A Kenyan hospital employee who was caught by the BBC selling a baby on the black market has been convicted of child trafficking.
Fred Leparan, who worked at Nairobi’s Mama Lucy Kibaki hospital, was filmed accepting $2,050 (£1,600) to sell a baby boy under the hospital’s care.
He was arrested in 2020 following a BBC Africa Eye investigation.
Leparan was charged alongside another hospital employee, Selina Awour, with child theft.
Awuor was convicted of three counts of child neglect but was acquitted of child trafficking.
The pair will be sentenced on 26 September.
An Africa Eye reporter initially approached Leparan posing as a potential buyer, after hearing from a source that the senior clinical social worker was involved in illegal child trafficking from the government-run hospital.
A meeting was arranged at the hospital, where Leparan asked the undercover reporter, who said she and her husband had struggled to conceive, only cursory questions about their situation before agreeing to sell the baby boy.
On the day the baby boy was supposed to be transferred from the hospital to a government-run children’s home, along with two other children, Leparan was filmed falsifying the transfer paperwork so that the home would expect two children rather than three.
The BBC team ensured that all three children were delivered directly to the children’s home, but filmed Leparan amending the paperwork and informing them that the child was now theirs to take away.
Source:Fiilafmonline/BBC
