Mitsutoki Shigeta is 28. He is not married. He is extremely wealthy. He is believed to have 19 children, most of them around four years old.
And everyone has questions.
In 2014, the young Japanese man was at the centre of an international furore when it was revealed he had fathered a large number of babies through surrogate mothers in Thailand. Police raided his apartment in Bangkok and found nine babies, each one with a nanny. There were bottles and playpens everywhere. Interpol investigated, but found no evidence of human trafficking.
The “baby factory” case, as it was known, along with the “baby Gammy” case, led to the Thai government cracking down on commercial surrogacy.
Shigeta has already been awarded custody of four of his children born in Thailand, according to a CNN report.
This week, a Bangkok court granted him “sole parent” rights to the other 13. CNN reports his lawyer saying that he has another two children born via surrogates in India.
Shigeta is believed to be the son of a Japanese technology billionaire. When the court gave him custody of the 13 children, it was due to his “professional stability” and having an “ample income to raise all the children”.
The court also felt that growing up with a biological parent would be in the children’s best interests, ABC reports.
Top Comments
A guy on youtube did a cost benefit analysis between a man starting a family this way vs the normal way that now nearly always results in a man losing his kids & more than half his assets. Surrogacy came out in front by a golden mile even after factoring in the cost of a nanny. And with tech like the artificial womb just over the horizon, which is being developed primarily to help premature babies, even the surrogate wont be needed soon.
Weird but fair enough.