No, photos don’t show baby boy abandoned in UK towns

Facebook posts sharing photos with claims they show a baby boy found in Newhaven in East Sussex, and Market Drayton in Shropshire, are not genuine. The photos actually show scenes from California in November 2023, and police forces operating in these parts of the UK confirmed the posts are not genuine.

One post shared in a local community group on 22 February says: “This beautiful baby boy, estimated to be between 7 months to a year old, was found dumped by the roadside about 1 hour ago in Drayton Officers have the child safe at the Police Station but we have no idea who the parents might be. No one has called in looking for him. IT ONLY TAKES 2 SECONDS TO SHARE”. Another post with almost identical text was shared in a community group for Newhaven. 

The posts share the same photos showing two men who appear to be police officers with a baby, but these do not show recent scenes in Market Drayton or Newhaven. The photos were shared by the San Bernardino Police Department in California, United States, in November 2023. The police’s post said a one-month-old baby had been found in a public place and that the child had since been placed in foster care. 

It added: “It has been brought to our attention that these photos are circulating throughout social media, and our police patches are blurred/cropped to bait people into scams”.  

West Mercia Police operating in Market Drayton said it’s not true that any such incident has taken place there, and Sussex Police also confirmed to Full Fact the post about Newhaven is a hoax.

Another sign that these are not genuine posts is that their comment sections have been turned off, which Derbyshire Police Online Safety team has previously said is a sign of a hoax.

We’ve written before about similar posts falsely raising the alarm for abandoned infants, missing children, elderly people, and injured dogs in Facebook community groups. 

Our investigation into these types of hoax posts found they’re often edited later to include links to surveys, freebies or cheap housing—you can find out more by watching an episode of BBC’s Rip Off Britain in which our investigation is featured. Our guide also offers some tips on how to identify such hoaxes.

This behaviour poses a risk to user engagement with local community groups, which can become overwhelmed with false information. We’ve written to Facebook’s parent company Meta expressing concerns about how these hoax posts can flood community groups, and asking the company to take stronger action in response to this problem.