Cheating wife had a secret baby and lef t it on doorstep
A CHEATING wife dumped her newborn baby on a stranger’s doorstep after hiding the pregnancy from her family because it was the result of an affair.
Leigh-Anne Varley, 36, fooled her husband by claiming to have a medical condition that swelled her stomach and delivered her son herself in the bathroom at home, a court heard yesterday.
Late at night she left the tiny baby wrapped in a dressing gown at a nearby block of flats with a note: ‘Please take care of my baby boy, please don’t go public as my husband is violent and will kill me.’
Varley waited for husband Simon, 39, to return home from his night shift
‘My husband will kill me’
and they then booked a trip to Disney World in Florida for them and their two children, aged six and 16. A police inquiry was launched when the baby was discovered alive and Varley later rang police to admit responsibility.
Yesterday she walked free from Peterlee Magistrates’ Court after admitting a charge of abandoning a child under Section 1 of the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act.
Magistrates imposed a 14-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered Varley to pay £325 costs.
Revealing the extraordinary details of Varley’s secret pregnancy, prosecutor Sarah Traynor said the mother told police ‘she had an affair and she believed the baby was the result of that affair.’ When Varley discovered she was pregnant, she realised the baby was not her husband’s and it was too late for a termination.
Mrs Traynor said Varley kept her condition secret by pretending she had ovarian cysts – which can make the stomach swell – and faked a negative pregnancy test by dipping it in the toilet.
‘She said she knew what she had done was wrong and she didn’t want to keep the baby.’
Varley planned the birth carefully. She did housework during the early stages of labour and then put her son to bed.
Her husband, a car factory worker, was at work and her teenage daughter out for the night. Varley went into the bathroom, taking scissors to cut the umbilical cord, and had the baby.
‘She went on to deliver the baby herself and wrapped the afterbirth in a carrier bag before putting it outside in a bin,’ said Mrs Traynor.
The mother abandoned her original plan to drop the baby at a hospital walk-in centre because her six-year-old son was in bed.
Instead she carried the newborn around the corner from her home in Horden, County Durham, and left him on the doorstep of a block of flats at around midnight on May 26 this year. The child was found cold but safe between four and five hours later by a man walking his dog.
By the ti me her husband returned home she had hidden any sign of the night-time drama. Although exhausted and emotional, Varley went to work as usual and was ‘comforted’ by the sight of an ambulance at the flats, indicating the baby had been found. She later gave a full explanation to police of what had happened. She kept her pregnancy secret for fear of breaking up the family.
Mrs Traynor said: ‘She said the family were looking forward to a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disney World and her daughter was half way through her GCSEs.’
Sheila Ramshaw, defending, said: ‘This poor lady has suffered a lot over the last several months, she is of impeccable character, she is someone we will never see before the courts again.’
The court heard that Varley was still ‘part of the family unit’. She was accompanied to court by family members, including the father of her husband, who said his son was ‘very fragile’.
Bench chairman Mark O’Neil told Varley she was not going to jail because of her ‘obvious remorse and mental health issues’.
Varley left the court sobbing and refused to comment. No details have been released about what has happened to the baby, but he will have been handed into the care of social services.
‘Still part of the family unit’