Locked up, teenage girls who tried to steal 3 babies
They targeted mums on Facebook
TWO teenage girls who set up an elaborate scheme to steal babies have been locked up for a year.
Holly Kelland, 18, and Codie Farrar, 17, secretly spied on new and expectant mothers online to select their targets
Kelland had lied about being pregnant and needed a newborn to pass off as her own, a court heard yesterday.
The teenage girls set up a fake Facebook account offering free designer children’s clothes to new mothers as a way of tricking them into revealing where they lived.
Farrar – who works as an actress for a company running murder mystery weekends – even turned up at one mother’s home posing as a social worker in a bid to abduct her two-week-old son.
Kelland, from Wolverhampton, and Farrar, of Evesham, Worcestershire, admitted conspiring to abduct three babies – known as U, S and W for legal reasons – in September last year. Derby Youth Court heard how the friends first targeted Baby W, who was six months old, by contacting the parents on Facebook offering to send free socks.
A week later, Kelland and Farrar, who knew each other from school, turned their attention to Baby U in Normanton, Derby.
The court heard that, again, the mother was offered free socks and told she had won a raffle, with the prize being either £100 worth of children’s clothes or a Segway board.
She gave her address so the items could be sent to her. The following day Farrar knocked on her home posing as a social worker, while Kelland waited in a taxi outside.
Farrar told the new mother that she had signed a form for the baby to be taken away for a medical assessment, before asking how old the child was and saying: ‘He’s beautiful.’
Almas Ben-Aribia, prosecuting, said: ‘The girl asked, “Do you love him”, and said she needed to take him away. The mother refused and said the girl became increasingly nervous and left.’
The mother phoned police and social services, who confirmed Farrar was not a social worker. Hours later, the teenagers moved on to their third target, Baby S, a 12-week-old boy in Wolverhampton. But the grandmother of Baby U was able to send a message to warn Baby S’s mother. She had logged back in to Facebook and spotted a video on the fake selling page showing a mock raffle in which Baby U’s mother’s name was drawn.
After Baby U’s mother received the warning message via Facebook, she persuaded the would-be kidnappers, who did not realise their plot had been uncovered, to hand over a mobile phone number.
Police were contacted again and both Kelland and Farrar were arrested within days. The court heard the teenagers had exchanged Facebook messages saying, ‘Don’t feel like baby-chasing today’, and ‘Did you bin the SIM?’ Miss Ben-Aribia added that after Kelland’s arrest, a fake pregnancy scan, together with a false note to her partner from a midwife, were found on her iPad.
Elaine Stapleton, defending Kelland, said she was mentally ill and that the bogus scan, from a website called fakeababy.com, was to ‘support her continued lie that she was pregnant’.
She claimed Kelland, whose mother is a Police Community Support Officer, had been pregnant at one point but had lost the child after an assault by her partner. Police found a fully-equipped nursery at her home.
Miss Stapleton added: ‘This all comes from the mental condition she was suffering from at the time. She does fully accept she was responsible for the recruitment of Codie.’
Louise Sweet QC, defending Farrar, told the court the teenager was immature and quoted a pre- sentence report that said she ‘often does not realise she is being used and manipulated’.
The mother of Baby U said the abduction bid had ‘ruined her experience of having a baby’. In a victim impact statement she added: ‘After it happened I kept breaking down. I don’t trust people and don’t like being at home alone. I feel distrustful of strangers around my baby.’
Sentencing Kelland and Farrar each to a 12month detention and training order, district judge Jonathan Taaffe said he would be failing in his duty if he did not impose custodial sentences. He said: ‘The distress caused to the babies and their mothers should not be underestimated. Fortunately, only the alertness of the mother of Baby U prevented an actual kidnap taking place.’
‘She said she had to take the baby away’ ‘Continued lie that she was pregnant’