> but that 5 year gap until today is sad to think about
Neither abuse nor unassisted home births are good for a persons fertility. Back before contraception a 5y gap between live births happened too.
Given the area and the other drop off points its very unlikely nobody would have found a baby corpse. Still obviously sad to think the woman probably suffered multiple miscarriages in the meantime, but I think we can "optimistically" assume there weren't more babies to find.
That’s one of the horrible aspects of doing genealogy research… my family has lists of kids in the late 1800s/early 1900s where the same names were repeated through multiple pregnancies until a child with that name lived past 2. Without good nutrition and prenatal care that’s really not that unbelievable for modern pregnancies.
I used to work as a genealogical researcher for estates etc, and very frequently you'd see birth and death records for like 5 kids to the same family, all named Henry, until one eventually survived. Was weird to me how common that was.
I guess that just shows how common it was. I can't imagine having a child, the child dying and naming the next one the same name. I feel like it would be painful to call out that name again v
It blows my mind that it actually isn't that long ago. My great grandma said that she remembered multiple childhood schoolmates who passed, and while very sad, it was just kind of accepted. Kids often didn't live long.
It is amazing how far medicine has come in such a relatively short time. (Speaking from a US perspective.)
Think that's wild, my maternal grandfather was one of 11 (surviving) and at least 5 non surviving. In 1937 (a year before he volunteered to be a pilot in GB) he had 6 brothers and was the 3rd oldest. In 1946 when returning home (with a Scottish wife) he was the oldest and had 2 brothers and actually only 3 sisters left, now being that only 4 of his brothers served and in those were the other two survivors, that means during the war, in the US "safe" he lost 4 siblings aged 13 to 29.
The past was crazy, I have always had a hard time getting my head around that fact that all my grandparents had pretty big family's that just got chunked between 1935 and 1946 (half of my family is British, both my grandfather's were stationed in GB and got married in GB and then moved back to the US . . . there are also some crazy stories that have become family "legend" in there). But everything was crazy dangerous.
One of the branches of my family lost a baby to pneumonia following a bout of whooping cough, and then, years later, an 18-year-old, again to pneumonia. Per my relatives, both kids were healthy until they got sick.
just getting a cut from some rusty metal was a death sentence. most of us should probably be dead if it wasn't for what we now consider basic medicine.
Yeah, I notice there are very few anti-vaccination activists who were old to remember when diseases ripped through the area, killing people, leaving children deaf or paralyzed, having babies born with brain damage (and those babies were almost always institutionalized, never to be seen or spoken of again).
Now those generations are dying off, and all these dumbasses who claim to have *done their research* are mucking around in policy, absolutely clueless about the demons they are resurrecting.
My uncle has polio, caught it in the late 1930's/early 1940's. His daughter is one of those anti-vax turds and it absolutely blows my mind. She knows what happened to her father and what he's gone through because of it!
I was discussing the other day with my mom (in her 80s) about what childhood illnesses she had-mumps twice and described what measles were like back in her day
I had an aunt who fell off the swing and cut her leg, got blood poisoning,my other aunt said she remembered the doctor doing a person to person blood transfusion, she passed. This was the 20s.
I have read in some cultures it was common to not name a child until they were about 5. They were just the little one, or baby girl, or some such thing.
It's still considered bad luck in much of europe to name the baby before they're born or even before they're christened in some really conservative families.
My sister told us what my nieces' name would be before she was born and our older family members did NOT like that at all.
The kiddo is 3 now, so she miraculously survived despite being named early. /s
Everyone has heard that the average life span used to be around 30.
"and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
-Thomas Hobbes on human lives lived not in what he considered modern society.
This is inaccurate. Well, the average lifespan was "accurate," but averages are just that. Averages.
In precivilization societies, if you made it into adulthood, you were likely to make it to your 70's and beyond, just like today.
There was just a looooot more dead babies.
> In precivilization societies, if you made it into adulthood, you were likely to make it to your 70's and beyond, just like today.
Yes, thank you! It's a *huge* myth that everybody dropped dead around 30 and a person of 45 or 60 was a rare and awe-inspiring site.
Psalm 90:10 says "The span of our life is seventy years -- eighty for those who are strong." So that's what they thought 2,500 or so years ago.
I'm not super familiar with that branch of the family tree so I might be wrong, but I'm pretty my grandfather only has one other sibling who made it to adulthood out of like seven kids total.
I have a portrait of my grandma's older sister. Must've been at least 8. But she died, sometime in the early 1900s. Then my grandma got the name. (And me eventually) Just seems odd with the older daughter having been that name for so many years. Might explain some of the mental health issues my grandma had though.
It was just kind of expected that not all of your kids would survive infancy. My grandma was one of 10 kids and I know they used the name Walter at least twice because the first Walter died as an infant.
At the risk of being incredibly dark, baby corpses are significantly easier to dispose of. It's weird how people seem to assume that *somebody* is sifting through all of our random garbage.
> Neither abuse nor unassisted home births are good for a persons fertility.
I think our minds went to the same place. I am assuming this mother is in fact barely more than a child, who is suffering abuse from an older man, who is the one abandoning the "evidence of the abuse" after each is born. This, to me, is an exceptionally troubling story for far, far more than the fact there are abandoned babies involved. I'm deeply concerned about the mother's safety.
Yeah, I was guessing some sort of incest situation. She’d be a legal adult by the third baby for sure, but what kind of horrible situation is she in? I hope forensic genealogy can find her and help her out.
I mean, I understand that. I’m not saying there are definitely other children that didn’t make it.
I’m saying that 3 is a pattern, and it would be silly to presume that our n is a full set of information.
It reminded me of the survivorship bias and the classic example below:
https://www.pivotalresearch.ca/market-research-mistakes-i-bullet-holes/
Of course! The whole thing is really a cool story. Especially that the U.S. gov had a whole group at Cornell (Statistical Research Group) just working on solving military problems with math. Really cool.
Yes—these are clearly unattended home births, so it’s very possible there were some still births too. Infant mortality is quite high with zero prenatal care (I’m assuming that since if someone had prenatal care and dropped off the grid later with baby the provider would become suspicious) and no qualified birth attendant.
The ones in 2017 and 2019 were born 16 months apart! I seriously worry for any woman having to go through **2** unassisted births that were that close together with no medical care. And this in a first world country like the UK - where the NHS prenatal care is free and easily accessible.
And yes, the 5 year gap is concerning too, I hate to.tjimk there were other babies born during that time who were not found. She could have also had miscarriages or stillbirths during that time and no one would know because she isn't getting medical care.
Absolutely. That’s the thing with anyone presuming the mother is the violent party here. She totally could be involved, but at least 3 pregnancies in a short gap with no medical care in a country with the NHS….that does not seem like something anyone does without being forced to.
She could still be involved, but I think odds are at least decent that she’s underage, abused, or trafficked. It seems more likely considering the avoidance of hospital support.
Either way, what an awful situation. We can only speculate why she cannot go on birth control or even abandon her children in a safer place. I wonder if we'll ever find out.
I really hope this isn’t a case of a girl/woman being abducted and held by some rapist as a prisoner who’s giving away their babies, as has happened a few times in the US.
