Newborn baby found in London has brother and sister also abandoned

[IwantToRetire]

A newborn baby girl found in a park in east London earlier this year has an older brother and sister who were also abandoned in similar separate earlier incidents, it can now be reported.

At the time the Metropolitan police said it was highly likely that Elsa had been born after a concealed pregnancy.

DNA tests revealed she has the same parents as a girl temporarily named Roman after being found next to a bench in a park near Roman Road, Newham, in January 2019. Like Elsa, she was found by a dog-walker in freezing temperatures wrapped in a towel inside a shopping bag.

Elsa and Roman also have an older brother, who was provisionally named Harry after he was found wrapped in a blanket in another east London park in Plaistow in September 2017.

On Monday, a judge in a family court ruled that the relationship between the siblings could be reported because of the public interest of the case, due to the rarity of babies being abandoned.

The BBC and PA argued that reporting the sibling links would help the police find the parents of the three children.

there were plans for the siblings to have contact as they grew up. The public reporting of the sibling links was not supported by the public bodies that advise courts about children’s best interests.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/04/abandoned-newborn-baby-elsa-newham-london-brother-sister

Not quite sure about posting this but just feel so sad for the children and of course their mother.

What are her circumstances, and how could she be living so isolated from anyone else that no one has come forward to help find her.

I did wonder whether this might be a case of incest - with a father repeatedly making his daughter pregnant, or else a case of coercive control.

It’s a terribly concerning story isn’t it.

I also fear what situation exactly the mother is in.

Three children, same parents, over seven years, all abandoned in really quite dangerous scenarios (away from cameras etc?).

Something really does not add up.

The possibilities are many and varied and none of them are good, for either the mother or the children, or for any other children born between the ones who have been found.

Sadly this was my first thought too

What a sad situation. That poor mother. Can you imagine giving birth 3 times, on your own and then feeling like (or being forced to) abandon your newborn baby.

I hope she is Ok

If these children were the product of incest, then their dna would show that. The fact that they are known to be siblings, suggests that their dna has been compared.

I think the large age gap makes that unlikely. Even if she had her first baby at 13, then she'd be 20 by now. Whilst not impossible that she'd still be under his control to that extreme, I think it makes it less likely.

There is also no indication thankfully of any of the children having disabilities, which if all the were conceived in incest, would be a huge risk.

Poor kids in any event :-(

In woman's hour , today , the reporter who requested the story to be made public made a few interesting comments
often local authorities and social services try to stop things being reported in the public sphere if it shows them in a bad light.
The local authority and social services tried to stop this story going public.
The reporter who got the story released also hinted that there might be more to it than is now in the public domain.

Can you elaborate? Is the implication that the LA is somehow involved eg are the parents both in care?

If they were a product of incest then I would expect that fact would not be reported publically

Wonder what happened during the gap involving the lockdowns

Yes this. How terrible this story is.

With the same mother and father for all three babies, I can only assume the mother is trapped in a situation that is dangerous or harmful.
It's very rare to abandon a baby but from what I've read about other cases it's been due to extreme poverty (more so in the past than now) and cultural/religious reasons. And it's invariably (though not exclusively) only one child.
For three babies, the parents are still together in some form or other and she (the mother) either doesn't want the babies or is being prevented from keeping them. Whichever of those it is, she is clearly in a situation of risk and harm.

Thanks for that. I did wonder about the comments in the newspaper report about why it had been made public, and that local support services didn't want it.

As no one has come forward in the intervening years, a worried relative or next door neighbour, and the 2 older children are now adopted, why wouldn't they want help finding out the situation.

Maybe it is wrong of me to think it is about a woman being oppressed and that somehow she is willing to be in whatever situation it is.

But wouldn't local services want to be sure she is okay.

I agree it's quite likely the mother of these babies is probably not in control of them being abandoned. As they are full siblings rather thah half siblings she must be under the control and abuse of one man rather than being e.g. a trafficked woman being kept captive in a brothel.

It's not impossible there could be serious mental illness involved. The fact that the father is the same does seem to make that less likely, but I don't think impossible.

I don't expect they'd report it if they knew the parents were related.

Children of father/daughter incest are typically entirely healthy and genetically normal - it's kind of a myth that they are likely to have problems.

There's not the slightest chance that would be made public at this stage.

The investigating officers would know and presumably if the parents are found and if the CPS thought it was in the public interest to prosecute, it would become public knowledge then.

Could it be a cult-type situation? Seems far-fetched but then the whole scenario is not normal.

I wasn't going to comment more, as it is so hard to know what the situation is.

But in fact on one of those TV shows about tracing long lost family, I can remember 2 real life stories that had similarities to this.

One was someon who had been abandoned at birth later found they had a sibling similarly abandoned.

And one where the person concerned who was abandoned at birth, then found they had siblings who had grown up with their shared parents.

Sometimes its hard to even begin to think what lifes women are living that would lead them to act like this.

I hope when and if the siblings meet they find it a positve experience.

Bruce is the closest thing we have to an expert on this issue. She has identified at least one parent in each of the 25 foundling cases she has handled. In most cases, she has identified both sides of the genetic history. In eight cases so far she has found a living parent. She is often the one breaking the news to the parent, and has seen the impact first-hand. “The public idea is that children are left by very young girls,” she says. “That may be the case in some instances, but quite often they are left by someone who already has a family and cannot cope for one reason or another.”

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/the-foundling-detective-on-why-parents-still-abandon-babies-qlzrrxh35

Also possible to read at https://archive.ph/rP2GA