Internet auction baby to stay with Dutch 'parents': court

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

THE HAGUE (AFP) — A Dutch court on Wednesday ruled that a girl whose Belgian mother reportedly put her up for sale in an Internet auction should stay with the Dutch couple who adopted her.

The case of little Donna, as the child is known, has become a major cross-border legal battle.

The biological father, Bart Philtjens, a Belgian whose own wife could not have children, had started the court action in a bid to get Donna, now aged three, returned to Belgium to live with the couple.

But the court in the Dutch city of Utrecht even refused to give him automatic visiting rights, only access through a local child protection service.

The Belgian woman who gave birth to the child had originally agreed to hand over the child to Philtjens in exchange for...