiar.

He had a few videos about eating raw meat.

Today I'm eating raw beef.

We did joke about it afterwards, that he had some very weird habits,

but I guess you have to be a little bit unique to do this.

We arrived first.

And we were sitting, and we were waiting there,

and there was a concert pianist who was playing on... on a piano.

I was watching people coming and going,

and every man that came around the corner,

I was asking myself, "Well, is that him?"

And, "Yes, that's him."

"Okay, that's a good-looking guy. Jeez."

"Well, yeah, he could be the... the... the... the father of my child."

Jonathan came, and we introduced ourselves.

He looked exactly like he did in the pictures.

I thought he was an attractive guy.

He had curly hair. He had bright blue eyes.

Good set of teeth.

He looked good.

We were there early,

so we'd already sat down and ordered something to drink,

and then he walked in.

Over the dinner or lunch, you... you talk everything through,

um, to see if there's also this, uh, connection.

What did you notice about him?

- His hair. - His hair.

Immediately.

We really hoped that our kids have his hair.

Because he has a beautiful head of curls.

He told me he was not going to the hairdresser from that point,

and he was planning to let it grow.

And he did. Yeah, his hair is amazing.

Hi. Thank you for watching a new video blog.

If you want healthy hair, if you want strong hair,

if you don't want to lose your hair,

if you want to stop balding, reverse balding,

you have to get out and get some sun.

People that do this, you expect them to have

a little bit of an alternative lifestyle and way of thinking.

He was quite proud of that.

Hi. Thank you for watching a new video blog.

This summer, I spent weeks and weeks in the forest.

He has a very big range of subjects to talk about. He knows a lot.

He seems very believable, and he can really draw you in.

I wanted to talk about how to learn a language

in only 15 minutes every day.

Today I wanted to talk about hedonism and nihilism as a lifestyle.

Today I will explain how to make a low-carb pancake.

He was talking about being a teacher, that he loved that.

And I was like, "Okay, that's nice."

Because I come from a family of teachers, and we have a connection about that.

And he told me that he was building orphanages

for... for the children in Kenya.

I befriended a guy in college,

and he told me that he was infertile.

It made a huge impact on me.

And I was just imagining, well, what would it be if I became, uh, a donor?

Uh, they really help building these families,

to make a dream come true.

He wants to help. He wants to donate,

but he didn't like the sperm banks at all,

because the sperm banks were making money out of it,

and he didn't want to make money out of it.

He wanted to be more, uh, philanthropic.

In the Netherlands, when you have a child from a clinic,

you have to wait for 16 years

to know who your donor is and to have contact with him.

And I really want to have contact from the beginning.

I see the children a few times in the year.

That's, I think, for all, most optimal.

But I'm totally fine.

I totally accept

that parents choose to do something else, choose what they prefer.

It's about them. It's not about me.

He was very willing to be in our lives, to have contact.

Yeah, I thought I'd found the perfect match.

He told me he had helped two families,

and I was the third and the third child at that time.

I asked him, "How many people are you willing to help?"

And he said, "I'm willing to help five families."

"I'm, like, one of the five people you are willing to help?"

Ker-ching! And every... And the dollar bills are flying in.

No, so I thought I was very lucky at that moment.

A hallelujah moment, I guess.

♪ Aha ♪

Found someone!

When you're ovulating,

the window you can conceive a child is, like, three days.

So it's a really tight window.

He said maybe we could drive up to collect the sperm

and then drive back again to our house and then do the insemination.

Plan was, I'm going to put the cup between my legs to keep it warm,

and I drive home as fast as I can.

That was the plan.

And then he came outside. He was walking to the car.

"Here. Success! Success!"

And I was like, "Oh, yes, thank you." Yeah.

Ugh.

It is gross, you know? It's so gross.

Keeping the sperm warm is very important

because you know if you are not at home at a certain time,

the semen is already dead.

The semen was in this cup, yeah? So I have to be fast.

And then she got lost.

So I was looking on the map where she was, telling her where to go.

We have no time for this because the semen is dying between my legs.

I thought, "Okay, this is not gonna happen this month."

And then I was like, "Okay, I'll... I'll park my car in a... in a street."

And I was like, "Okay, there's nobody here. Okay."

You're going upstairs, and then you get the syringe, fill it up,

you put your legs up, you squeeze it out,

and then it can go through the process of getting through to the egg.

