Abandoned baby Elsa is third newborn to be deserted by same parents

[SerendipityJane]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5115e7k2eno

That's what I meant, but badly worded!

I hope the police manage to find this poor woman. They are clearly very concerned about her and rightfully so.

It just makes me think of those awful cases where a woman is held captive for many years, like the Josef Fritzl case. It makes my blood run cold.

Me too.

I find it hard to believe there is a woman out there that was heavily pregnant THREE times but suddenly wasn’t pregnant with no child and no one has noticed. No friends not work colleagues. No one. I appreciate someone could claim the child died but after three babies were found locally people would surely start to wonder.

A woman who has happily gone without any medical care during pregnancy and birth.

Which suggested there is something very wrong.

I am very concerned there is a woman being held somewhere against her will and abused.

Similarly, to me it seems that the most chilling, horrific scenario is the most likely here - a poor woman being held captive. I wonder whether the DNA evidence shows that mother and father are related... a Fritzel scenario? 😢

It's not always evident when a woman is heavily pregnant. I work in a shop and have been surprised on several occasions by women customers turning up with a very new baby in a carry seat only days after I've last seen them without. They tend to be ladies who are on the larger side, but it depends how they carry the pregnancy and, without them actually telling me they were expecting I would never have known.

It suggests significant isolation, no health care, no children in school etc. No contact with any agencies that have safeguarding.

It’s a very odd situation all round, they all have the same father so there is obviously some relationship between the parents, which we can assume is abusive, possibly incestuous, the babies are being left where they can be found rather than kept in the abusive home, killed and buried or the pregnancies prevented? with modern DNA matching the parents must know that if only one of their relatives is arrested then they could be traced so why leave evidence? if the father is abusive why is he not taking steps to prevent the pregnancies from a self preservation point of view? I do hope they find the parents so the children can have answers and the mother can be helped.

Do we really think the possibly father or mother will actually submit to dna testing.

All the people who do agree to being tested will be narrowing down those 400 households. Eventually I imagine the police are hoping the list and scope of the task will become more manageable and other kinds of investigations will begin to be appropriate.

Also all it could take is someone related to either parent to innocently do a test and the police will be nearer the truth. I read that DNA testing of the children has produced results, albeit very distant relatives, so ploughing on to either narrow down or get a match somewhere seems a decent way of trying to get closer, to the mother particularly.

No, but their relatives might.

Oh yes but I mean even if the police were 99% sure it’s that house with them people could they legally be forced to do dna for a parentage claim?

Suspects must provide a DNA sample if police believe them to be involved in an offence, and have reasonable grounds to want the sample.

So yes.

I’m not at all sure that ‘we reckon it’s one of these 400 households’ would stand up as being‘reasonable grounds’ if challenged.

Strange how they state she may be restrained yet go on to say they think she personally abandoned the babies ??

Even the article linked makes it clear the DNA tests are voluntary and some people have refused.

Rainbowcollar · Today 15:21
Strange how they state she may be restrained yet go on to say they think she personally abandoned the babies ??

Imagine if she had one or two that he let her keep, perhaps in that gap 2019-24... He sends her out to dump the latest, threatening to kill the ones she has kept if she's not back within ten minutes... Maybe she has seen him kill some...

Coercive control comes in many shapes. If it starts young and goes on for years, it can cause permanent mental damage. You simply cannot think straight any longer.

Even the article linked makes it clear the DNA tests are voluntary and some people have refused.

Yes. But they'll be able to eliminate a lot of lines of enquiry. The article also said that many of the people they speak to have heard of the case and want to help.

They might get a sample from some who isn't involved in the case at all, and has no personal knowledge of it, but has a family connection to someone who is or has. That's all they need.

I expect the DNA tests would largely be ruling people out, narrowing the search area further rather than finding the parents that way.

That they said in the news report tonight the police are not ruling out a fourth child being involved it sounds like they might have a rough idea who they are looking for, but need the DNA to bring them closer to proof.

I noticed this too they definitely seem to have some withheld information and plan as to why they are making it public.
I suppose if the hunt/ publicity does spook the parents/ father it might mean they try and flee which in itself would make them more obvious as likely suspects as in the family at x address have done a midnight flit (is that the word) after the search details were on the news- big red flag.

Can DNA testing determine if both parents are related and to what extent ie cousins (legal) = less dna similarities but more than none cousins, brother and sister = maximum similarities , father and daughter = more than cousins less than siblings.

Lastly I think their ethic heritage has been mentioned before and can get quite specific so that would rule out lots of people immediately and make targeting the search easier surely so if for example they find the profile matches Uganda they can look into that community within the area etc.

If they think the mother abandoned them herself it may be that there was one or more other babies that were killed and so she felt her only hope for these three to survive was to abandon them in a public space. It's a very tragic story all round.

I think this is likely as they were abandoned so soon after their births, I think they said it was likely that Elsa had been born within an hour of being found.