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 …read more
Source:: Metro