So I do the insemination in my car...

...sitting behind the wheel.

So we tried it a couple of times,

but it didn't work.

So I suggested to him,

maybe you can come to our house and donate there.

And he was willing to do that.

I travel most of the times to the recipients to donate

at their place, in their bathroom.

I gave him a towel, and I asked him...

- And a cup. - And a cup.

I had a little basket to keep it warm.

The moment came that he went to do his thing.

And he went upstairs.

He goes up to the bathroom.

He jerks himself off.

Took forever as well.

Yes. You sit there on the couch...

- Waiting for him to donate. - Waiting and waiting.

And knowing what he's doing in your bathroom,

which is very, very awkward.

It was the longest 45 minutes of my life.

Then he left it in my bathroom.

And then, uh, I just found it,

like an Easter egg.

Sorry.

He told me he looked at my Facebook account.

And he told me I look nice and just some flattering things.

"You look beautiful. You look amazing."

He was very flirty, almost like seducing you.

I don't see myself as pretty or... or anything.

But it's nice when someone gives you compliments on how you look.

When he came to my place to, uh... to donate, um,

he offered me the opportunity to, um, conceive the natural way, by having sex.

When we talked about it, it made sense

that it would be the most effective way to conceive.

And he... he told me, um, "It's okay,"

that he wouldn't tell anyone else, and it's just, um, between us,

and that's it.

And then, finally, I indeed decided

to try it in, uh, um, natural way.

Found out I was pregnant the first time.

Unfortunately, uh, it broke down.

We went for a second try after two or three weeks.

And then the second time, I was pregnant.

- Straight away? - Yeah.

Super sperm.

Two weeks later, I was nauseous.

I'm pregnant.

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!"

"I'm pregnant."

"What do I do?"

The second time, I knew when he drove away.

I felt, like, a butterfly or something going up in my... in my... in my body.

And I was like, "This one. This one is gonna stick."

Nine months later, I had a baby boy.

The loveliest baby in the world, and I was so, so, so, so, so happy.

Nine months later, we get a beautiful daughter.

She's perfect.

It was such a beautiful moment

to have your little baby in your arms and to look at it.

And then I broke out in tears.

"Oh, she's really mine," and, "I did it."

And, yeah, wonderful.

I was very thankful.

He gave me the most precious thing in my life.

It was perfect, at that time.

Yeah, it... it... Maybe it was too perfect.

I'm Max Curfs. I'm a clinical embryologist.

I'm part of a team

that is helping women and couples that are trying to conceive.

We have a sperm bank.

We freeze sperm from sperm donors.

We start with a written agreement

that a donor will not be active for other clinics or for other women.

The donor will only donate in our clinic

because we still had the guideline that a sperm donor was not allowed to have

more than 25 children in the Netherlands.

But we found out there was a sperm donor who had deceived us.

I was at my work, and I received an anonymous email.

The message was hard to believe.

"Dear fertility doctor,

there's a sperm donor active on the internet

who probably has more than 150 children in the Netherlands."

"He goes under several aliases."

"The donor indicates to prospective wish parents

that he wants to be a donor a maximum of five times."

"Most of his children were conceived via self-insemination

at the homes of intended mothers."

"However, he has also been a sperm donor at many clinics in the Netherlands."

I was shocked, really shocked.

The reason why we have a guideline

that a sperm donor could not have more children than 25

is to reduce the risk of consanguinity.

That's half-siblings who are not aware that they are half-siblings

are attracted to each other and will have children together.

If the story was true, what will it mean in the future for the children?

I work at a preschool, as a teacher,

and my colleague used a donor as well.

And, um, she asked me, uh, "Do you know who your donor is?"

And I said, "Yes, of course I know who my donor is." And, um, um...

"Oh. Where does he come from?"

"Well, he's coming from Den Hague." Uh...

And then I saw her face, like, going, "Oh."

And I say... I ask, "Oh? What do you mean?"

"Well, my donor's coming from Den Hague as well."

She said, "What is his name?" And I said, "Jonathan."

And then we were like... in the hallway at work.

I think we laughed.

And I remember her telling me,

"Well, in that case, our kids will know each other,

and they will grow up as siblings, half-siblings."

We were like, "Well, that would be great. A little family."

