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

[SerendipityJane]

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

There are quite strict rules around what can be done with DNA. Most Ancestry DNA type testing companies don't allow their databases to be used for law enforcement purposes, for instance. Whether that would extend to finding the parents of an abandoned baby I'm not sure. It's also not a simple thing to just compare a DNA sample taken from a baby for the purposes of testing it against siblings with partial DNA samples from crime scenes or with samples taken from suspects for testing against those partial DNA samples. There will be specific rules about how crime samples can be used. They may be different types of DNA, the results may be recorded differently and even if they are physically comparable, there may not be a simple mechanism to do so (e.g. software etc.) It's quite a niche situation, not something the police will have a standard set up for.

That was my first thought too

Yes this. No matter how frightened the mother is surely she can find a safer place to leave the baby. In freezing temperatures in a park is just horrific. Very little concern shown for their survival... or maybe that was the idea? Tragic

Got to be some kind of abuse, or serious mental health issues. NO-ONE abandons a baby for no reason, let alone THREE babies.

What a sad and tragic story. I hope the mum is OK. (I hope the babies are too!)

As for 'could the mum not have found a better/safer place to leave the babies?' I would imagine she is NOT of sound mind when she has been doing this!

An hour after a birth with no medical assistance it’s almost certainly not the mother abandoning the babies.

1 hour after birthing my children I was still struggling with the placenta and that’s with the medication to speed it up and massage by the midwife. This woman birthed with no pain meds, no stitches, no medicine. She wasn’t walking through the freezing streets of London within an hour.

It was specified when Elsa was abandoned, that she was left in a safe and busy place. She wasn't hidden, she was well wrapped and left where she would be quickly found.

She was also very new so it's unlikely the mum left her.

It's also the same dad, is it is a stable situation, even if appalling.

So the dad wants the babies to survive but the couple cannot keep them.

That's an unusual situation and a terrible one.

Hopefully one of the only good things about this being the third baby is that police will put serious resources into investigating it to try and find the poor mother because it almost definitely indicates some serious safeguarding/ criminal activity going on.
I agree it's most likely a trafficked child or woman being held without anyone's knowledge.

The Fritzl case was my first thought.

I’ve just read the article online and it really jars that these three children have been given names such as Elsa, Harry and Roman. Surely it would have been respectful to have given more culturally sensitive names based on heritage? I’d be interested to know if anyone else thought similar? It smacks of an old fashioned colonialistic attitude somehow.

I don't think they've actually been given those names. They are just pseudonyms for the press. And no info about race was even published for the 1st two originally

It says in the BBC article their names have now been changed. (Probably for safeguarding or anonymity)
One was found in Roman Road so maybe that's why they were initially given the name?

Thank goodness. Those names were like they were naming a bloody pet or something.

Their names are the least important thing here and they've been given new ones now.
How do you know which would be 'culturally sensitive'? They could be from any number of backgrounds - all that's been said is that the babies are black. That covers many cultural possibilities and thousands of names.
At least someone cared enough to give them a temporary name, unlike their parents.

more culturally sensitive names based on heritage

Which ‘heritage’ would you ascribe to them? The BBC article said the babies were ‘black’. And clearly born in England. So they might have parents who are

Completly English - with or without any religious background or belief.

Or they might be immigrants from

Africa
The Caribbean
North America
South America
Anywhere else in the world.

They might be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, Pentecostal, whatever. Or of no religion.

How are the people tasked with giving a name to know which of these heritages might be most apposite? Kindly - Black people are not all the same; we don’t all pick from a limited set of names …

They have had DNA testing. That would give ethnicity and heritage roots so the children could be named appropriately. Gone are the days where everyone had to be called Harry 🤦🏻‍♀️

That's what you took from the article? That's what you find jarring?

No, I absolutely didn't think similar - this didn't cross my mind. My main focus was on the fact that three newborn children were abandoned in a park, not on whether the names given by authorities were culturally-sensitive enough.

Jesus fucking Christ.

But, if you do want to go down that route - what do culturally sensitive names look like?
The article only says that the children are Black.
Black isn't a homogeneous group.
Their parents could be from any of the 54 countries in Africa, from the Caribbean, from a mixture of both.
They could be from any one or more of the thousands of tribal groups in Africa, could speak any one or more of the native African languages, they could be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, they could follow a traditional African religion.
So, given that none of this is know.... what would a 'culturally sensitive' name be?

Three babies left in 2017, 2019 and 2024, all with the same dna so all related by both mother and father I assume? My first thoughts is of it being someone who is being abused and their babies are being taken away from them, or they are giving birth secretly and then abandoning them. I hope whoever it is will get some help soon

Yes, the authorities will be aware if the babies are the result of incest.

I think this is a case of isolated abused woman.

This has to be a wind up surely?? These are their 'code' names, like 'baby p' etc

Wow, you are serious, either that or, well I'm not sure

Yup. I know someone who is black called Harry. I didn’t know that wasn’t allowed.

This, plus the babies have now all been renamed

There may well be children born between the foundlings who are still with the parents. Presumably unregistered and unknown to authorities? This would be a priority safeguarding concern to authorities.

I would hope there is a full scale police investigation in place. Examination of objects found with the babies; CCTV tracing, ring doorbells, ANPR etc etc

They may not be able to work out the cultural heritage of the children. It's not an exact science and is more complicated in black people as there's less data available in the first place as they're less likely to go through DNA testing.

They will likely best case scenario be able to just narrow it down to a region of Africa. That won't give enough info as there's so many different groups who will have different naming practises. Plus a majority of people in the West Indies will have African heritage but identify as eg Jamaican rather than African.

It's a bit of a moot point as the adoptive parents will likely be given the option to name them but I think the best option is going for either a name that's very common or one that matches the adoptive parents background. If the name is for example very clearly Nigerian it may lead to the child spending their life being asked "are you Nigerian" which they won't have a answer for.