Mr Aboki: Sounds like Hokus Pokus to me..

1. What do you inject into a woman that would make her tummy swell and remain so for 9Months only to disappear after the faux birth..

2. Even if the women were hypnotised, were their husbands hypnotised as well?

If this article is all the Police has to go to court with, then this matter is as good as dead on arrival..

Which kind of hormone will induce one to have swelly tommy, enlarge your mammary gland, stop menstral period and ovulation circle for nine months and make you feel heavy with baby? Any medical practitioner should help out abeg because, in all my life as a pharmacist the only thing that will make a woman look pregnant is if she has fybroid! This article has X-file written all over it! It's a well cooked frame! **considering the fact that my countrymen will believe just about anything** Ignorance is definetly an expensive desease! Mtchwww

berem: As long as the babies aren't used for rituals, i see nothing wrong with it, that is if the babies are unwanted. it's better for them to be adopted than killed or left abandoned.

Mr Aboki: Sounds like Hokus Pokus to me..

1. What do you inject into a woman that would make her tummy swell and remain so for 9Months only to disappear after the faux birth..

2. Even if the women were hypnotised, were their husbands hypnotised as well?

If this article is all the Police has to go to court with, then this matter is as good as dead on arrival..

Mr Aboki: Sounds like Hokus Pokus to me..

1. What do you inject into a woman that would make her tummy swell and remain so for 9Months only to disappear after the faux birth..

2. Even if the women were hypnotised, were their husbands hypnotised as well?

If this article is all the Police has to go to court with, then this matter is as good as dead on arrival..

A couple had been trying to have a child for a considerable number of years. The woman was told of a fertility clinic in Nigeria which may be able to assist her. The woman made a number of trips to the clinic in Nigeria, received treatment and ultimately was told she was pregnant. She consulted her GP in the UK on various occasions who informed her that she was not pregnant. The Nigerian clinic informed her that the particular treatment she had been given, namely a silicone womb, would result in the pregnancy being undisclosed. The woman returned to Nigeria in order to have the silicone womb removed so that scans in the UK would show the pregnancy. The woman planned to then return to the UK to give birth. During the procedure in Nigeria, the woman went through a staged labour and was presented with a baby. The couple returned to the UK with the child and took him to their GP to be registered. The GP was extremely concerned, given the negative pregnancy tests and scans. The Local Authority and police became involved and the child was removed from the couple's care to foster carers under an interim care order.

A fact finding was listed to decide whether the couple had been complicit in removing the child from Nigeria and holding him out as their own child, or whether they were innocent victims of a scam perpetrated by the clinic in Nigeria.

HHJ Coleridge had particular regard to the following facts:

i) The couple's accounts were completely consistent when speaking to various professionals and when giving evidence in court.

ii) The woman made a number of visits to her UK GP. If she had known that this was a bogus pregnancy there would have been no purpose for her to have done so.

iii) The woman made a number of trips to Nigeria seeking clarification and further information following her UK GP finding she was not pregnant. If the woman had known of the scam, such visits would have been unnecessary.

iv) The couple tried to register for ante-natal classes in the UK and in Nigeria.

v) The couple never intended to have the child in Nigeria.

vi) The woman took the child to be register with her UK GP within days of returning to the country. She would not have done this if she had known of the scam.

vii) The couple were found to have been in complete and genuine disbelief following DNA tests.

viii) He found the couple to be extremely impressive witnesses.

HHJ Coleridge found that that the couple were entirely innocent victims in the scam.

Summary by Laura McMullan, barrister, Coram Chambers



2. The case involved a close examination of the activities of a clinic in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and the behaviour of a doctor there called Dr Chinyere. The clinic was called The Miracle of God Fertility Clinic and in hindsight a more apt description it would be hard to find for that particular establishment. The agreed facts of that case were that the female, I called her the mother because it happened to be convenient (but by the time of the hearing no-one for a moment was suggesting that the female respondent was indeed the mother of the child) had brought the child to this country. The question was the extent to which this mother had knowingly gone along with a most extraordinary process administered by this clinic, whereby 'spare' children were handed over to desperate, childless parents for very large sums of money.

3. Along the way in that case, the mother was required to go through what was in fact a completely bogus delivery process, although so far as the unsuspecting observer was concerned it was presented as a genuine delivery. Having heard extensive evidence, I concluded that the two individuals in that case, the man and the woman, the husband and wife, were entirely innocent victims of this most unpleasant scam.

4. Now this case is strikingly similar factually speaking to that earlier case. Many of the factual features are remarkably similar, if not identical to the features that I had to examine this time last year. In particular, exactly the same question arises in this case as it did in the earlier case. So the central question again is, were the husband and wife (the mother and father in a limited sense, but not in a true sense); complicit in removing from Nigeria a little baby a few months old and bringing him into this country and holding him out as their own child? Or were they, as they maintain, entirely innocent victims of a scam perpetrated once more by this dreadful establishment in Port Harcourt?

