Malawi girl commits "baby theft" after faking pregnancy

A bizarre court case is currently taking place in the African country Malawi, after a 16 year old was apparently pressured by her husband to steal a baby. The Child Justice Court in Blantyre accused the girl of stealing a baby, and her husband, who is 24 years old, was also arrested. Apparently, the girl's husband got angry and embarrassed when the 16 year old had not fallen pregnant yet after two years of marriage. He first talked her into stealing a baby from a local maternity hospital, but when that did not work out, the girl who remained unnamed ended up stealing her friend's baby, only to return it when she started feeling guilty. Does that sound weird? It gets worse. Read on if you are interested in a soap-like story.

The magistrate, Esmie Tembenu, ordered the arrest of the girl's husband on two grounds; as an accomplice as what is described as the "child theft charge", as well as for sexual abuse of his wife, whom he married when she was 13 without parental consent. The girl explained what happened to the court herself: "I was staying with my father but my stepmother was mistreating me so when this man proposed to me I accepted, and two days later, he told me to move in with him in Chirimba. But after we had stayed for close to two years without a child, my husband started troubling me. He said he had become a laughing stock among his friends who used to mock him as an impotent man. So he advised me to put pieces of cloth on my belly to feign pregnant, and when the time is ripe I should go and steal a baby from Ndirande Health Center."

She then makes some incomprehensible statement from which it isn't quite clear if she succeeded in stealing a baby from the health center and ended up returning it, if she refused, or just failed. In any case, the next move was again as advised by her husband stealing her friend's baby. She ended up dropping the baby off at the very same health center she was initially going to steal a baby from when she started feeling guilty. The police was called and the baby returned to its mother, or as a Malawian newspaper says, "to its rightful owner" (!!!). The court case will continue, but the girl has already said that she would prefer to leave her husband and return to school "for fear that one day, her husband will ask her to do something bigger than steal a baby". Just WOW! For more outrageous fertility-related news stories, check red bracelet for menstruating employees and Pennsylvania woman hides murdered newborns in closet.