Police fear mother might abandon fourth baby but close in on her location
Police have said they are doing “everything we possibly can” to find the mother of three babies abandoned in London over a seven-year period – amid fears a fourth child may be found.
Officers have focused their inquiries on just 400 homes in an area of east London near to where two of the babies were discovered, with members of the public being asked for voluntary DNA samples to help locate the mother.
Experts believe the person who abandoned the young children, who may or may not be the mother, could have travelled from one of the properties in a specified area of East Ham and Plaistow.
The three babies – named Harry, Roman and Elsa – were abandoned in 2017, 2019 and 2024, respectively. They were all found within a few miles of each other.
A full DNA profile of the mother has been established by investigators, but despite this, hundreds of hours of CCTV footage and a £20,000 reward being offered earlier this year, she remains unidentified.
Baby Roman. Pic: Met Police/PA
Each child was discovered in an area where there are no CCTV cameras and the case’s senior investigating officer said police have concluded the person who abandoned the babies “did not want to be found”.
Addressing the possibility of another child, Detective Inspector Jamie Humm added: “We can’t be blind to the fact that there may be a fourth [baby], and certainly the passage of time and the cycles of nine months it would take to potentially get pregnant and birth a child, mean that we cannot discount that.
“That means, again, I’m appealing to the public, because if there is another abandoned child, that child may not be as fortunate as Elsa and her siblings.”
‘We’re treating the mum as a victim,’ say police
DI Humm also said he believes the mother “is in danger”.
He continued: “The hypothesis that, as senior investigating officer, I believe is most likely, is that the mother of these children is vulnerable, is in danger, and is in a position where they feel that they are unable to come forward for whatever reason.
“We are treating mum as a victim in this case, and we are on standby to support her with everything she needs.”
The Boots bag Baby Elsa was found abandoned in. Pic: Met Police/PA
His comments came as Noel McHugh, national senior investigating officer adviser for the South East at the National Crime Agency, said it was a “miracle” the children survived because of the conditions they were abandoned in.
Elsa was found wrapped in a towel in a reusable shopping bag at the junction of Greenway and High Street South in East Ham, in sub-zero temperatures, on 18 January last year.
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The Greenway junction where Elsa was discovered. Pic: PA
A map of where the abandoned babies were found in east London
Roman was found in similar circumstances a short distance away in a play area off Roman Road, Newham, in late January 2019, as snow gripped the capital.
The eldest of the three, Harry, was found wrapped in a white blanket in Balaam Street, Plaistow, in September 2017.
Mr McHugh said: “We are doing everything that we possibly can to work through the information, the intelligence that is before us, to understand it, and that is why they [the police] are working on this really focused area.”
A police officer carrying out house-to-house enquiries in Plaistow. Pic: PA
Roman and Harry – not their real names – have already been adopted. Family court proceedings related to Elsa are continuing.
The court was previously told Elsa’s birth cannot be registered, and no final decision on her care has been made due to the ongoing investigation.
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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