6. The facts and circumstances leading to the involvement of Mr and Mrs O with the clinic in Port Harcourt are as I say clearly set out in her statement, beginning in particular at C27 and going on for a total of 10 pages, with something like 80 pages of exhibits to substantiate what is said there. In the statement, Mrs O sets out how she and her husband had been trying to have a child since their marriage which had taken place in 2003. In other words, for eight years they had been trying to have a baby. They had invested enormous amounts of time, energy and money in the pursuit of that elusive target.

7. She goes on to recount in her statement how she heard from a friend in Nigeria who was aware of the fact that she had had miscarriages in the past, that there was a clinic in Port Harcourt which had a very high success rate with women who had a history of miscarriages. She contacted them and she spoke to them on the telephone at the beginning of January 2011. She spoke in particular to this so-called doctor, Dr Precious Chinyere, who told her that the best thing she could do was to come out to Port Harcourt for an examination and then she would be in a position to make a decision as to whether or not the treatment she could offer was likely to be successful.

8. As a result of that, she made the first of a series of trips to Port Harcourt to see Dr Chinyere. She saw Dr Chinyere first on the 15th February 2011. When she went to the clinic, she found it full of obviously pregnant women and she supplied the doctor with copies of her English medical notes and she was subjected to an examination. The doctor was easily able to confirm that she could help Mrs O and that she was confident that she would become pregnant. The amount that was required to secure the services of this lady was no less than £12,000 sterling. In addition to that fee, the Os would have to make trips backwards and forwards to Nigeria at not inconsiderable expense as well.

9. She was immediately treated by Dr Chinyere with her expertise and within a matter of days, she was able to report that she had been made pregnant by her husband within, as I say, a week. She had remained in the clinic for a considerable period of time before this took place, and was subjected to a series of injections and drugs. All these were carried out she was told in order to induce her to ovulate and make her in a prepared state for insemination by her husband. She sets out what happened in her statement over the course of the next paragraph.

10. She then returned to this country and having returned to this country, she went to see her GP. She says she returned on the 25th April and she took steps to reduce her working hours to two days and she was very anxious that she did not lose her child again. She took steps as I say to see her English GP to announce with great excitement that she was pregnant.

11. On the occasion that she saw her GP in August, a pregnancy test was carried out and also a scan and it was confirmed that she was not pregnant at all. The doctor advised her to contact Dr Chinyere in Nigeria. It is impossible to appreciate the confusion that must have been in the mind of this poor lady, who had put her confidence in this doctor out in Nigeria and was now being told by her English GP that it all had come to naught.

12. Nothing daunted, Mrs O got back on the aeroplane and went back to Nigeria to talk to Dr Chinyere to find out what the explanation was for the fact that her pregnancy was not showing up on the English scanning equipment. But she was told by the doctor that the baby was growing well and that it was as a result of the particular treatments that she had been given, that the English pregnancy test had been negative. I pause there to mention that what she had been told in Port Harcourt was that the infertility problems that she had could be treated by the use of a silicone lining in her womb. Silicone would be injected into her, in a way which would form a protective lining to the womb which would remove or reduce the risk of miscarriage.

13. In cross-examination, interestingly, she was asked whether or not she had bothered to check out this process on the Internet. She said that she had. It is common ground apparently (although I have not been presented with the actual evidence, nor have I gone on the Internet myself) that silicone and silicone artificial uteruses are indeed a remote scientific possibility; albeit that such treatment is in fact very much at the experimental stage and albeit that it certainly does not sound like the injection of silicone in the way that Dr Chinyere had represented it to the poor, unfortunate Mrs O. However, it did have some small basis in fact and was not complete whimsy. Once again returning to the chronology, Ms O again returned to the United Kingdom, went back again and sought a further scan; saw her usual GP and by and by, the result came back again negative, showing that her uterus was still empty.

14. Mrs O says, quoting from her statement. 'By now I had accepted what Dr Chinyere was saying about the reasons for which my pregnancy did not seem to be detectible in the UK'. She went back finally to Port Harcourt on the 27th November 2011. The purpose was apparently to ask Dr Chinyere with whom she had been in contact to 'dissolve the silicone around my uterus'. The reason for this was because as she was continually getting negative results from the English scanning equipment, Dr Chinyere had said, 'Well it was now possible to remove the silicone implant and that that would put everybody's mind at rest'. So Mrs O planned to visit Nigeria, have the silicone implant removed and return to the United Kingdom for the purposes of the birth which was expected at the end of November or early December.