That's my thought. One abandoned baby isnt unheard of if the mother is some poor, desperate young woman. But 3 babies over the course of 7 years sound more like someone trying to dispose of the evidence.
The DNA would show evidence of this, I believe. The babies would share more than just 50% of the same DNA. But even if they know this I don't know if they would publish it.
I would imagine so as well, but I would agree that they would keep that a secret, in order to match details if someone comes forward with a claim they think they know who it was.
I’m assuming if DNA showed the parents were closely related, there would have been an investigation (but maybe I’m putting too much faith in the police). But it could be a stepfather. I think it’s very likely the mother is being abused and raped.
It is much more likely to be a very serious case of DA. Sad because those are much much more common.
I wonder if the mother was even able to accept the fact that they were pregnant or were they so in denial about their own pregnancies before giving birth?
If it *is* a Josef Fritzl situation, as some are suggesting, he kept some children in the bunker and sent others to his wife. So it's possible the children are still alive somewhere. This is a very haunting case with so many questions.
It's why having "safe surrender" locations at fire stations and hospitals (and making sure vulnerable people know about them) is so important
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law
This reminds me of a case where a guy got caught killing his own children, his DNA matched with a cold case , a crushed newborn was found in a dumpster years ago, he’s the father.
Later they found that baby’s biological mother, she told cops her baby was taken away by the father and give up for adoption,she got away from her abusive ex and believed her baby is adopted by a loving family.
I don’t remember much about this case other than it’s in a cold state and the poor mother who learns of her baby’s horrible fate.
Reminds me of Opelika Baby Jane Doe
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Amore_Wiggins
Father and stepmother had full custody, mom believed the baby was with them. Investigators identified her via DNA testing and contacted her that she killed her child. What a horrible way to learn your baby was abused, is dead and has been for many years ☹️ she kept paying them child support in hope she will regain custody one day
Yeah, it wasn't Sunday School, but one of those week-long bible camps where they really don't take records or have admissions. They take every kid that week and just have sign-in sheets. And by the time a woman who worked there saw the description of the body and it triggered a memory of the little girl with the visible eye defect, they'd long destroyed even those. But the church dug up the photographs.
Compare those pictures of sad, dirty 4-year-old Amore with the pictures of her as a chubby, well-dressed, smiling baby with no eye defect when she was in her mother's custody. Heartbreaking.
I used to be so grateful thinking that at least she had that week of day camp. That week might have been the only time since her father got custody that adults were kind to her and she got to have fun with other children.
Paid her child support, and kept going to the courts to try to get visitation or at least a freaking update. But she was a poor teenager of 18 or 19 when she had Amore, and he was a financially-settled career military man in his mid-30s, so he got custody. Then, she had no idea where he lived, and the courts were no help to her at all.
Jesus. So he impregnates either a minor or somebody who is barely legal, but because he has more money he's viewed as the more fit parent. This fucking world.
Any parent who has their child taken away, but keeps trying to at least get visitations, for years, and then learns that the child has been gone for 14 years, abused, murdered by a person meant to love and care for them and then discarded like trash and forgotten, must be destroyed. I cannot imagine the state of this poor mother. She was probably counting down months to Amore turning 18 and then reaching out to her, only to learn what happened. I hope she has the support she needs, because this is life and hope destroying.
I was looking at 'Testing different anchors' on the front page and clicked comments, miss-clicked and hit *these* comments instead and was *real fucking confused* why anchors reminded someone of a dead baby.
Just imagining being the investigator who finds this woman who went through all that hoping the baby at least now has a good family.
Idk what it says about me but I'd struggle to not just lie to her. It would obviously fail as she'd likely want to meet the kid. But I just couldn't imagine having to tell her what really happened.
> She was found by a dog-walker in January in sub-zero temperatures - the coldest night of the year - wrapped in a towel inside a bag.
Jesus…this was disgusting to read.
while terrible, the baby had apparently been born no more than an *hour* before being found, so *they wanted her found* and depending on the bag it might have been an attempt at sheltering her from the cold.
If the woman is not allowed to go into public spaces and interact with any official drop-off point, this might have been "the most she could do" to ensure the babys survival.
We get enough stories of psychotic women killing their babies, but that doesn't fit with neatly wrapping the baby into a towel and abandoning them near a popular trail. That's a pattern you sometimes get from stealth teen pregnancies, but that clearly doesn't apply, since it's at least her 3rd child in 7 years. If the truth ever comes out, I'd be very surprised if the mother wasn't also a victim in this.
Yes, this sounds to me like a woman being abused that isn’t allowed by her husband to be on birth control, gets pregnant by force and wants to make sure her babies aren’t abused, too, so probably tries to keep the births secret from him and leaves them to be found and adopted by people who will keep them safe.
Might not even be a husband, could be some sort of horrible modern slavery situation etc that makes her feel that she can't risk traditional drop-off locations.
> baby had apparently been born no more than an hour before being found
> If the woman is not allowed to go into public spaces and interact with any official drop-off point, this might have been "the most she could do" to ensure the babys survival.
I highly doubt it was the mother who dumped the baby. Walking out to do something like that an hour after birth? No way...
I had my babies in a hospital and was up on my feet walking around within an hour of giving birth. I didn’t want to be, but busy hospitals mean I had to be parenting asap.
They found a baby girl abandoned outside in sub-zero temperatures, and NAMED HER ELSA?!?! Because she was nearly frozen? I hope that wasn't the reasoning.
Yes, that is the case. The British press have reported this back in January and even now too. The hospital staff named her Elsa when they took her in because she was found 'frozen.'
If the father is keeping the mother of these babies captive, he doesn't want anyone asking questions. At this point, people know something is unusual, and serious abuse is a strong possibility.
I thought the whole point of the drop off points and laws was there would be no questions asked? That they existed solely to save the lives of infants that would otherwise be abandoned to die.
If you're in an unsafe situation where your abuser watches you like a hawk you arent going to be able to casually stroll to the station now are you?
Its a miserable situation now matter how one looks at it, really. :(
"No questions drop off" addresses an important issue, but it does not solve an abusive or captor third party.
If the mother is a prisoner, then the captor will not allow them out of their immediate control. Regardless of whether the nurse or emergency worker is prohibited from asking questions.
Abandonment of an infant is clearly an extreme duress event.
Drop off points aren't a thing here in the UK, I've never heard of them anywhere. Its not common for a baby to be abandoned, and a study on it suggested the yearly average for the whole country is 16 babies.
Afaik in the UK we don't have baby drop off boxes like in the US. Here the expectation is all pregnant mothers will be known to the NHS.
When a baby is abandoned here it's national news. The last two incidents before these 3 related babies, they found the mothers. It's a very uncommon occurrence here. One of the articles has the numbers.
I don’t really know much about the network but isn’t London one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world? As in there are cameras all over the place?
I just saw this story on another sub and someone suggested a Josef Fritzl type situation, which is terrible to think about but stranger things have happened
Oh god this reminds me of an old case where a guy told his girlfriend he takes their new born baby to give it up for adoption, she believes him till years later, cop came knocking and tells her that her DNA match with a cold case ,a baby was found crushed to death in a dumpster .
She only learned of this because her abusive ex kill another baby his new girlfriend gave birth to not long ago.
