Woman smuggled baby into UK using fake birth story






Last summer, a woman was arrested at Gatwick Airport after she arrived from Nigeria with a very young baby girl.

The woman had been living in West Yorkshire with her husband and children, and before leaving the UK for Africa had told her GP she was pregnant.

That was not true.

When the woman returned about a month later with the baby, she was arrested on suspicion of trafficking.



The case, the second the BBC has followed through the Family Court in recent months, reveals what experts say is a worrying trend of babies possibly being brought to the UK unlawfully - some from so-called "baby factories" in Nigeria.

'My babies are always hidden'


The woman, who we are calling Susan, is Nigerian, but had been living in England since June 2023, with her husband and children.

A careworker with leave to remain in Britain, Susan claimed she was pregnant. But scans and blood tests showed that wasn't true. Instead, they revealed Susan had a tumour, which doctors feared could be cancerous. But she refused treatment.

Susan insisted her previous pregnancies had been invisible on scans, telling her employer, "my babies are always hidden". She also claimed she'd been pregnant for up to 30 months with her other children.

Susan had travelled to Nigeria in early June 2024, saying she wanted to have her baby there, and then contacted her local hospital in Britain, to say she had given birth.

Doctors were concerned and contacted children's services.

Arriving back in the UK with the baby girl - who we're calling Eleanor - Susan was stopped and arrested by Sussex Police.

She was bailed and the lead police force on this confirmed there is no active investigation at the moment.

After her arrest, Susan, her husband, and Eleanor were given DNA tests. Eleanor was taken to foster carers.

"When the results show that I am Eleanor's mother, I want her to be returned immediately," Susan said.

But the tests showed the baby had no genetic link with Susan or her husband. Susan demanded a second test – which gave the same result, and then she changed her story.

She'd had IVF treatment before moving to Britain in 2023 with a donor egg and sperm, she said, and that's why the DNA tests were negative.

Susan provided a letter from a Nigerian hospital, signed by the medical director, saying she'd given birth there, as well as a document from another clinic about the IVF treatment to back up her claims.

She also provided photos and videos which she said showed her in the Nigerian hospital's labour suite. No face is visible in the images and one showed a naked woman with a placenta between her legs, with an umbilical cord still attached to it.







Someone had given birth - it wasn't Susan


The Family Court in Leeds sent Henrietta Coker to investigate.

Ms Coker, who provides expert reports to family courts in cases like this, has nearly 30 years experience as a social worker. She trained in Britain, and worked in front-line child protection in London, before moving to Africa.

Ms Coker visited the medical centre where Susan claimed she'd had IVF. There was no record of Susan having had treatment there - staff told her the letter was forged.

She then visited the place Susan said she'd given birth. It was a shabby, three bedroom flat, with "stained" walls and "dirty" carpets.

There Ms Coker was met by "three young teenage girls sitting in the reception room with nurses' uniforms on".

She asked to speak to the matron and was "ushered into the kitchen where a teenage girl was eating rice".

Ms Coker then tracked down the doctor who'd written a letter saying Susan had given birth there. He said, "Yes, someone had given birth".

Ms Coker showed him a photograph of Susan, but it wasn't her, the doctor said.

"Impersonating people is common in this part of the world," he told Ms Coker, suggesting that Susan might have "bought the baby".







The practice of "baby farming" is well known in West Africa, Ms Coker later told the court. At least 200 illegal "baby factories" have been shut down by the Nigerian authorities in the last five years, she said.

Some contained young girls who'd been kidnapped, raped, and forced to give birth repeatedly.


Post a Comment

0 Comments

Hype News
Hype News
Hype News
Hype News
Hype News
Hype News