UK: abandoned baby is full sibling to two others previously abandoned

volchitsa

This is a very strange story, and I can't help fearing a Josef Fritzl type scenario:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5115e7k2eno

So much so that I can't quite understand why no journalists seem to think it: on the BBC this afternoon the journalist said something about how them being full siblings meant that, unusually, this time people were concerned about the father too. I mean - maybe. But that's not what it's shouting out to me - I'm wondering if the babies were not, in fact, removed from the mother, and whether she is being kept prisoner somewhere by whoever is fathering these children.

I really hope there's a proper search going on for her.

Conall Cernach

I read that story earlier and had the same thought as yourself.

volchitsa

I can't stop thinking about it.

I hope that police and social services are taking it seriously, but the fact that they already knew the first two were full siblings back in 2019, and don't seem to have reacted until a third turned up in 2024 - and even then only in terms of releasing the information at the demand of the press - is bizarre.

I also think some of the headlines, about parents or even mother "abandoning" the babies are oddly phrased too: nobody knows who abandoned the children - if the babies were removed form her, did she abandon them?

Wanderer78

severe dysfunctions going on there, state care for all, urgently required!

Ezeoul

I'm wondering if the babies were not, in fact, removed from the mother, and whether she is being kept prisoner somewhere by whoever is fathering these children.

My first thought also. It doesn't bare thinking about.

Jequ0n

I don’t understand the concerns if I’m honest. There are countless reasons why people abandon their children, so why jump to conclusions about a capture and abuse story.

It’s more likely that the parents are junkies because they clearly aren’t criminal masterminds.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220165#Comment_122220165

Abandoning a child is actually very unusual nowadays, unlike in the past. I think they said the previous one in the UK was 2011.

Secondly, a mother who's just given birth then abandoning the new born and not being found soon after because she's in need of some sort of healthcare is really unusual. Junkie or not, the bleeding after an unattended birth is going to be scary.

So doing it three times and presumably NEVER getting any health care at all any of those pregnancies or afterwards - well I'd say it's unheard of in a western country, even for junkies.

I.R.Y.E.D

Could be a number of reasons but you have to pry kids from a junkies near dead hand because they are a source of money and when young a easy way to stash stolen items in their stroller or smaller items in their nappy. They also don't make the best midwife.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220504#Comment_122220504

That's a good point: a mother who decides to abandon her child has made choices that I don't think a junkie is fit to do. They'd keep the child despite putting it in danger with their lifestyle. And anyway I don't believe the woman wouldn't be found pretty quickly by police or social services - because I think she wouldn't be well enough organised to keep it all a secret. Three times.

It's astonishing in our society to have been pregnant three times, given birth and left a baby, all without any healthcare and even without anyone else even noticing. I don't see how that can happen for a woman who is out and about in the world.

Once, maybe. Three times??

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220492#Comment_122220492

But a kidnap/ prisoner story is equally unlikely. Why create children if you don’t want them and don’t want to use them for profit?
And you will have the same issue with not being able to access medical care unless you pay a substantial amount, so you’d rather sell the babies to make up for the deficit. I don’t think this is comparable to the Fritzl case and similar ones.

volchitsa

That said, there were cases of "denial of pregnancy" where woman has given birth and then killed the baby, and I think some of them did it more than once.

So I suppose it could be some version of that, but where the baby is abandoned instead. But in those cases, the father was (allegedly) unaware of the pregnancy. Would abandoning the baby in secret be more difficult to manage than disposing of its body?

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220526#Comment_122220526

Right but you implied that it was quite likely that she'd abandoned it. Both are extremely rare.

And my point is that to bring three pregnancies to term and abandon the babies without ever, at any point, coming to the attention of the authorities is even more rare, and frankly almost impossible to do for a woman who is able to move about in society.

That's the bit that makes me think she probably hasn't been seen by a doctor for years. And I can't really see how that could happen if she were free to go where she wanted.