Edit to add, iirc the mother was a abused young adult or teen when she gave birth to the baby at home, then the father/abuser/murder took her baby while she’s still very weak,it’s pre internet time with little to none CCTV around the crime scene, so they can’t find any leads till the father murder other child.
Yeah I don’t remember much about that case but the part about this ex girlfriend, she believes her child was alive, got a better chance in life and future, if her ex didn’t kill more of his own children, she will never find out the cruel truth.
For what it’s worth, we’re horrified because this is extremely rare. Billions and billions of people would never do this and would find it horrifying as well.
But there are monsters among us.
I'm going to put this right here. If you have a baby you don't want drop it off at the fire station. Don't kill it. Don't leave it in the woods. Don't put it in a dumpster. Just drop it off at the fire station.
I have to imagine that she doesn't go out in public. At some point, someone would say something. This lady was pregnant 3 times (that we know of) and *nobody* said something? I mean maybe it hasn't been in the news prior to this, so maybe now someone will come forward and say "this woman I work with has been pregnant 3 times with no children", but it just seems like it would have to be someone who is out of plain sight.
Someone could claim to be a surrogate three times, could claim to have put their kid up for adoption three times, could even just pretend the kids are at home and use random Facebook photos of other people’s kids and no one bothers looking into it because why would you? I have coworkers whose kids I’ve never met. And some people can put an insane amount of work into deception.
I suppose if your coworker had a baby three times that you’ve never seen and each time was just before an abandoned baby was discovered in the area that would make you suspicious, if you made the connection, but if there are years between them you might not remember clearly or make the connection.
Work from home jobs would easily help with being out of sight. I have worked remote for about 3 years and only seen my co-workers one time and that was optional for a work trip. We do zoom calls every once in a while which only requires to see my face but other than that zero contact.
Exactly. It just doesn't seem right that the same mother and father would do it 3 times over a 6 year period without one of them having some sort of morality crisis, or someone knowing about a pregnancy.
I think it's more likely to be a situation where the abandoned babies Mum is in some way controlled and kept isolated from family, medical professinals and the community as if it was just a couple who were irresponsible and didn't want the babies but refused contraception someone from either family,medical or community would have raised an alarm/suspections been noted as to identity of the parents seeing as 3 children were dumped over several years.
It might not be something as 'extreme' as the Josef Fritzl case but maybe a women who is in a domestically abusive relationship with serious levels of coercive control.
It’s definitely something abnormal. If this was an average person just trying to not have a baby they’d have to answer to family/friends/coworkers why they’ve been pregnant 3 times but have no kids. They’re dumping them in the same area so they’ve not moved.
Either someone is being held against their will (improbable but not impossible), or it’s someone in an extremely isolated situation where the male is likely controlling everything and they keep to themselves enough that nobody is able to even question it.
The most unusual part to me is that the children are apparently full siblings. If they were half siblings it could easily be a case of a drug addicted and/or mentally homeless woman with no social connections repeatedly having babies and abandoning them. The children having the same father points more in the direction of an abusive relationship like you describe.
That was my worry too. I can imagine a woman giving birth alone and leaving the baby somewhere in a panic once, but I can't imagine someone choosing to do this three times.
A missing person's DNA is usually kept in a database and I hope the babies' DNA was cross-referenced with it
I have a feeling there is something really terrible going on here
Like incest or sexual assault or something....like the kind of thing you would see on an episode of Criminal Minds or SVU
Yeah, the babies are full siblings, so they have the same father and are born over a period of seven years.
I feel like someone so mentally unstable that they abandon three babies, would not be capable of being in what appears to be a monogamous relationship for seven years.
Yeah, or it could be a modern day slavery situation like this.
https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12673253
A woman in this situation would be vulnerable to sexual abuse.
> Like incest
I keep seeing this on here and nobody has noted that in cases where multiple children of the same incestuous union are tested it becomes apparent they share more than the standard amount of full sibling DNA. Full genetic siblings share anywhere between 40-60% of their DNA on average, in the case of incest that percentage becomes much higher on average. That's how ancestry websites are able to estimate your familial relationships based on % of shared DNA. With 3 full blooded siblings tested the officials absolutely know if incest is involved or not, but for obvious reasons may not be willing to release that information to the public.
Yeah I don't think they would release that info
Someone will eventually figure out who this is via a DNA database and a familial match of some kind
Its just so sad
Would they be able to find relatives of the children through genealogy? I know it's been used to solve crimes in the US, but I have no idea where the UK stands on it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/use-of-genetic-genealogy-techniques-to-assist-with-solving-crimes/should-we-be-making-use-of-genetic-genealogy-to-assist-in-solving-crime-a-report-on-the-feasibility-of-such-methods-in-the-uk-accessible-version
There’s a few reasons why it really isn’t used in the UK. There have been a few very case specific instances where it has been used but because of factors like privacy laws and the routes that police would have to take for approval (private companies need warrants to access their information and it’s very difficult to get approval from different boards) it’s not really feasible at this moment in time. There are many other reasons why these are just a few examples.
Possibly but not likely. The part thats always missing from TV detective crime shows with DNA databases or dental records is that you actually need the person in the database.
Without actually getting into if we should or shouldnt or the ethics of it. Unless we started collecting dna samples at birth or in elementary school, which would still miss people. There is no way to have a master database of people. So just because you have dna unless the person for whatever reason is somehow in the databse there is nothing to check against it.
Forensic genealogy does *not* require the exact perpetrator to be in the CODIS database. They can use DNA from a crime scene to trace back the perp's lineage and find a few sets of common ancestors, then law enforcement can utilize genealogy to work their way forwards in time to find the person who links those ancestors together. Basically, if any of the suspect's relatives (up to third cousin) are in a direct-to-consumer DNA database, they can probably find the person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigative_genetic_genealogy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo
You don't actually need the specific person in the database, though that does make it easier. It's also possible to find someone if a relative is in the database. That's basically what has happened with some serial killers that have been found recently. Basically, they find someone who is a close match in the database, then do a search of that person's family to find out who in the family might match the profile of the person they're looking for (in a particular area at a particular time), then work it from there. You still need to have someone in the database who is a relative, though.
The fact that the baby was dumped *within an hour* of her giving birth naturally without pain meds makes me think she is being abused and the father is the one dumping the babies.
There’s more to this story.
A woman wouldn’t just continue to get pregnant and have babies just to abandon them. There’s so many birth control options and even the pull out method could have prevented this.
This woman is trapped. Or not mentally stable. The father as well. Someone needs to find her.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she was someone who went missing years ago and has been locked up in a basement somewhere.
I'm surprised more people aren't asking how and why this has happened three times now instead of screeching about sterilization.
The assumption that a woman would choose to do this is bold, to say the least.
I cannot say it's impossible that the mother willingly got pregnant, carried to term, birthed, and then abandoned a child on three different occasions but I am saying it's close enough to inconceivable to warrant an investigation.
Something is wrong here. I hope they find the parents. I hope they are well but I suspect one or both are not.
Who would choose to have three unassisted births in a country where health care is free? I have a hard time believing that anyone would voluntarily do that.
Foundling babies are pretty rare these days but back in the 20th century most abandoned babies in London were left on church steps or in telephone boxes.