15. At the end of November and early December, the extraordinary process described by Mrs O in her statement took place, and she went through a completely bogus delivery process and (almost as a carbon copy of the previous case) a baby was in due course produced to her. On this occasion the baby was attached only to an umbilical cord and not a placenta, but as if by magic, as if from the back of her hand he was presented to Mrs O as her own child. She sets out in detail the steps that she had to go through, some of them extremely painful and unpleasant, to give the impression to her that she was taking part in a genuine labour.

16. Apparently D was born at about 12.50 am on the 2nd December 2011. From that moment, Mr and Mrs O believed that they had a child of their own. Because the child had been born at the end of the year, it was then not, of course, possible to travel straight back to the United Kingdom. There were difficulties over passports and immigration documents and they were not able to come back to this country until the 3rd April 2012.

17. The very next day after her return, Mrs O took D to the GP with whom she had had dealings throughout the previous nine months to register him and then to have him checked over. The check-up took place on the 16th April and on the 17th April, the balloon went up, because of course, as in the other case the vigilant GP in this country became extremely concerned when she saw a child; apparently having been born to this lady in circumstances where the GP knew only too well that at no stage had she been pregnant.

27. On the other hand, I have listened to them give evidence and I have read their evidence. I found them extremely impressive as witnesses. I found that their accounts were in all material respects, completely consistent, both to the police, to the Local Authority, in their statements and finally in oral evidence. Indeed, the more detailed the questioning became (and they were subjected to very detailed questioning, both by counsel for the Local Authority and the children's guardian), the more convinced I became that they were telling the truth on the old-fashioned basis, that if you are inventing, it is simply not possible to think up answers fast enough to deal with the sort of detail that they were being asked to produce, in explanation for some of the events. I start from the position that having heard them and seen them give evidence; I am entirely comfortable that these two are honest witnesses. However, if the conclusions that I have come to rested entirely on that impression, I would be concerned, but they do not.

28. There are certain facts, what I described in the previous case as smoking guns; facts and events which are in my judgment only consistent with innocent involvement. Firstly, the repeated trips to doctors, both in this country and indeed in Nigeria. What possible purpose or advantage was there to Mrs O continuing to visit the English GPs in order only for her lie to be confirmed repeatedly? It could only have sensitised the medical profession to what was going on and indeed, that is precisely in the event what happened. The GP surgery, to whom Mrs O took D, within almost hours of her returning to this country, took very little time to put two and two together and realise there was something very seriously amiss.

29. But it is not only her trips to the doctors in this country, it is her flights over and over again to Nigeria, to go back to Dr Chinyere to question what was going on and to ask for explanations as to why it was, having apparently become pregnant, the pregnancy was not showing up on English scans.

30. Why, I ask rhetorically, would you go backwards and forwards and spend your hard-earned money on aeroplane flights if you knew that all that was in fact going to take place, was that you were going to pick up a baby at or around the date when such a child would be produced in the course of a normal gestation? The combination of the repeated scans, the repeated trips to the doctor, the attempts to register for ante-natal classes in this country and ante-natal in Nigeria leads inexorably to the conclusion that these were two innocent victims.

31. Secondly, the evidence seems to me to be clear, both written and oral that Mrs and Mr O never intended to have the child in Nigeria. Their overwhelming wish was always to have the child in this country. That again is only consistent with the genuine belief that they were taking part in a real fertility and birth process. The scam could not be perpetrated, self-evidently, anywhere except Nigeria where the supply of unwanted babies was located. As part of that same point, it is interesting to note that Mrs O took nothing with her when she went out in October to check yet again with Dr Chinyere and have the so-called silicone lining removed. Why did she take nothing with her if she intended to pick the child up then and there? Because it seems to me she knew and then intended that she was going to fly back to this country to have the child here.

32. Thirdly, as I have already indicated and much reliance is placed on by Mr Powell, her visit to the doctor within days of returning to this country, as with the previous case. It is again unthinkable that she would have taken the child to her Nigerian doctor in London if she had known that this child had only been produced as a result of this nefarious scam.

33. There is simply no explanation for that. To run the risk that what has happened would happen, flies in the face of common sense. Fourthly, there are text messages that I have not been shown, but I am told are entirely consistent with Mrs O's story. These text messages were sent by Mrs O to her husband, at around the time when the bogus delivery and labour were underway. I am told that the social worker has seen them and they are indeed consistent with the mother believing she was going into labour.

