Dutch couple sentenced over internet baby

A DUTCH couple who bought a baby boy for €7,500 on the internet were each given eight-month suspended jail terms and sentenced to 240 hours of community service yesterday.

The couple, aged 28 and 29, replied to an advertisement placed by the baby’s parents and picked up the infant across the border in the Belgian city of Ghent shortly after he was born in June 2008, a court in Zwolle, in the east of the Netherlands, was told.

Dutch social workers discovered the transaction six months later, and the baby was handed back to the Belgian authorities just two days before Christmas 2008 – on the grounds that he would have a better future in his country of origin.

The court heard that the reason given by the baby’s parents for selling their son – initially known only as “Baby J” but later named as Jayden – was that they already had one child and could not afford a second.

However, their lawyer subsequently said they deeply regretted the decision and hoped ultimately to have Jayden, who has been living in care, returned to them.

The Dutch couple, who have not been named, denied buying the baby, and have since claimed on TV current affairs programme Netwerk that the €7,500 represented only the costs associated with the mother’s pregnancy.

After Jayden was born in Ghent in northern Belgium on July 3, 2008, the Dutch couple declared the birth under their own name at the city's municipality and returned to the Netherlands, where they used the Belgian documentation to register the birth in the town of Hardenberg.

Said the court on Thursday: "The accused only thought of their own wish to have a child and not of the implications for the baby."

Dutch prosecutors only charged the couple with an illegal adoption and using false documents as the Dutch penal code did not rule against the buying of a baby.

The baby was placed in the care of an adoptive family in December 2008.

Belgian prosecutors in Ghent said they wanted to prosecute Jayden's parents and grandmother, the Belga news agency reported, with the Ghent judges' chamber to announce a decision shortly.