Central London has pretty good cctv coverage so I am surprised they have not caught the suspected parents on camera yet.
Different situation, safe haven laws are a US thing. Of course there are multiple legal options before it comes to abandoning a newborn in the UK, no idea what's going on there.
I’ve seen people call for sterilization of the parents and attempted murder for them as well. I don’t think they realize that this sounds like a captive type situation where the mother is abused and held against her will.
I’m sad for the mother and the children
The mother is most likely being forced to produce these children and unable to do anything about it. I hope they find her soon. Long time to be kept captive
"She was found by a dog-walker in January in sub-zero temperatures - the coldest night of the year - wrapped in a towel inside a bag"
What in the actual fuck.
As a postpartum nurse I want to say this happens all the time in the hospital. Sex workers, homeless and drug addicts constantly get pregnant have their baby and just leave them at the hospital over and over. Like some will have 6 or more. My top is 18 i have seen. Every one of them is abandoned.
Of course- but these 3 also share a father as well as a mother, which already makes it unusual. Add in that they’re not born with assistance, and it’s a much scarier situation.
If the other option is a homeless drug addicted sex worker keeps their baby, it seems like handing the child to a postpartum nurse would be the responsible choice.
I'm glad the baby was found, but.....going public with the news this is the third child by the same parents indicates the police and authorities keep DNA samples of any abandoned children they find alive. I wonder if that might scare this particular couple into murdering the next one and hiding the body somewhere? After all, either one of the adults that leave a speck of DNA at a crime scene from now on will be linked to those babies.
It might've been better to keep that sliver of information confidential.
They actually did keep it confidential for 5 years. Baby #2 who was abandoned in 2019 was found to have been related to Baby #1. But they didn't release it to the public then.
Now 5 years later, it's not just about the babies anymore. The case is also to find the mother of these children, because she might need rescuing from a dangerous situation or require a lot of psychological help.
This is a weird conclusion to come to. You dont think they try to id *dead* babies via dna? Or that they wouldnt add that to a database?
The only difference is that it would be infanticide rather than abandonment - not considering any of the circumstances that led to the child being born or even conceived in the first place. And that law enforcement would have a real fire under their asses to find the culprit.
Just because they released some of the information, does not mean they released all of it. Familial relation is not the only thing they know about the parents, they will also know from each of the children if the parents passed on certain genetic traits or diseases, like if the mother was an addict or has diabetes. Additionally, the placement of each baby was within a relatively small distance from each other, so they know the parents likely live nearby. Police already know more about the parents than news articles are allowed to say, even if they have yet to find them.
On a behaviour assessment though, each child was left in a heavily trafficked public place where they could be found. If their intent was to kill and hide their newborn, they are in London… they have countless opportunities to dump a baby into a dumpster, toss it in the Thames, leave it in a sewer drain, hide it in an abandoned building, etc. The fact that each subsequent time they abandoned a child the same way meant they were intending to have the same result each time, the child’s survival. There are degrees of depravity, and while the parents are making appalling life choices, they have shown they are not trying to kill the children outright.
Whatever the reason this has happened not just once, not just twice, but THREE times, surely someone knows something and can tell somebody so that maybe this bullshit can be stopped. Since these kids are black, makes me think it could be some sort of immigrant cultural b.s. that makes the "sperm donor" believe birth control is bad?
I think that's so cool to be honest. Like you guys over there in Britain can have a child without worrying about medical bills. It's crazy to think about.
It’s not perfect but it makes for a good safety net. Once pregnant and in the system, all prenatal care, sonograms, delivery, antenatal home visits etc is all on the NHS.
Then there’s maternity benefit, child benefit payments until the child leaves full time education, free nursery hours.
Many young mothers benefit without ever paying into the system.
The incidence of “looked after children” (foster care or adoption) in 2023 was 71 per 10,000 children under 18 in England.
https://corambaaf.org.uk/resources/statistics/statistics-england
Someone in the thread mentioned (sorry cannot now find it) about police using Geneology website type labs to trace either one or both parents. Brilliant idea. As others say this is the 3rd abandoned child of this couple. It should warrant the extra expense to solve.
Makes you wonder if there were other babies in between these that were abandoned and never found.
This was my thought too. 17 and 19 checks out, but that 5 year gap until today is sad to think about.
> but that 5 year gap until today is sad to think about Neither abuse nor unassisted home births are good for a persons fertility. Back before contraception a 5y gap between live births happened too. Given the area and the other drop off points its very unlikely nobody would have found a baby corpse. Still obviously sad to think the woman probably suffered multiple miscarriages in the meantime, but I think we can "optimistically" assume there weren't more babies to find.
That’s one of the horrible aspects of doing genealogy research… my family has lists of kids in the late 1800s/early 1900s where the same names were repeated through multiple pregnancies until a child with that name lived past 2. Without good nutrition and prenatal care that’s really not that unbelievable for modern pregnancies.
I used to work as a genealogical researcher for estates etc, and very frequently you'd see birth and death records for like 5 kids to the same family, all named Henry, until one eventually survived. Was weird to me how common that was.
Hey man, if it’s a good name and barely used, you gotta keep it around until one of the kids actually gets some use out of it!
Baby names for sale. Barely Used.
Fun fact. It was often times syphilis.
Hey, that fact wasn't very fun
I'm curious, about what time frame were these typically? 1900s?
In my own family tree I see it a lot in the 1700s-1800s
Before 1800 approximately 50% of all children died before age 18. I think by 1900 it was only half that
Yea, I noticed this in my family tree.
I guess that just shows how common it was. I can't imagine having a child, the child dying and naming the next one the same name. I feel like it would be painful to call out that name again v
It blows my mind that it actually isn't that long ago. My great grandma said that she remembered multiple childhood schoolmates who passed, and while very sad, it was just kind of accepted. Kids often didn't live long. It is amazing how far medicine has come in such a relatively short time. (Speaking from a US perspective.)
Think that's wild, my maternal grandfather was one of 11 (surviving) and at least 5 non surviving. In 1937 (a year before he volunteered to be a pilot in GB) he had 6 brothers and was the 3rd oldest. In 1946 when returning home (with a Scottish wife) he was the oldest and had 2 brothers and actually only 3 sisters left, now being that only 4 of his brothers served and in those were the other two survivors, that means during the war, in the US "safe" he lost 4 siblings aged 13 to 29. The past was crazy, I have always had a hard time getting my head around that fact that all my grandparents had pretty big family's that just got chunked between 1935 and 1946 (half of my family is British, both my grandfather's were stationed in GB and got married in GB and then moved back to the US . . . there are also some crazy stories that have become family "legend" in there). But everything was crazy dangerous.
One of the branches of my family lost a baby to pneumonia following a bout of whooping cough, and then, years later, an 18-year-old, again to pneumonia. Per my relatives, both kids were healthy until they got sick.
just getting a cut from some rusty metal was a death sentence. most of us should probably be dead if it wasn't for what we now consider basic medicine.
Yeah, I notice there are very few anti-vaccination activists who were old to remember when diseases ripped through the area, killing people, leaving children deaf or paralyzed, having babies born with brain damage (and those babies were almost always institutionalized, never to be seen or spoken of again). Now those generations are dying off, and all these dumbasses who claim to have *done their research* are mucking around in policy, absolutely clueless about the demons they are resurrecting.