Couple of years later,

I found out that another colleague, who had a daughter,

she said, "Hey, I think the girls look alike."

The children are blonde,

and you see, uh, the eyebrows are the same

and the nose and the ears.

That's the point we found out we'd both used Jonathan as well.

It's also a classmate of my niece

who called me a few years later telling me she has a son.

It was also a friend of my first boyfriend

who's telling me she has a son.

It's also somebody from my birth town who says she has a child.

And then you think,

"If there are so many connections in my direct environment, uh,

how many are there?"

- Sorry. - Oh, hello.

- Hi. - Just in time for a sound bite. Thank you.

Sweet dreams. Did you have a nice dinner?

What did you have?

Uh, Grandpa's cucumber salad.

Didn't you have that yesterday as well?

Muah.

- Bye, sweetie. Sweet dreams. - Sweet dreams.

- Sleep well. - Sleep well.

We started talking about having another family member.

And I said to... to Natalie,

"I only... only want a kid if it's from that donor."

"Maybe we could ask Jonathan again if he is willing to donate."

I made a text. Okay. "Hi, Jonathan."

Uh, "We want a second child. Do you want to help us again?"

So it was, um, so exciting

when he just, like, replied quickly, quite fast, um,

that he wants to come over.

We discussed a little bit of politics,

um, and, yeah, we also discussed, um, the donations.

- You asked him the question. - Mm-hmm. Yeah.

"How many?"

"How many children do you have now?"

- And he was telling me 25. - Yeah.

And I was like, "Oh, that's a lot."

I was shocked, actually, when he... when he said the number.

It was really right in my face.

He explained it.

He said, "Okay, but it's the... the length of the time,

and there are a couple of women who have seconds or sometimes thirds."

And I was like, "Okay, if you do the math, then it... it... it isn't that bad."

So, um... we...

- Yeah, we accepted it. - Yeah. We went ahead.

And after a while, we noticed that it still didn't work.

Yeah. I was 36,

so the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

He told me, "Well, I will be there

when your cycle is there."

And then for three months in a row,

he wasn't.

And finally, um, I got ahold of him,

and then he told me he had to go to, uh... to Mexico for work.

Cabin attendant...

And the next round came,

and he was really difficult to get ahold of.

Jonathan makes these, uh, YouTube videos,

and we... we got the impression from watching those videos

that he was traveling, uh, around.

Hi. Thank you for watching my video blog.

Today I'm in Rome, and behind me is the Colosseum.

At the time, he created videos talking about crypto and about investing.

He needed to travel, uh, because of, uh, the partners he worked with,

and, um, um, yeah, he needed to meet them.

Hi. Thank you for watching my new video blog.

Today I'm in Switzerland, in Zurich,

and I wanted to talk about why I think Bitcoin will be very big

and very important in the future.

It gives the impression that he's maybe a bit too busy to help us.

- It's frustrating. - Yeah, it was so frustrating.

You don't wanna complain, because you're dependent on him.

Yeah, because if you complain, maybe he will back off.

So the next month came.

Then he said he wanted to meet at one of the biggest shopping malls

here in the Netherlands.

He told me that he was doing a job close by.

And then he went to a restroom.

I was like, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm gonna do the donation here."

I was like, "What the hell? What is he going to do there?"

He was actually jerking off in a public bathroom

where there are other guys standing next to him

taking a piss or taking a dump.

It was... felt like...

- Yeah, filthy. - You're very graphic.

Yeah, but... but you need to be graphic because it's... it's... it's weird.

It's actually disgusting.

- We still inseminated it. - We did that, yeah.

But we said, "No more."

- No, we just gave up. - Yeah.

With pain in our hearts.

We drove to his house again.

Nine months later, we had a lovely baby boy.

The sperm banks in the Netherlands, they came in contact with each other.

It was found out that he was indeed active in 11 clinics,

and as a result, this donor had 102 children

only in the sperm banks in the Netherlands.

Hard to imagine.

We needed to inform every patient who was ever treated with donor sperm.

Everybody had to be informed.

We came to the hospital, and we started calling patients.

Of course, patients were shocked,

were angry, were sad, were crying.

That was the moment when I received an email.

The newspaper is going to publish now.

It was 2017,

and I was sitting in the car with my mom and my daughter.

And there was a news item on the radio

of a man who donated in 11 clinics in the Netherlands

and that he had 102 children.

