Scotland: Court told pregnant woman lied to baby's father so she could sell baby for £300

A pregnant woman stands accused of deceiving the father of her daughter into thinking she had an abortion, so she could sell the baby to a gay friend.

A jury was told the 29-year-old-woman, from Perth, Scotland, who cannot be named for legal reasons, supposedly wanted to sell her unborn daughter to her 35-year-old friend for £300.

The court heard that the woman and her friend devised a story to fool the biological father into thinking the child had never been born. After placing the friend's name on the baby's birth certificate, the pair supposedly manipulated the NHS, the local registrar and council officials in an alleged scam which continued for three years.

The woman also allegedly pretended that she had not given birth at all. Instead, she and her friend set up a fake Facebook account for the child's imaginary surrogate mother who had given the real mother's friend full custody of the child.

However, the baby's mother later told council officials that she had been pregnant by her former lover but had terminated the pregnancy, before falling pregnant after having sex with her friend on his birthday.

"We just went out for his birthday and it happened. Maybe it shouldn't have. Three or four weeks after his birthday my period was late and the test came back positive," she said, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

The woman said the baby's father could not have been the real dad, as she had not seen him before falling pregnant. However, doctors giving evidence said as the baby had been born in February 2011, she could not have been conceived in April 2010, when the mother claimed.

The pair are accused of conducting a fraud, before and after the little girl was born, to ensure her real father would not obtain parental rights, and that the mother's friend would be recognised as the girl's father by NHS Tayside and Perth and Kinross Council.

The pair deny the charges. The trial before Sherriff William Wood continues.