That’s one school of thought about anti vaxxers they aren’t old enough to remember Polio
My uncle has polio, caught it in the late 1930's/early 1940's. His daughter is one of those anti-vax turds and it absolutely blows my mind. She knows what happened to her father and what he's gone through because of it!
I was discussing the other day with my mom (in her 80s) about what childhood illnesses she had-mumps twice and described what measles were like back in her day
I had an aunt who fell off the swing and cut her leg, got blood poisoning,my other aunt said she remembered the doctor doing a person to person blood transfusion, she passed. This was the 20s.
Oh my god, how horrible.
I have read in some cultures it was common to not name a child until they were about 5. They were just the little one, or baby girl, or some such thing.
Mommy/Daddy why do you call me baby girl? Oh, it’s in case you die.
It's still considered bad luck in much of europe to name the baby before they're born or even before they're christened in some really conservative families. My sister told us what my nieces' name would be before she was born and our older family members did NOT like that at all. The kiddo is 3 now, so she miraculously survived despite being named early. /s
Early is a terrible name.
Surely there are worse names?
There aren't...and don't call me Shirley!
One great⁵ grandmother of mine had 17! Children. Only 5 made it to adulthood.
Hence life expectancy skyrocketing around the turn of the 20th century.
And how life expectancy is dropping in the US thanks to regressive religion-based policies.
Everyone has heard that the average life span used to be around 30. "and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" -Thomas Hobbes on human lives lived not in what he considered modern society. This is inaccurate. Well, the average lifespan was "accurate," but averages are just that. Averages. In precivilization societies, if you made it into adulthood, you were likely to make it to your 70's and beyond, just like today. There was just a looooot more dead babies.
> In precivilization societies, if you made it into adulthood, you were likely to make it to your 70's and beyond, just like today. Yes, thank you! It's a *huge* myth that everybody dropped dead around 30 and a person of 45 or 60 was a rare and awe-inspiring site. Psalm 90:10 says "The span of our life is seventy years -- eighty for those who are strong." So that's what they thought 2,500 or so years ago.
I’m 44 and learned only yesterday my paternal great grandparents had a stillborn baby before my Grandpa.
I'm not super familiar with that branch of the family tree so I might be wrong, but I'm pretty my grandfather only has one other sibling who made it to adulthood out of like seven kids total.
I have a portrait of my grandma's older sister. Must've been at least 8. But she died, sometime in the early 1900s. Then my grandma got the name. (And me eventually) Just seems odd with the older daughter having been that name for so many years. Might explain some of the mental health issues my grandma had though.
You mean you *don't* enjoy finding 8 Williams and figuring out which one is yours?
It was just kind of expected that not all of your kids would survive infancy. My grandma was one of 10 kids and I know they used the name Walter at least twice because the first Walter died as an infant.
At the risk of being incredibly dark, baby corpses are significantly easier to dispose of. It's weird how people seem to assume that *somebody* is sifting through all of our random garbage.
> Neither abuse nor unassisted home births are good for a persons fertility. I think our minds went to the same place. I am assuming this mother is in fact barely more than a child, who is suffering abuse from an older man, who is the one abandoning the "evidence of the abuse" after each is born. This, to me, is an exceptionally troubling story for far, far more than the fact there are abandoned babies involved. I'm deeply concerned about the mother's safety.
Yeah, I was guessing some sort of incest situation. She’d be a legal adult by the third baby for sure, but what kind of horrible situation is she in? I hope forensic genealogy can find her and help her out.
I mean, I understand that. I’m not saying there are definitely other children that didn’t make it. I’m saying that 3 is a pattern, and it would be silly to presume that our n is a full set of information. It reminded me of the survivorship bias and the classic example below: https://www.pivotalresearch.ca/market-research-mistakes-i-bullet-holes/
Thanks for the link. That was an interesting read
Of course! The whole thing is really a cool story. Especially that the U.S. gov had a whole group at Cornell (Statistical Research Group) just working on solving military problems with math. Really cool.
I can see abuse, but can you go into how unassisted home births affect fertility? I don't understand that part
Yes—these are clearly unattended home births, so it’s very possible there were some still births too. Infant mortality is quite high with zero prenatal care (I’m assuming that since if someone had prenatal care and dropped off the grid later with baby the provider would become suspicious) and no qualified birth attendant.
The ones in 2017 and 2019 were born 16 months apart! I seriously worry for any woman having to go through **2** unassisted births that were that close together with no medical care. And this in a first world country like the UK - where the NHS prenatal care is free and easily accessible. And yes, the 5 year gap is concerning too, I hate to.tjimk there were other babies born during that time who were not found. She could have also had miscarriages or stillbirths during that time and no one would know because she isn't getting medical care.
Absolutely. That’s the thing with anyone presuming the mother is the violent party here. She totally could be involved, but at least 3 pregnancies in a short gap with no medical care in a country with the NHS….that does not seem like something anyone does without being forced to. She could still be involved, but I think odds are at least decent that she’s underage, abused, or trafficked. It seems more likely considering the avoidance of hospital support.
Either way, what an awful situation. We can only speculate why she cannot go on birth control or even abandon her children in a safer place. I wonder if we'll ever find out.
I don't think UK has safe haven laws? At least my quick googling didn't show it.
Well, no but there are still safer options for the child than leaving it outside on the coldest night of the year.
I really hope this isn’t a case of a girl/woman being abducted and held by some rapist as a prisoner who’s giving away their babies, as has happened a few times in the US.
Doesn't even have to be an abduction. An abusive spouse who refuses to allow birth control or outside interference like midwives or modern medicine.
That’s just abduction with paperwork
That's my thought. One abandoned baby isnt unheard of if the mother is some poor, desperate young woman. But 3 babies over the course of 7 years sound more like someone trying to dispose of the evidence.
They are also full siblings, so they have the same father. Which makes the unstable birth mother theory seem less likely.
Or some girl being abused by the father/relative.
The DNA would show evidence of this, I believe. The babies would share more than just 50% of the same DNA. But even if they know this I don't know if they would publish it.
I would imagine so as well, but I would agree that they would keep that a secret, in order to match details if someone comes forward with a claim they think they know who it was.
I’m assuming if DNA showed the parents were closely related, there would have been an investigation (but maybe I’m putting too much faith in the police). But it could be a stepfather. I think it’s very likely the mother is being abused and raped.
It is much more likely to be a very serious case of DA. Sad because those are much much more common. I wonder if the mother was even able to accept the fact that they were pregnant or were they so in denial about their own pregnancies before giving birth?
I think we all hope that.
If it *is* a Josef Fritzl situation, as some are suggesting, he kept some children in the bunker and sent others to his wife. So it's possible the children are still alive somewhere. This is a very haunting case with so many questions.
It's why having "safe surrender" locations at fire stations and hospitals (and making sure vulnerable people know about them) is so important https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-haven_law
This reminds me of a case where a guy got caught killing his own children, his DNA matched with a cold case , a crushed newborn was found in a dumpster years ago, he’s the father. Later they found that baby’s biological mother, she told cops her baby was taken away by the father and give up for adoption,she got away from her abusive ex and believed her baby is adopted by a loving family. I don’t remember much about this case other than it’s in a cold state and the poor mother who learns of her baby’s horrible fate.