And I was just making fun to my mom, saying,

"Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if that... if that would be Jonathan."

And ten minutes later, I was called by the colleague

saying that it was about Jonathan.

The moment I heard there were already 102 from the clinic,

I was just starting to ask myself,

"I am from a private donation."

"How many private donations did he do? And how many more children are there?"

Like on every Saturday,

I picked up the newspaper.

I stumbled upon this article about a mass donor,

and it sounded like Jonathan.

- It was a shock. It was really a shock. - Yeah.

And the first thing I did was actually call Natalie.

"Darling, I think that you need to come home."

"There's nothing... nothing urgent, but we... we need to discuss something."

I drove quickly to our house, parked the car,

came in, and asked, "What is going on?"

And she said,

"You need to sit down, and you need to read this."

And I picked up the newspaper,

and I read the article from start till end.

And I was like, "My God, what the actual fuck is going on?"

"What has he done? Why has he done this?"

My daughter wasn't his eighth. She wasn't his twenty-fifth.

She was his over 100th

donor child in the Netherlands.

And, um...

that hit me like a ton of bricks.

I wanted to find other moms. We had to stop him.

I found out that there was a Facebook group with more parents.

When I joined the Facebook, uh, group,

I got in contact with Nicolette,

and she shared a picture of her daughter,

and my daughter is just the spitting image of hers.

If they are the same age, they could be twins. It's just crazy.

The group grew and grew and grew,

and every week another mother was let into the group.

And another mother and another mother.

First time we talked to Nicolette,

it was the first time we talked to someone in the same situation.

Um, I asked him how many kids he already had,

and he said, uh, uh, I was... I was going to be the third.

And he told me that he only donated to three women.

He said there were three.

Three. My daughter was the "fourth."

My child would have been the third.

He is lying and still lying.

He's drowning in his... in his... in his own lies.

And we all believed him when he said three... it was three.

You try, as a mom... you try to protect your children from everything.

And this was something I could not protect them.

There was also the story about the three children in Almere

that were in the same area and even in the same school.

They were in the same day camp.

And then we thought about, "Oh fuck. What if these children meet each other

and maybe have a connection or fall in love,

and they don't know they're related?"

And that's when the... when the real panic started.

That's when... that's when we saw the real danger in this.

Maybe there's another child in your street, you know?

Every blond kid, I was like, "Is that a Jonathan kid?"

I was obsessed with it.

♪ My mother said ♪

♪ Child, when you're older You'll be so much taller... ♪

So many connections. It's, like, immense.

And you know it's getting bigger because you hear it.

But you don't wanna hear it and know it,

because you don't want to be in that situation.

I think it's like blocking your emotions or blocking the truth.

It's like a horror situation. You don't wanna be in there.

♪ My mother said ♪

♪ Child, when you're older You'll be so much... ♪

Something snapped. I was angry. I was mad.

I was like, "What did he do?"

"And why did he do this?"

I tried... I tried so hard to find a reason in it,

but I still can't find a reason.

I can't... I can't understand

why are you so willingly

putting so many children on this earth?

Why?

The next day, I contacted Jonathan.

I, uh... I said, "I know about the numbers."

I said, "I'm going to hang you by your balls

from the highest tree."

I would grab him by the balls and turn him inside out.

Don't mess with a mom.

Then we realize that every YouTube movie was in another country.

And the question is, did he donate in all those countries as well?

Today I'm in Canada, and behind me are the Niagara waterfalls.

Was he actually doing something with... with... with crypto?

- Crypto, yeah. - Or not?

Today I'm in Thailand, in Bangkok.

Egypt, in Hurghada.

Sweden, in Malmö.

Stuttgart. Nuremberg.

Prague. Vienna.

It's terrifying to see him pop up

in all of those countries on his YouTube channel,

like he doesn't care about what's going on while our world crumbles.

And you start thinking, "How big is this?"

"How many kids are there? Hundreds? Thousands? I don't know."

Hi. Thank you for watching my video blog.

Today I'm in Toronto in Canada.

Today I'm in Hong Kong.

Today I'm in New York, on the Brooklyn Bridge.

With every country on YouTube,

it felt like the earth under my feet went away.

Today I'm down under in Australia.

- Hi. - Hi, I'm Kate.

And I'm Laura.

We're from Sydney, Australia.

And we have two beautiful sons.