Texas woman fined for role in RI baby sale
Texas woman fined for role in RI baby sale
AUCKLAND (AP): A Texas woman desperate to be a mother was fined US$31,800 (NZ$60,000) Friday for her role in an international baby trafficking case.
Charli Shirley Connelly, 35, of Austin, Texas, pleaded guilty to four fraud charges relating to the baby's birth certificate and travel documents to the United States.
In the High Court, Justice Silvia Cartwright fined Connelly $8,000 on each charge and ordered that half the money be paid into a trust fund for the child.
Two other people have already been sentenced for their role in the baby smuggling scheme.
In April, Indonesian-born Erica Henrietta Langenbach, 52, was sentenced to two and one-half years jail for allegedly masterminding the plan. She was deported from New Zealand Thursday. Australian Dr. Guiseppe Barbaro was fined $10,000 for signing falsified birth documents.
The court heard that in July 1997, Langenbach brought a baby to New Zealand and gave it to Connelly in an Auckland hotel room. The baby was believed to have been bought in Indonesia for around $120. The women attempted an elaborate ruse to convince hotel staff that Connelly was pregnant and that the baby had been born in the motel room.
"(Langenbach) ran around asking for towels, she gave false information; she was the director of her own production," Connelly's lawyer, Deborah Hollings said Friday.
Hotel staff became suspicious when there was no evidence of the birth. Hollings said Connelly was desperate to have a baby and had been manipulated by Langenbach.
"She was psychologically blinded by her own intense desire to give an infant a new home and a better life," Hollings said.
Connelly had believed the baby had been legally obtained, but was so besotted with the baby that she went along with Langenbach's false-birth hoax at the hotel.
Noting Connelly was extremely unlikely to ever be allowed to adopt a baby legally, the judge said a prison sentence was inappropriate.
Cartwright said authorities will never know if the baby was unwanted by its parents, but that now the child will never know its family or ethnicity. Outside the court, Connelly's U.S. lawyer Thomas George said she still wanted to adopt a baby.
In a suburban Auckland home, 11-month-old "Baby Paul," named after the police officer who headed the case, is flashing his new teeth and learning to walk, carers said.
Despite an investigation spanning four countries authorities still do not know who his parents are.
"He is... well-loved... but he is a little man from nowhere," Childrens' Service manager Julie Sutherland said.