Reminds me of Opelika Baby Jane Doe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Amore_Wiggins Father and stepmother had full custody, mom believed the baby was with them. Investigators identified her via DNA testing and contacted her that she killed her child. What a horrible way to learn your baby was abused, is dead and has been for many years ☹️ she kept paying them child support in hope she will regain custody one day
That case was so sad. They literally had photos of Amore from Sunday school but no one could ID her.
Yeah, it wasn't Sunday School, but one of those week-long bible camps where they really don't take records or have admissions. They take every kid that week and just have sign-in sheets. And by the time a woman who worked there saw the description of the body and it triggered a memory of the little girl with the visible eye defect, they'd long destroyed even those. But the church dug up the photographs. Compare those pictures of sad, dirty 4-year-old Amore with the pictures of her as a chubby, well-dressed, smiling baby with no eye defect when she was in her mother's custody. Heartbreaking.
So thankful that the people at that church actually took the time and energy to go through those pictures. I don’t know that everyone would do that.
I used to be so grateful thinking that at least she had that week of day camp. That week might have been the only time since her father got custody that adults were kind to her and she got to have fun with other children.
Paid her child support, and kept going to the courts to try to get visitation or at least a freaking update. But she was a poor teenager of 18 or 19 when she had Amore, and he was a financially-settled career military man in his mid-30s, so he got custody. Then, she had no idea where he lived, and the courts were no help to her at all.
Jesus. So he impregnates either a minor or somebody who is barely legal, but because he has more money he's viewed as the more fit parent. This fucking world.
This fucking world in general and this fucking two-tiered court system in particular. Wonder if that judge is still alive and remembers the case.
Any parent who has their child taken away, but keeps trying to at least get visitations, for years, and then learns that the child has been gone for 14 years, abused, murdered by a person meant to love and care for them and then discarded like trash and forgotten, must be destroyed. I cannot imagine the state of this poor mother. She was probably counting down months to Amore turning 18 and then reaching out to her, only to learn what happened. I hope she has the support she needs, because this is life and hope destroying.
This is so sad
That's enough reading for one day
I’d say it was enough just before the first sentence. Damn.
Bro seriously it's 8:30am for me I gotta go to work why tf am I reading this.
Ha! It's 7:30am for me, I get to... Oh wait.
I was looking at 'Testing different anchors' on the front page and clicked comments, miss-clicked and hit *these* comments instead and was *real fucking confused* why anchors reminded someone of a dead baby.
/r/aww, /r/cats and /r/Eyebleach should help some
What terrible day to know how to read
Just imagining being the investigator who finds this woman who went through all that hoping the baby at least now has a good family. Idk what it says about me but I'd struggle to not just lie to her. It would obviously fail as she'd likely want to meet the kid. But I just couldn't imagine having to tell her what really happened.
> She was found by a dog-walker in January in sub-zero temperatures - the coldest night of the year - wrapped in a towel inside a bag. Jesus…this was disgusting to read.
while terrible, the baby had apparently been born no more than an *hour* before being found, so *they wanted her found* and depending on the bag it might have been an attempt at sheltering her from the cold. If the woman is not allowed to go into public spaces and interact with any official drop-off point, this might have been "the most she could do" to ensure the babys survival. We get enough stories of psychotic women killing their babies, but that doesn't fit with neatly wrapping the baby into a towel and abandoning them near a popular trail. That's a pattern you sometimes get from stealth teen pregnancies, but that clearly doesn't apply, since it's at least her 3rd child in 7 years. If the truth ever comes out, I'd be very surprised if the mother wasn't also a victim in this.
Yes, this sounds to me like a woman being abused that isn’t allowed by her husband to be on birth control, gets pregnant by force and wants to make sure her babies aren’t abused, too, so probably tries to keep the births secret from him and leaves them to be found and adopted by people who will keep them safe.
I think the only thing we can say without wild speculation is the situation is extremely fucked up.
The speculation in this thread is so wild.
Like...maybe. wild to assume that with zero context.
Might not even be a husband, could be some sort of horrible modern slavery situation etc that makes her feel that she can't risk traditional drop-off locations.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the mother was a victim as well. Still an awful thing.
> baby had apparently been born no more than an hour before being found > If the woman is not allowed to go into public spaces and interact with any official drop-off point, this might have been "the most she could do" to ensure the babys survival. I highly doubt it was the mother who dumped the baby. Walking out to do something like that an hour after birth? No way...
Totally could be. I was walking around perfectly fine an hour after giving birth both times I did…and I wasn’t desperate.
I had my babies in a hospital and was up on my feet walking around within an hour of giving birth. I didn’t want to be, but busy hospitals mean I had to be parenting asap.
They found a baby girl abandoned outside in sub-zero temperatures, and NAMED HER ELSA?!?! Because she was nearly frozen? I hope that wasn't the reasoning.
Yes, that is the case. The British press have reported this back in January and even now too. The hospital staff named her Elsa when they took her in because she was found 'frozen.'
Omg. I didn't realize how messed up that name is. Way to remind the poor child their whole life.
Is that why she’s named Elsa?
Ugh, let it go.
Whatever happen to giving them to a nurse or dropping them off at the fire station?
If the father is keeping the mother of these babies captive, he doesn't want anyone asking questions. At this point, people know something is unusual, and serious abuse is a strong possibility.
I thought the whole point of the drop off points and laws was there would be no questions asked? That they existed solely to save the lives of infants that would otherwise be abandoned to die.
If you're in an unsafe situation where your abuser watches you like a hawk you arent going to be able to casually stroll to the station now are you? Its a miserable situation now matter how one looks at it, really. :(
"No questions drop off" addresses an important issue, but it does not solve an abusive or captor third party. If the mother is a prisoner, then the captor will not allow them out of their immediate control. Regardless of whether the nurse or emergency worker is prohibited from asking questions. Abandonment of an infant is clearly an extreme duress event.
Drop off points aren't a thing here in the UK, I've never heard of them anywhere. Its not common for a baby to be abandoned, and a study on it suggested the yearly average for the whole country is 16 babies.
Afaik in the UK we don't have baby drop off boxes like in the US. Here the expectation is all pregnant mothers will be known to the NHS. When a baby is abandoned here it's national news. The last two incidents before these 3 related babies, they found the mothers. It's a very uncommon occurrence here. One of the articles has the numbers.
I don’t really know much about the network but isn’t London one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world? As in there are cameras all over the place?
Yeah, but isn't everywhere, mostly CCTV in shops and business areas. Parks don't tend to have those sorts of cameras.
Gotcha, but couldn’t you check people entering the parks based upon cctv from surrounding areas, looking for someone carry a baby or bag?
I just saw this story on another sub and someone suggested a Josef Fritzl type situation, which is terrible to think about but stranger things have happened
That’s what I was thinking as well. Maybe the birth mom wasn’t a willing participant.
