Wednesday Weirdness-Nigerian “Miracle” Conception Adoption Battle

Welcome to Wednesday Weirdness, a recurring theme where we post something truly weird and wacky in adoption or child welfare.

“An infertile couple duped by Nigerian conmen into believing their child was miraculously conceived were the victims of greedy international child traffickers, a judge has ruled.

Now the pair are fighting a legal battle to adopt the one-year-old girl after she was taken into care.

In 2010, the husband and wife from Hackney decided to travel to Nigeria to undergo fertility treatment after failing to conceive in the UK using IVF.

But when they returned to Britain their local GP discovered the baby was not related to her ‘parents’ and the child was taken into care by Hackney Council.

However, the woman insisted that she had been tricked by ‘unscrupulous’ conmen into believing that the child was hers – despite their being no pregnancy or birth

The court heard the woman underwent fertility treatment as she was ‘desperate’ to have a baby.

She said she believed she was pregnant and had no idea that she had become embroiled in a child trafficking scam.

The woman then claimed she was drugged and thought she had genuinely given birth at a Nigerian clinic.

However, after returning to the UK, suspicions about the baby’s parentage were raised by the couple’s local GP and the local authority was alerted.

It was confirmed that the ‘birth’ had been staged and that the child had been stolen from her unknown parents in Nigeria.

The child was then taken off the couple and put into the care of the social services

But in December last year as part of ongoing care proceedings a High Court judge ruled in favour of the mother and found that she was a innocent victim of an elaborate scam.

The court heard ‘baby exchange’ was a common practice in Nigeria and the ‘desperate and distressed’ couple had been an easy target for exploitation.

This week Hackney Council challenged the judge’s finding at the Appeal Court.

The authority’s lawyers argued the woman was a ‘knowing and willing participant’ and the whole thing was a ‘charade’ designed to unlawfully remove the child from her country.
Marianna Hildyard QC, for the council, said it was ‘incredible’ the woman could have believed she had gone through pregnancy and labour when she had not.

However, Lord Justice McFarlane, rejected the council’s appeal bid.

He said he was ‘fully alive’ to the extraordinary nature of the woman’s claims, but found her to be ‘credible.’

And he concluded the council had failed to prove she was a ‘knowing and willing partner’ in the scam.

He said he understood the points made by the council, but that it was a ‘tall order’ to overturn the findings of the experienced High Court judge, Justice Coleridge.

He added: ‘Other judges may have come to other conclusions on the evidence in this case, but this was an extremely experienced trial judge who, throughout, flagged up the basic incredulity.

‘He was fully alive to those factors, but nevertheless took the view that the local authority had failed to prove the woman was a knowing and willing partner in a scam.’

The ruling will improve the couple’s chances of becoming the child’s adoptive parents.

In September last year, an evangelical pastor, Gilbert Deya, who claimed he could give infertile couples ‘miracle babies’ was extradited to Kenya to stand trial over allegations he stole five children.

It is alleged the self-proclaimed bishop of a church in Peckham, south London, stole youngsters from the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, in Nairobi, between 1999 and 2004.”

Couple’s legal battle to adopt one-year-old girl after Nigerian fraudsters convinced them she was miraculously conceived
[Daily Mail 4/20/12 by Navia Parveen]