Inside brutal ‘baby farms’ where kidnapped girls as young as 13 are raped until pregnant & tots sold to desperate Brits

CAGED inside filthy, cramped buildings in Nigeria, pregnant teenagers cradle their swollen stomachs, knowing their babies will be ripped from their arms the moment they’re born.

The girls – watched closely by gunmen to ensure they don’t escape – were kidnapped off the streets then brought to these hellholes to be repeatedly raped until they fell pregnant.

Police officers rescued 23 pregnant girls and four infants from a baby factoryAl Jazeera

Inside the hospital room the mothers gave birth inAl Jazeera

In 2018, the Moonlight Maternity Clinic was raided by paramilitary operatives for allegedly engaging in baby traffickingGetty

Their journey to motherhood is nothing short of horrific – with some girls fed just one meal a day, given poor medical care, and sexually abused by their captors while heavily pregnant.

And their trauma will only intensify once their babies are born, as the defenceless infants are flogged to desperate infertile couples – allegedly including Brits – and child trafficking rings.

Newborns from Nigerian ‘baby factories’ are reportedly being sold for as little as £60 – and as much as £2,000 – on the black market, with in-demand boys attracting a “premium” price.

Just this month, a family court in Leeds heard the case of a “very young” baby who was brought in from Nigeria by a woman who was not their biological mother, and has now been put up for adoption.  

The case follows that of another baby brought unlawfully from Nigeria, who was taken in by social services in Manchester, amid fears that children from ‘baby factories’ are being trafficked to Britain.

But, while they may never know their real mothers, they are perhaps among the lucky ones.

Those babies not purchased by international or domestic couples, who claim them as their own, are used as child labour. Others are trafficked to Western nations as sex slaves.

And for a few, their fate is even worse – with reports of infants being sacrificed in sick rituals.

Experts tell The Sun that Nigeria’s baby trafficking trade is “lucrative”, with an estimated 10 children sold each day – while their violated young mothers are left with empty arms.

“Infants are sold into black-market adoptions, domestic servitude, or trafficked into countries like the UK,” says Jared Navarre, Chairman of the Board of Project AK-47, a strategic humanitarian initiative that fights to free children enslaved and exploited globally.

“Some are moved on forged documents. 

“Others are smuggled in under the radar and are never registered, and never found.”

He adds: “These factories exist because there’s a market for human lives.”

A 19-year-old who had been lured into the home was forced to sell her babyAl Jazeera

Tv24 NewsPolice rescue 10 pregnant mothers from a baby factory in Ogun[/caption]

youtube/Tv24 NewsCops raided the ‘farm’ and arrested its female owner[/caption]

As for the fate of the babies’ mothers – some, who didn’t die in childbirth the first time, are impregnated, again and again, with their newborns callously torn from them each time.

When their depraved captors consider them no longer useful, the ‘luckier’ girls are freed – reportedly, with blindfolds on, so they can’t locate the factories they were held at.

Those less fortunate are never seen again.

“They’re raped systematically and impregnated as part of the business model,” says Jared.

“They’re not patients. They’re inventory.”

Women being taken to hospital after being freed by police from a baby farm in LagosReuters

AFPA ward abandoned at Nigeria’s Moonlight Maternity Clinic, raided by paramilitary operatives for allegedly engaging in baby trafficking business[/caption]

Jared Navarre is the Chairman of the Board of Project AK-47

Last week, it was reported that a woman living in West Yorkshire had flown to Nigeria before returning to Gatwick Airport with a “very young” baby girl that she hadn’t birthed. 

The woman, who was arrested, claimed she was the baby’s biological mother, according to the BBC. However, tests showed “no genetic link” to either the woman or her husband. 

The Leeds court heard that the baby had suffered “significant emotional and psychological harm” after her “parents” lied and handed the authorities fake documents.

A judge ordered that the girl – who, tragically, may never know the identities of her real parents – be placed for adoption. Police said there was no active investigation at present.  

A specialist social worker, who visited the medical centre where the mother alleged she had given birth, told the court the practice of “baby farming” is well known in West Africa.

At least 200 illegal “baby factories” have been shut down by the Nigerian authorities in the last five years, she said.

Promised ‘easy money’

women were lured by promises of work before being kidnapped and hauled to baby farmsReuters

The slave-masters get rich by selling babiesReuters

But such concerns aren’t entirely new: in 2012, a High Court judge raised fears about “desperate childless parents” becoming involved in baby-selling scams in Africa.