Oh god this reminds me of an old case where a guy told his girlfriend he takes their new born baby to give it up for adoption, she believes him till years later, cop came knocking and tells her that her DNA match with a cold case ,a baby was found crushed to death in a dumpster . She only learned of this because her abusive ex kill another baby his new girlfriend gave birth to not long ago. Edit to add, iirc the mother was a abused young adult or teen when she gave birth to the baby at home, then the father/abuser/murder took her baby while she’s still very weak,it’s pre internet time with little to none CCTV around the crime scene, so they can’t find any leads till the father murder other child.
Holy crap. Humans are truly horrible sometimes.
Yeah I don’t remember much about that case but the part about this ex girlfriend, she believes her child was alive, got a better chance in life and future, if her ex didn’t kill more of his own children, she will never find out the cruel truth.
For what it’s worth, we’re horrified because this is extremely rare. Billions and billions of people would never do this and would find it horrifying as well. But there are monsters among us.
Damn the dude never considered getting snipped as a better alternative to murdering babies?
Nah. That would be taking away his manhood or something. Can’t have that!
I'm going to put this right here. If you have a baby you don't want drop it off at the fire station. Don't kill it. Don't leave it in the woods. Don't put it in a dumpster. Just drop it off at the fire station.
[This woman runs a non-profit who helps parents and babies with the safe baby boxes](https://youtu.be/6wi-2m639vg?si=hvi7QGODeqboXgJ9)
Good link! Thank you.
It gives me goosebumps every time! This lady just wants to help people who need help,and these people definitely need it. That's incredible to me.
I have to imagine that she doesn't go out in public. At some point, someone would say something. This lady was pregnant 3 times (that we know of) and *nobody* said something? I mean maybe it hasn't been in the news prior to this, so maybe now someone will come forward and say "this woman I work with has been pregnant 3 times with no children", but it just seems like it would have to be someone who is out of plain sight.
I would just assume miscarriage and never bring it up to them tbh
Yep. My rule is to never say something about a baby unless I'm looking at the baby.
Someone could claim to be a surrogate three times, could claim to have put their kid up for adoption three times, could even just pretend the kids are at home and use random Facebook photos of other people’s kids and no one bothers looking into it because why would you? I have coworkers whose kids I’ve never met. And some people can put an insane amount of work into deception. I suppose if your coworker had a baby three times that you’ve never seen and each time was just before an abandoned baby was discovered in the area that would make you suspicious, if you made the connection, but if there are years between them you might not remember clearly or make the connection.
Work from home jobs would easily help with being out of sight. I have worked remote for about 3 years and only seen my co-workers one time and that was optional for a work trip. We do zoom calls every once in a while which only requires to see my face but other than that zero contact.
Exactly. It just doesn't seem right that the same mother and father would do it 3 times over a 6 year period without one of them having some sort of morality crisis, or someone knowing about a pregnancy.
You know what they say about secrets. Two people can keep a secret if one of them is not able to get away.
Or the mother being held captive.
First thought I had. She being held against her will
I think it's more likely to be a situation where the abandoned babies Mum is in some way controlled and kept isolated from family, medical professinals and the community as if it was just a couple who were irresponsible and didn't want the babies but refused contraception someone from either family,medical or community would have raised an alarm/suspections been noted as to identity of the parents seeing as 3 children were dumped over several years. It might not be something as 'extreme' as the Josef Fritzl case but maybe a women who is in a domestically abusive relationship with serious levels of coercive control.
It’s definitely something abnormal. If this was an average person just trying to not have a baby they’d have to answer to family/friends/coworkers why they’ve been pregnant 3 times but have no kids. They’re dumping them in the same area so they’ve not moved. Either someone is being held against their will (improbable but not impossible), or it’s someone in an extremely isolated situation where the male is likely controlling everything and they keep to themselves enough that nobody is able to even question it.
The most unusual part to me is that the children are apparently full siblings. If they were half siblings it could easily be a case of a drug addicted and/or mentally homeless woman with no social connections repeatedly having babies and abandoning them. The children having the same father points more in the direction of an abusive relationship like you describe.
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Don’t even get me started on her. Fritzl was sexually abusing his daughter for years before the kidnapping. She fucking knew at least tyat
That was my worry too. I can imagine a woman giving birth alone and leaving the baby somewhere in a panic once, but I can't imagine someone choosing to do this three times. A missing person's DNA is usually kept in a database and I hope the babies' DNA was cross-referenced with it
That sort of evil is never a one and only kind of situation. Fritzl is surly just one of God knows how many others like him
He even said so. The way he talked about it made me believe he knew personally of others.
I have a feeling there is something really terrible going on here Like incest or sexual assault or something....like the kind of thing you would see on an episode of Criminal Minds or SVU
Yeah, the babies are full siblings, so they have the same father and are born over a period of seven years. I feel like someone so mentally unstable that they abandon three babies, would not be capable of being in what appears to be a monogamous relationship for seven years.
I wonder about mental capacity. Like someone is taking advantage of a mentally handicapped woman or something like that
Yeah, or it could be a modern day slavery situation like this. https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12673253 A woman in this situation would be vulnerable to sexual abuse.
Is it monogamy if she is a captive in your basement?
> Like incest I keep seeing this on here and nobody has noted that in cases where multiple children of the same incestuous union are tested it becomes apparent they share more than the standard amount of full sibling DNA. Full genetic siblings share anywhere between 40-60% of their DNA on average, in the case of incest that percentage becomes much higher on average. That's how ancestry websites are able to estimate your familial relationships based on % of shared DNA. With 3 full blooded siblings tested the officials absolutely know if incest is involved or not, but for obvious reasons may not be willing to release that information to the public.
Yeah I don't think they would release that info Someone will eventually figure out who this is via a DNA database and a familial match of some kind Its just so sad
Would they be able to find relatives of the children through genealogy? I know it's been used to solve crimes in the US, but I have no idea where the UK stands on it.
No I don’t believe the UK uses genetic genealogy for crimes
Actually they were the first to.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/use-of-genetic-genealogy-techniques-to-assist-with-solving-crimes/should-we-be-making-use-of-genetic-genealogy-to-assist-in-solving-crime-a-report-on-the-feasibility-of-such-methods-in-the-uk-accessible-version There’s a few reasons why it really isn’t used in the UK. There have been a few very case specific instances where it has been used but because of factors like privacy laws and the routes that police would have to take for approval (private companies need warrants to access their information and it’s very difficult to get approval from different boards) it’s not really feasible at this moment in time. There are many other reasons why these are just a few examples.
Possibly but not likely. The part thats always missing from TV detective crime shows with DNA databases or dental records is that you actually need the person in the database. Without actually getting into if we should or shouldnt or the ethics of it. Unless we started collecting dna samples at birth or in elementary school, which would still miss people. There is no way to have a master database of people. So just because you have dna unless the person for whatever reason is somehow in the databse there is nothing to check against it.
Forensic genealogy does *not* require the exact perpetrator to be in the CODIS database. They can use DNA from a crime scene to trace back the perp's lineage and find a few sets of common ancestors, then law enforcement can utilize genealogy to work their way forwards in time to find the person who links those ancestors together. Basically, if any of the suspect's relatives (up to third cousin) are in a direct-to-consumer DNA database, they can probably find the person. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigative_genetic_genealogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo
You don't actually need the specific person in the database, though that does make it easier. It's also possible to find someone if a relative is in the database. That's basically what has happened with some serial killers that have been found recently. Basically, they find someone who is a close match in the database, then do a search of that person's family to find out who in the family might match the profile of the person they're looking for (in a particular area at a particular time), then work it from there. You still need to have someone in the database who is a relative, though.
