‘Abortion scam mother sold baby for £300 to gay friend’

A PREGNANT woman conned her ex- lover into thinking she had had an abortion so that she could sell their baby daughter to a gay friend, a jury heard yesterday.

The 29-year-old mother is accused of creating the hoax in return for up to £300 payment.

She is alleged to have duped the baby’s father into thinking she had not given birth to their daughter.

The woman told her former lover that she had terminated the pregnancy – then disappeared for the rest of her term so he could not discover the lie, the court heard.

The mother and her gay friend, 35, are then alleged to have set up a Facebook profile for a fictional woman – Clare Green, said to be an ‘Edinburgh lawyer’ – who supposedly claimed she was acting as a surrogate mother for the gay man.

‘Clare Green’s’ Facebook page said she had handed the baby to the gay man and that he had full custody of the child, Perth Sheriff Court in Scotland heard.

The real mother denied involvement with the Facebook page and said she could not remember why she was ‘friends’ with the fictional woman on the social networking website.

When challenged by police, the woman and her coaccused then claimed to have conceived the child after a drunken one-nightstand on his birthday, the court heard.

The pair, from Perth and Glasgow, are alleged to have conned the NHS, the local registrar, council officials and the girl’s real father for nearly three years. The friends claim they are innocent of the fraud charges and the mother claims that she did not receive money from her homosexual friend for her baby daughter.

The co- accused’s name was given as the father on the baby girl’s birth certificate in Perth.

The mother denied the baby was the biological daughter of her former lover and said that instead she was the product of a ‘drunken mistake’ with her gay friend.

She told police that she had sex with her homosexual friend ‘just the once’.

But her claim to have become pregnant by her gay co-accused in early April 2010 was not possible because doctors said her full-term baby had been conceived at least a month later, the court heard.

The co-accused said the mother instigated the hoax in order for the friend to gain parental rights and responsibilities towards her daughter, a police officer told the court.

The officer told the mother: ‘He told us it was your idea. Money may have changed hands, anything from £100 to £300, from him to you – for your trouble.’

The mother replied: ‘It’s definitely not true. I never received any money from him ever. I can see what it looks like but it’s not true. I am being honest.’

The prosecution alleges that the woman and her gay friend persuaded the father to believe the child was not his and also induced the local authority and health officials to offer advice and assistance on the basis that the child was theirs.

The pair were both detained and interviewed more than a year after the February 2011 birth in connection with carrying out a fraud from June 2010 to April 2013.

They deny the charges and the trial continues.

‘A drunken mistake’