Nigerian nurse caught attempting to smuggle baby into Britain

A nurse tried to smuggle a baby into Britain after falsely claiming she had given birth to it on holiday in Nigeria.

The illegal attempt to adopt the child was discovered when she tried to obtain a British passport for it.

When Gladys Effa-Heap and her husband Dr Simon Heap, an academic, went to the British High Commission in Lagos with a counterfeit birth certificate the authorities became suspicious and ordered a DNA test that proved the baby was not related to them.

The couple, from Headington, Oxford, were both given 12-month suspended prison sentences and 250 hours’ community service at Isleworth Crown Court in London after pleading guilty to facilitating a breach of the immigration law. In an attempt to reduce her sentence, Effa-Heap, 52, told the judge in April last year that she had already been struck off and would never work as a nurse again, a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) panel heard yesterday. In fact, she was not referred to the organisation until June 2013.

Jessica Holmes, for the NMC, told the tribunal that Effa-Heap had conducted “a premeditated and determined course of action calculated to deceive”.

Cullled from Simon Ateba's Blog