Woman smuggled baby into UK using fake birth story

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.

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.

"Sometimes these girls are released," Ms Coker said, "other times they die during childbirth, or are murdered and placed in the grounds of the organisation."

It's not clear where baby Eleanor might have come from – though the doctor told Ms Coker he believed she would have been given up voluntarily.

Ms Coker was unable to establish who Eleanor's real parents are.

She gave evidence to the Family Court in Leeds in March this year, along with Susan, her husband, her employer and a senior obstetrician.

At an earlier hearing the judge asked for Susan's phone to be examined. Investigators found messages which Susan had sent to someone saved in her address book as "Mum oft [sic] Lagos Baby".

About four weeks before the alleged date of birth Susan wrote a text message which read:

"Good afternoon ma, I have not seen the hospital items"

The same day, Mum Oft Lagos Baby responded:

"Delivery drug is 3.4 m

"Hospital bill 170k."

Assuming those sums to be Nigerian Naira, they would be in the region of £1,700 and £85 respectively, the Family Court judge, Recorder William Tyler KC said.

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