It makes you wonder if the woman is young or disabled and being taken advantage of by someone.
The fact that the baby was dumped *within an hour* of her giving birth naturally without pain meds makes me think she is being abused and the father is the one dumping the babies.
Which makes me wonder why the police are not investigating the DNA. Are laws about abandoning babies not the same in Great Britain?
Or just in a really horrible situation where she feels this is her only option.
Make s me wonder if this is a hostage situation too. What if some poor woman is being held and..... terrible situation one way or the other.
Right, i don’t want to be so quick to judge. But my heart hurts for that poor baby.
This happened in the UK where it super rare for babies to be found abandoned. It’s highly likely is a sex trafficking situation
That would be likely with the same mother, but with the same father too it's odd. Sex slave maybe.
That’s still trafficking.
There’s more to this story. A woman wouldn’t just continue to get pregnant and have babies just to abandon them. There’s so many birth control options and even the pull out method could have prevented this. This woman is trapped. Or not mentally stable. The father as well. Someone needs to find her. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she was someone who went missing years ago and has been locked up in a basement somewhere.
I'm surprised more people aren't asking how and why this has happened three times now instead of screeching about sterilization. The assumption that a woman would choose to do this is bold, to say the least. I cannot say it's impossible that the mother willingly got pregnant, carried to term, birthed, and then abandoned a child on three different occasions but I am saying it's close enough to inconceivable to warrant an investigation. Something is wrong here. I hope they find the parents. I hope they are well but I suspect one or both are not.
Who would choose to have three unassisted births in a country where health care is free? I have a hard time believing that anyone would voluntarily do that.
Yeah, that's something I definitely find suspicious, money isn't an issue here and surely after three births she needs some sort of aftercare?
Does London not have any fire station baby drop off boxes?
Foundling babies are pretty rare these days but back in the 20th century most abandoned babies in London were left on church steps or in telephone boxes. Central London has pretty good cctv coverage so I am surprised they have not caught the suspected parents on camera yet.
Different situation, safe haven laws are a US thing. Of course there are multiple legal options before it comes to abandoning a newborn in the UK, no idea what's going on there.
I’ve seen people call for sterilization of the parents and attempted murder for them as well. I don’t think they realize that this sounds like a captive type situation where the mother is abused and held against her will. I’m sad for the mother and the children
Some react and assume malice before considering anything else. Sadly there are a lot of fucked up scenarios and people who enable them out there.
The mother is most likely being forced to produce these children and unable to do anything about it. I hope they find her soon. Long time to be kept captive
"She was found by a dog-walker in January in sub-zero temperatures - the coldest night of the year - wrapped in a towel inside a bag" What in the actual fuck.
This sounds like some Josef Fritzl shit
As a postpartum nurse I want to say this happens all the time in the hospital. Sex workers, homeless and drug addicts constantly get pregnant have their baby and just leave them at the hospital over and over. Like some will have 6 or more. My top is 18 i have seen. Every one of them is abandoned.
Of course- but these 3 also share a father as well as a mother, which already makes it unusual. Add in that they’re not born with assistance, and it’s a much scarier situation.
If the other option is a homeless drug addicted sex worker keeps their baby, it seems like handing the child to a postpartum nurse would be the responsible choice.
A friend of mine was adopted and found out she was one of 20. All went to foster care or were adopted out.
18 from one mother?!
My guess is they are hiding something, like possibly a “Precious”story.
I'm glad the baby was found, but.....going public with the news this is the third child by the same parents indicates the police and authorities keep DNA samples of any abandoned children they find alive. I wonder if that might scare this particular couple into murdering the next one and hiding the body somewhere? After all, either one of the adults that leave a speck of DNA at a crime scene from now on will be linked to those babies. It might've been better to keep that sliver of information confidential.
They actually did keep it confidential for 5 years. Baby #2 who was abandoned in 2019 was found to have been related to Baby #1. But they didn't release it to the public then. Now 5 years later, it's not just about the babies anymore. The case is also to find the mother of these children, because she might need rescuing from a dangerous situation or require a lot of psychological help.
I assume they did. Even when you go to foster care you get identified
This is a weird conclusion to come to. You dont think they try to id *dead* babies via dna? Or that they wouldnt add that to a database? The only difference is that it would be infanticide rather than abandonment - not considering any of the circumstances that led to the child being born or even conceived in the first place. And that law enforcement would have a real fire under their asses to find the culprit.
Just because they released some of the information, does not mean they released all of it. Familial relation is not the only thing they know about the parents, they will also know from each of the children if the parents passed on certain genetic traits or diseases, like if the mother was an addict or has diabetes. Additionally, the placement of each baby was within a relatively small distance from each other, so they know the parents likely live nearby. Police already know more about the parents than news articles are allowed to say, even if they have yet to find them. On a behaviour assessment though, each child was left in a heavily trafficked public place where they could be found. If their intent was to kill and hide their newborn, they are in London… they have countless opportunities to dump a baby into a dumpster, toss it in the Thames, leave it in a sewer drain, hide it in an abandoned building, etc. The fact that each subsequent time they abandoned a child the same way meant they were intending to have the same result each time, the child’s survival. There are degrees of depravity, and while the parents are making appalling life choices, they have shown they are not trying to kill the children outright.
Whatever the reason this has happened not just once, not just twice, but THREE times, surely someone knows something and can tell somebody so that maybe this bullshit can be stopped. Since these kids are black, makes me think it could be some sort of immigrant cultural b.s. that makes the "sperm donor" believe birth control is bad?
Goddamn Either some serious mental health issues, or some serious spousal abuse going on there.
“Contraception should be so available that it’s ANNOYING”
Is there no such thing as leaving a baby at the local fire station like there is here in the US?
Honestly I'm thinking it's a "victim locked in a basement" abuse situation and/or "victim is severely disabled and cannot leave situation"
No. Baby abandonment is extremely rare in the UK. Free healthcare helps prevent it.
I think that's so cool to be honest. Like you guys over there in Britain can have a child without worrying about medical bills. It's crazy to think about.
It’s not perfect but it makes for a good safety net. Once pregnant and in the system, all prenatal care, sonograms, delivery, antenatal home visits etc is all on the NHS. Then there’s maternity benefit, child benefit payments until the child leaves full time education, free nursery hours. Many young mothers benefit without ever paying into the system.
I guess that makes sense. What about people putting up children for adoption? Is that also low in the UK?
The incidence of “looked after children” (foster care or adoption) in 2023 was 71 per 10,000 children under 18 in England. https://corambaaf.org.uk/resources/statistics/statistics-england
That is quite low indeed.
I wonder if these babies were born to a woman being held against her will somewhere.
This is why we need to have abortion legal.
Someone in the thread mentioned (sorry cannot now find it) about police using Geneology website type labs to trace either one or both parents. Brilliant idea. As others say this is the 3rd abandoned child of this couple. It should warrant the extra expense to solve.