34. Fifthly, there is the reaction of her and her husband to the revelation after the DNA, that this child was not theirs. It was one of complete and genuine disbelief and of course huge upset. It is not without note and it is right to point out that looking at the case from the other point of view; the events which took place in Nigeria are completely consistent with the clinic being in the know and the parents not being in the know. In particular, the sudden speeding up of the process at the end of November, when the clinic must have realised that if the baby was going to be produced, it had to happen within the next few days or the mother was going to get back on the aeroplane and go back to London and there would then be no birth in England. The clinic would then have lost a significant portion of the price that had been paid for this treatment. It is also significant I think that the evidence was that her niece who accompanied the mother to the birth process was not allowed into the delivery room. For obvious reasons she could not attend. She would have been the one person who could have blown the whistle on the 'magician'.

35. I think, and as I have already mentioned, the supposed use of the silicone womb as part of a scam is all part and parcel of this being an elaborate fiction. It is not as I say complete fantasy, although it is little more at the moment than an early medical possibility. To add authenticity to the process, Dr Chinyere repeatedly told the mother to have scans which of course the mother did do when she came back to this country. This would do nothing but provide confidence to the mother that she was in the hands of a genuine professional, helping her.

36. I have come, once again, to the clear and unhesitating conclusion that Mr and Mrs O were completely duped and entirely innocent. Gullible they may well have been, dishonest they most certainly were not. They had no inkling of the scam in which they were involved and the light only dawned after the production of the DNA tests. That is the conclusion to which the police and the Local Authority each independently have come and I think they are right.


End of judgment.

http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed113823

bigx: When they swell their stomach would they stop their periods too?

free2ryhme: East again

Paris-fran:
Well well well... selling of babies is a common fad in the East and Rivers State. I have seen it with my own eyes and though i don't like the idea of selling babies, i think it is our society that has pushed them so far. If you see the way "barren women" and girls with "unwanted pregnancies" are treated in those parts of the countries, you will understand the true meaning of demand, supply and middle men in Economics. I pray something sincere happens in this country sha, cus apparently Religion isnt really helping us.

God bless us all.

playah P: I am not against this at all!!
It even benefitted a good friend of mine.
The babies sold are not stolen babies.
Rather, they are unwanted babies mostly by women who don't want abortion and still wanna make good money on the side ....

Actually I think this should be regulated by the government.... In the sense that the families buying the baby should be checked

Seriously oooh, I am not against this!!

St_Black:

JEEEEEEEEEEESU OBA IYE!
So thats another way of adoption in IBOLAND?...

JEEZ, these people are intensely BARBARIC.
Woman, sincerely, i DOUBT it if u were never invoved in such act.
.....if u havent, then going by ur comment, u arent the sort of people worth living with, ESPECIALLY WITH WE YORUBAS IN OUR LAND OF LAGOS.

LOOOOOOORD HAVE MERCY.

luvmijeje: Oga o.
@naijababe, what finally happen to the baby?

nnenna.1:
I hope you will remember lumping Rivers State with Igbos the next time your brothers say that the SE is Landlocked.

Also wondering why the ikwerre/Igboid "Rivers people" are not here to clarify that this is not an "Igbo" thing.

You know, since everyone is so adamant that Rivers is NOT igboland.

Abagworo: Like I've always written, these fake stories of baby factories will continue until government enlightens people on the laws of adoption and welfare. Even in advanced countries, parents do give out their children to wealthier childless people and in most cases lose legal ownership of the children.

St_Black:

fake stories? LMAO.

bro, those who do such business are born-criminals! They are barbaric creatures!
They are a curse to Nigeria and human existence!
SIMPLE!!!!
...(guess you shoudnt be offended cos I didn't mention names).

Italiano1:

Dont mind him/her.

The only reason why he is being defensive is because of the names of the perpetrators. If they didnt share his ethnicity, he would have condemned them.

Yeye dey smell

Paris-fran:
My dear, it is heart breaking that people don't believe this fake pregnancy of a thing, If I never see am I for no believe myself. With my eyes I have seen a close person do this thing, but in this my "Aunty's" own she knew it was fake, but belle dey grow oh, no period oh. Seriously na wetin person use e two eyes see, na im e dey swear for.

But when I hated the whole thing was during the Church Dedication oh, see lies everywhere, of how God has been faithful after 7yrs of Childless-ness, how the child was even Natural birth, despite the enemy trying to interfer during labour. My dears my mouth dropped open.

Paris-fran:
My dear, it is heart breaking that people don't believe this fake pregnancy of a thing, If I never see am I for no believe myself. With my eyes I have seen a close person do this thing, but in this my "Aunty's" own she knew it was fake, but belle dey grow oh, no period oh. Seriously na wetin person use e two eyes see, na im e dey swear for.

But when I hated the whole thing was during the Church Dedication oh, see lies everywhere, of how God has been faithful after 7yrs of Childless-ness, how the child was even Natural birth, despite the enemy trying to interfer during labour. My dears my mouth dropped open.

Paris-fran:
lol....sent u a mail though.