Disguised as maternity clinics and orphanages, ‘baby factories’ plague south-eastern Nigeria – which has the dark reputation of being a major African country in human trafficking.

Fuelled by poverty, heavy social pressure on women to bear children, and a stigma around teen pregnancy, these heinous sites have been described as “puppy mills for people”.

They have even inspired the recent Netflix series, Baby Farm. 

The girls at these ‘factories’ – some, just 14 – have either been recruited while pregnant with false promises of “easy money”, or have been kidnapped, raped and impregnated.

“Some come in already pregnant. Most don’t,” says Jared.

Forced to sell their babies

Pregnant women are crammed into tiny buildingsAl Jazeera

Women give birth bare hospital roomsAl Jazeera

One survivor – who was already pregnant – told Al Jazeera that she was lured to a ‘baby factory’ by a woman who claimed she owned a home for young expectant mothers.

But when she got there, the girl said the woman demanded to buy her unborn baby.

“I was really afraid and I was scared,” said the 19-year-old, who was held captive.

She added that some imprisoned teens tried to kill themselves, while others staged escape attempts. “I was among the ones who tried to escape, but there was no way,” she said.

Human trafficking expert Joanna Ewart-James says some pregnant girls are “coerced” into going to ‘factories’ through poverty, “seeing no financial option other than to sell their baby”. 

“Many young women are afraid to tell their families they are pregnant,” Joanna, co-founder of the US-based non-profit organisation, Freedom United, tells us.

“And without access to abortion and antenatal care, some are drawn to baby-sellers who keep them hidden – and captive – until the baby is born.”

She adds of the infants involved: “The commodification – the buying and selling – of children and newborn babies is horrific because of their inability to defend themselves.”

Abortion is illegal in Nigeria – where up to one million people each year are thought to be trafficked. Pregnancies can only be terminated to save the life of the mother.

Another survivor, then 16, wasn’t pregnant when a woman, known as ‘Aunty Kiki’, lured her from an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp to the Nigerian state of Enugu.

Promised a job as a housemaid, with a monthly salary, the teen was transported to a compound guarded by gunmen, where a man allegedly ordered her to strip then raped her. 

“The compound had two flats of three bedrooms each filled with young girls, some of them pregnant,” the teen – who would go on to suffer daily abuse – told Al Jazeera.

Within weeks of being caged at the compound, the girl was pregnant. 

Yet she was still raped.

“It doesn’t matter whether you are six weeks or six months pregnant,” said another girl who was impregnated at the compound. “If any of the men wants you, you can’t say no.”

The two girls from the compound both delivered baby boys, who were snatched from them.

The infants were sold to unknown customers, for unknown sums – though they likely drew a heftier price because they were male. Traditionally, in Nigeria, boys inherit land. 

‘Cryptic pregnancy doctors’

A hospital bed in a cryptic pregnancy clinic in NigeriaBBC

Women outside the cryptic pregnancy clinicBBC

A bed in a cryptic pregnancyBBC

Lori Cohen, CEO of children’s rights organisation Protect All Children from Trafficking (PACT), says that, in patriarchal societies like Nigeria, “rigid gender roles continue to shape the cultural norms by placing a premium on fertility, and particularly boy babies”.

So-called ‘cryptic pregnancy doctors’ in Nigeria prey on this pressure to conceive. Their cruel scams – which ‘guarantee’ couples a pregnancy – operate alongside ‘baby factories’. 

In such scams, Nigerian couples longing to be parents fork out hundreds of pounds on ‘miracle’ fertility treatment – including injections that reportedly cause the woman’s stomach to bloat.

The ‘doctors’ administering the treatment promise the woman that she is pregnant – news she has, often, waited years to hear – despite medical scans and tests proving otherwise. 

As the ‘birth’ nears, the couple is told they must pay for an expensive drug to induce labour.

But this is not always available imminently – because the ‘drug’ is, in fact, a trafficked baby. 

While waiting for this ‘drug’, women have reported being up to 15 months ‘pregnant’. 

Ify Obinabo, Anambra State Commissioner for Women Affairs & Social Welfare, told a BBC Africa Eye documentary: “Cryptic pregnancy cannot exist without child trafficking. 

