A court has been informed that the newborn baby discovered abandoned in London in subfreezing conditions earlier this year has two siblings who were similarly abandoned in past years under similar circumstances.
A dog walker in east London discovered the girl, who hospital staff named Baby Elsa, wrapped in a towel inside a shopping bag in January and reported it to the police.
Since then, DNA testing has revealed that she has a brother and sister who were found in the same area of the UK capital in 2017 and 2019 and are known as Baby Harry and Baby Roman.
The children’s parents are yet to be identified, and London’s Metropolitan Police is working to trace their identities.
A family court judge on Monday approved the release of details about the cases, lifting the normally strict reporting restrictions on minors and family matters in the interests of “openness of justice”.
“There is a clear public interest in reporting this story,” said judge Carol Atkinson, granting an application by two UK media outlets to report the link between the three siblings.
“The abandonment of a baby in this country is a very, very unusual event and there are years where there are no children abandoned, and because of that it is the story of the abandoning of a child that is of public interest.”
On January 18, Elsa was discovered abandoned in the East Ham neighborhood; it was thought that she had not even been alive for an hour.
As frigid temperatures and snowfall engulfed the nation’s capital in late January 2019, her sister, Baby Roman, was discovered in a similar state in a play area in Newham.
Meanwhile, Baby Harry was discovered in Plaistow in September 2017 after being covered in a white blanket.
Elsa’s future care has not yet been decided, but Harry and Roman—not their real names—have since been adopted.