Jequ0n

I’m sure the police will have an idea whether the mother was the likely culprit to drop the babies or not. I wouldn’t know how likely it is for a woman to carry anything to a park right after birth. There might also have been more cases which didn’t survive, but which are understandably kept out of the coverage.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220552#Comment_122220552

But if they knew who had left the baby/babies they'd be able to find them. Clearly they don't have any idea. The parents also can't be someone with a criminal record, or the DNA database would identify one or both - again, that makes it less likely she's a junkie.

It's quite possible she'd be physically able to carry a baby to a park and leave it there - that's not what I'm surprised at. I'm surprised that medical staff don't appear to have ever come across her - that's generally how women who abandon babies are found: because while it's possible to ignore a pregnancy out of fear, it's not easy to manage all the stuff that happens after a birth without help from someone with significant experience or training.

For instance: how would she manage once her milk came in? If you don't bind the breasts and take medicine to reduce milk production, mastitis/milk fever is very likely - and that requires medical care.

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220544#Comment_122220544

I don’t think it’s rare at all. You get a lot of parallel societies and select healthcare professionals not engaging with authorities. Think about the Adam case in the 2000s.

I’m not rejecting your theories but I think that’s all they are right now and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. It’s most likely just a set of **** parents even if that’s uncomfortable to accept.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220593#Comment_122220593

I've no idea what specific case you're referring to, but parallel societies that then abandon the resulting children?? Over and over?

That seems like a massive stretch.

Basically I think you're conflating entirely different situations. People do sometimes decide to withdraw from society, but it requires a lot of organisation and often an ideology behind it. That doesn't sit well with abandoning the resulting children - if only because a parallel society needs to reproduce.

That's not what's going on here IMO.

(FWIW, "a s*** set of parents" is far more comfortable to accept than the thought that maybe some young woman is being kept a prisoner somewhere, and her children taken from her.)

ceadaoin.

They would know if the babies were born addicted to drugs surely and would have mentioned that? A heroin addicted baby is not something you don't notice

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220606#Comment_122220606

Oh come on. You don’t truly believe that there are no parallel societies that operate outside of the mainstream systems. If that was the case you wouldn’t have fgm and other mutilations happening to European based citizens for example. I just think that the prisoner woman is a very unlikely scenario.

volchitsa

I mean, I specifically agreed that they do. I said a different thing entirely:that this scenario of abandoned babies doesn't make sense in that context.

You seem to be one of those people (men!) who thinks that pregnancy is sitting around geting fat for 9 months, followed by a severe case of constipation.

It's a lot more complicated than that, and women who "freebirth" or whatever prepare it in advance, usually with some sort of "doula", the way women did for generations. It's part of an ideology, like I said - not something a junkie decides to do because she doen't want to keep her babies.

It's also got a high rate of death and injury - by definition: there's a reason why women dying in childbirth was a thing.

plodder

Reminds me of this case, where three adopted kids grew up in the 60's here, knowing they had been abandoned but only in the last few years (through DNA testing) discovered they had full siblings who were also abandoned. The parents were apparently a kind of forbidden relationship across the divide in NI. Though aspects of that sounded quite a bit dodgier to me tbh as well. You'd expect this kind of thing to be even more unusual nowadays alright though.

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/three-irish-siblings-abandoned-as-babies-say-another-child-found-in-newry-could-be-related-HKP6DVAASZDXRPOYLX7PPQDEXA/

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220647#Comment_122220647

Wow I hadn't heard of that one. Yes it's the kind of thing that happened up to about the 70s or even 80s, but has become extremely rare now with changes in society, as wall as reliable contraception and now of course abortion too.

A friend of mine who's adopted has since found her birth family, and they are all her full siblings, so I know it happens that the couple stayed together after a first "illegitimate" birth. She had a lovely childhood with her adoptive parents, but still finds it a bit sad that she didn't grow up with siblings.