“Anybody that tells you [that] you will have a child through cryptic pregnancy is a liar… you are going to be given another person’s child, a trafficked child.”

One Nigerian-trained diagnostic sonographer, who dubs herself ‘The Celebrity Sonographer’, recently told of how a woman ended up with “three cryptic babies”. 

Taking to Facebook, the sonographer, based in London, explained that the devastated woman had been convinced that she’d carried and given birth to her children.

However, DNA tests had refuted this. 

For each birth, the woman had reportedly been called up by a hospital in Nigeria – which has reportedly since closed down – and told it was “time for her to deliver”. 

“She was not allowed to come with anyone,” wrote the sonographer. 

“Once she arrives, they will make her sleep and when she wakes up, her baby will be by her side and that was how she gave birth to the three.”

She added: “It dawned on me that they had probably made her sleep to give her other people’s children.”

Some experts claim that “local corruption” in Nigeria helps ‘baby factories’ to thrive.

“They operate because they’re profitable, protected, and low-risk for the people running them,” says Jared. “Local corruption shields them. International demand fuels them.”

He adds: “There’s no meaningful consequence for either.”

Nigerian cops have previously cracked down on such ‘factories’ through raids and arrests, with 22 pregnant women, aged between 20 and 25, rescued from one site in 2023. 

In 2021, four pregnant girls were saved from a ‘factory’ in Anambra, while, in 2019, police in the nation’s biggest city, Lagos, freed 19 women and girls as well as four babies. 

Most of the survivors in Lagos – brought there from the states of Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Abia and Imo – had been kidnapped and impregnated by their captors. 

“The young women were mostly abducted by the suspects for the purpose of getting them pregnant and selling the babies to potential buyers,” Lagos police spokesman Bala Elkana told Reuters at the time, adding that the victims had been “tricked” with employment offers.

‘Orphanage trafficking’

Nigerian couples longing to be parents fork out hundreds of pounds on ‘miracle’ fertility treatmentReuters

GettyA nurse with one of the babies in a legitimate Nigerian hospital[/caption]

A year earlier, more than 160 children had been rescued from a ‘baby factory’ and two unregistered orphanages in the same city, which is known for its beach resorts and nightlife. 

Horrifically, some of the infants had been sexually abused, an official told the BBC in 2018.

They were later placed in government-approved homes. 

According to Joanna, so-called ‘orphanage trafficking’ is ongoing in parts of Africa, with British volunteers becoming unknowing participants in such exploitation. 

“Used to attract donations from abroad, poor parents in countries like Uganda or Cambodia are convinced that their child will be given an education,” she tells us.

“Instead, they are placed in an orphanage to attract money from well-meaning volunteers travelling in their gap year.”

Meanwhile, in southern Nigeria, some women drug and “rent” their young children out to street beggars, according to a 2018 trafficking report by the U.S. Department of State.

They do this to increase the beggar’s profits, with passersby feeling pity for the child.

But, in at least one case, an infant died from a drug overdose. 

Even for the children who survive trafficking, the consequences are “irreversible”.

Referring to the infants sold by ‘baby factory beasts’, Irina Tsukerman, a New York-based human rights and national security lawyer, tells us:  “They are deprived of their identities, disconnected from their biological families, and placed into lives constructed on deception.

“Their legal status may remain ambiguous. 

“Their access to education, healthcare, and social protection may be compromised. 

“The psychological harm of being trafficked as a commodity is compounded by the systemic erasure of their origins.”

She adds: “For the mothers who survive these ‘factories’, the loss is equally profound. 

“They are left to contend with the trauma of forced pregnancy, the disappearance of their child, and the social isolation that often follows.”

While Nigerian police continue to raid ‘factories’ – with suspects facing a reported 10 years behind bars – the UK government has restricted adoptions from Nigeria in recent years. 

Border Force officers are trained to identify and safeguard children who could be in danger. 

But experts insist more action must be taken against the buyers, and sellers, of ‘factory’ babies.

“As with other forms of human trafficking, forced harvesting of children only exists because of the underlying demand that makes this crime so profitable,” says Lori.

“Eliminating the demand for stolen babies by holding buyers accountable, in addition to these vile child brokers, is the surest way to shutter the doors of these criminal networks.”

Lori Cohen told The Sun rigid ‘gender roles continue to shape the cultural norms’

Joanna Ewart-James is the Co-Founder of Freedom United, a nonprofit that fights human trafficking Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]