A man going by the name “Rod Kissme” claims to have “very strong sperm”. It may seem like an eccentric boast for a Facebook profile page, but then this is no mundane corner of the internet. The group where Rod and other men advertise themselves is a community where women and couples come, in many cases, to fulfil a lifelong dream: parenthood.
There is a growing number of online sperm donor groups on social media. They offer people the chance of parenting children in an unregulated, dangerous but surprisingly straightforward way.
Membership of groups such as Sperm Donors UK, Start a Family Here and “Get Your BABYDUST Here!” are thriving. This is due, in part, to the prohibitive cost of the official route – through a Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulated clinic.
For those who do things by the book, the costs can easily run into tens of thousands of pounds, especially if they do not become pregnant at the first attempt.
Lengthy delays and shortages of donors from certain religious backgrounds or ethnicities also drive many towards unregulated means.
Selling sperm for profit is illegal in the UK and donors are allowed to be compensated only for legitimate costs. And with the illegal route comes considerable risks.
In the groups there are numerous posts from women who describe having bad experiences. One woman in a same-sex relationship said they met their donor to receive a sperm deposit, only to find he would not go through with the deal unless the couple showed him their breasts.
More alarming still are the responses, many of which tell the couple they should have gone to a sperm bank if they did not want to have a threesome with the donor. There is little time for sensitivity, it seems, in the competitive world of online sperm selling.
Hastily arranged online sperm donation can easily lead to the family courts, and judges have warned about the dangers of these ad hoc deals. Recently, a Guardian investigation into Robert Albon, an unregulated donor who claims to have 180 children across the world, revealed he has begun to seek access to his offspring through the courts in England and Wales. The situation has become a “horror story” for the women who paid for his donations.
Felicity (not her real name), 39, divorced with one child and wanting another, joined the Start a Family Here group five or six years ago.
“My daughter had been IVF due to male infertility – that was an awful experience so even though money wasn’t a problem, I didn’t want to go through with it again,” she says.
When she first joined the group, it was “pretty quiet, just a few posts each week from people looking for a donor”.
That began to change a couple of years ago when media coverage led to an influx of new members.
“Suddenly there were thousands of young women aged 18 to 25 joining and membership went up to 10,000 within a year. Anonymous posting started to become the norm and women were rushing in without research, asking for last-minute donations,” she adds.
Recent posts include one by a woman aged 18 hoping to get pregnant, one from someone asking for a donor “with a high rate of girls” and many people asking for urgent donations.
“Need a donation some time this evening,” reads one post from a woman who is ovulating and has been “let down” by a donor. Others ask for donations “this weekend”.
Felicity describes the younger members as “very immature and selfish”. She says many appear to be have mental health disorders – she has seen posts from women saying they had tried to kill themselves alongside those looking for a donor, while some were “desperate to have a baby, but it seems to be a fix for their own family trauma”.
The age profile of donors seems to be considerably higher than recipients – most appear to be between 35 and 50 – so “there’s huge scope for them taking advantage and manipulating the young women”, Felicity says.
One common tactic often warned about in these communities is that men will pressure women into sex, telling those who want to use “artificial insemination” with a syringe or baster, that sexual intercourse is more successful at producing pregnancies, which is not true.
Sex, euphemistically referred to as “natural insemination” in these groups, is not the preferred method for most women, and yet recipients who are desperate to get pregnant can be persuaded to allow their boundaries to be crossed.
Many of the posts in the groups are from people who will donate only through sex or through a method they call “partial insemination”, where the donor’s penis is inserted immediately before ejaculation.
In one post, a man complaining about rude recipients says he will no longer donate, except through natural insemination, while many, such as a young Russian donor, simply write something along the lines of: “The NI [natural insemination] method is free, the AI [artificial insemination] method is for money.”
A significant problem according to Felicity is that Facebook’s algorithm promotes groups to people it identifies as having similar interests.
“One swinger joins sperm donors’ group and Facebook advertises it to all his mates over in Big Women for Desperate Losers,” she jokes. “These guys hide in the background, private messaging new members and sending [dick pics], getting off talking to women about the process.
“Some will go so far as to appear genuine and arrange to meet but it’s nothing more than a fantasy to them. For the women who jump in, they get taken in by those and the scammers.”
The Guardian understands Facebook is now investigating the content in these groups.
While sexual assault and harassment is rife, there are also risks of serious sexually transmitted diseases, hidden genetic disorders and creating a child with someone to whom you could end up being legally bound for life.
James MacDougall was named by a family court judge in 2022 after donating sperm knowing he was a carrier of the genetic condition, fragile-X syndrome, which can cause a wide range of problems including learning disabilities and cognitive impairment in children.
Donors are not spared trouble or pain either – men who advertise their services can face a barrage of personal abuse, especially about their physical appearance.
Below some pictures of a man in his 50s with curly, dyed black hair, commenters wrote: “Are you knocking out Gary Glitter clones”, “Temu Fred West more like Frank East”, and “Christ don’t let it breed 🤣”.
Felicity says: “Recipients treat (men) like sperm vending machines, demanding they just show up when they need, doing all the travelling in most cases, hand over the sample then disappear, never to be heard from again.
“They’re living in a fantasy world where they pretend the donor doesn’t exist and don’t care that the child may have different feelings about it.”
Younger, more conventionally good looking men tend to be very popular. These prolific donors can quickly become minor celebrities in the sperm-donation universe.
Men in their 20s and 30s, particularly from the US, appear to travel the world making money from selling sperm. They also cash in on influencer content on Instagram and TikTok, uploading videos about their lives and advising women how to get pregnant.
The German sperm donor influencer Daniel Bayen, who recently visited the UK, is one such influencer. The 25-year-old’s videos, filmed all over the world, preach openness and transparency about being a prolific donor. He answers questions from followers and talks about the rapport he builds with families he donates to, and the “pride” he feels when he sees pictures of his biological children – though he will not give any indication of how many he has.
Bayen was conceived through donated sperm himself and has about 30 half-siblings. He says he uses a homemade “sibling registry” to keep track of his biological children and has a Facebook group where the parents can meet.
Whether Bayen’s approach is ethical is hotly debated in the groups, and he and others like him are criticised for leaving a trail of possibly hundreds of legally untraceable siblings and thousands of first cousins.
It is a problem often ignored by the adults in these communities who are so keen to have a baby: the tangled genetic backstory their children will have to unpick later in life if they want to know where they came from. This is especially the case if they do not want to risk starting a sexual relationship with a close biological relative – a genuine hazard, especially when recipient families live close to each other.
In one of the sadder posts in the Sperm Donors UK group, one woman enquires about her child’s potential siblings.
“How do I find out about the other babies born from his sperm?” she asks. “Obviously there’s no sperm bank with information available as I found him in here. I could message him but I really don’t want to. Is there any other way I can find other families?”
She adds: “Any advice welcome I know there were 10 families in total and we all conceived in the same year I believe, also I remember him saying one lady was expecting twins.”
More than a dozen respondents say variations of the same thing: “You can’t.”