Jequ0n

But your argument also doesn’t make sense to me.
The chances of someone keeping a woman prisoner and forcing pregnancies on her just to abandon the evidence and profit defies any logic.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220724#Comment_122220724

Not sure what you mean about profit? There have been several cases where rapists have kept a woman prisoner and made her pregnant, whether deliberately, or through carelessness or maybe because it's not that easy for a man to get a regular supply of contraceptive pills without there ever being a woman around somewhere. Not just Fritzl. Ariel Castro was another one, or Philip Garrido, who kidnapped Jaycee Dugard and kept her for nearly 20 years.

And those are the ones who got caught.

volchitsa

Or she may not be being physically kept prisoner, but may be too frightened to tell anyone:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7797293.stm

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220748#Comment_122220748

But usually these types of people want to keep the offspring. That doesn’t seem to be the case here though.

If you dont want it, but still go through with the whole inconvenient pregnancy situation, you’d at least try to monetise on it and sell the babies. Abandoning them in such a fashion is most nonsensical if you know what I mean.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220806#Comment_122220806

Which is why the examples I gave, of men whose interest was centred on controlling a woman rather than on monetary gain, are worryingly similar to this.

None of the men I named tried to monetise the child/children - but making the woman pregnant either happened because women get pregnant, or was even part of the torture they inflicted on her. The fate of the children was of less interest to them - more just another problem to be solved.

And the woman, who is of course the one who has to go through the "inconvenience" of the pregnancy presumably doesn't have a choice in the matter.

JP Liz V1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220165#Comment_122220165

Would the police release that the children had drug issues, illness etc., from junkie parents, addicts themselves the children?

It is a very strange case, 3 full siblings abandoned

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220748#Comment_122220748

But in the examples you listed the abusers wanted to keep the children (that weren’t aborted) because they considers them as their property, just like they saw the mothers. It just doesn’t seem logical to abandon the babies unless they were “imperfect “ some shape or form but no conditions were reported in the news. Someone like that does not simply forfeit having someone else in their control.

Look, I’m not saying that you are wrong or that it’s impossible, just that it seems unlikely to me.

ceadaoin.

Its obvious that there is a terrible situation behind these child abandonments, whatever form that might take. In this day and age, in a country like the UK that has free birth control, free abortion, and free healthcare, there's just no need for it. To deny this fact is just a bit weird.

volchitsa

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122221305#Comment_122221305

The cases don't have to be identical in all respects. Fritzl and Castro both had criminal records for one thing, so could possibly be identified by the babies' DNA.

Moreover Fritzl may have wanted to keep the babies because he saw himself as a "family man" (eg large, stable family in his other/public life) and also, he knew he could control his wife's curiosity by getting Elizabeth herself to write the letters asking her parents to keep the babies.

We don't know why Castro finally allowed one woman to keep one baby after causing multiple abortions through terrible beatings (yet not preventing future pregnancies). Maybe he saw that woman as harder to control and giving her a "favour" helped him in some way. Or maybe he was afraid she would not survive another beating and he wanted to keep her. So Castro and Fritzl acted differently themselves, but the point in common, of a woman/women being kept prisoner was the same.

Assuming the mother is being controlled in some way in this case, there are so many possible different living conditions that it's impossible to say that the father could have done like either Fritzl or Castro but just chose not to. He'd have had to adapt to his own situation, whatever that was. Nosy neighbours who'd hear a child crying for instance.

Lillyfae

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122220566#Comment_122220566

Not really. Alot of women choose not to breastfeed and don't need to do this. If the baby is physically away from the mother it's likely milk production would be negligible too. It's very unlikely she left an hour old baby somewhere without being spotted though. There was some premeditation in that it was away from CCTV.

God love her and the babies though, something very wrong is occurring. Really hope that the children are geographically close to eachother, it would be very difficult to place them together but hopefully they have as much access to eachother as they need and not just "contact".