A newborn baby boy has been found in a Swansea dumpster in February 2023.
The image accompanying this Facebook post shows a newborn girl abandoned in a park in London in 2019. South Wales Police says it has no record of a recent incident like this in Swansea.
A Facebook post claiming that a newborn baby boy has been found in a dumpster in Swansea uses a picture of a baby girl found after being abandoned in a park in London four years ago.
The post, published on 22 February 2023, says: “So Sad ,A newborn found in Swansea dumpster this morning at 4am .We will keep you posted when we know more. Currently baby is alive but is critical. Pray for this newborn as the doctors work to save his life. Investigators are searching for the parents of the baby contact the authorities if you have any information regarding this. [sic]”
However, the image accompanying the post actually shows a baby girl discovered in a park in East Ham, London in January 2019. This incident was covered by a number of national media outlets at the time, including ITV News and the BBC.
South Wales Police has confirmed to Full Fact that it has no records matching the date, time or nature of the incident described in the Facebook post, and there are no credible recent news reports of an abandoned newborn baby being found in Swansea.
Over recent months we’ve written about a number of similar hoax Facebook posts involving false claims of abandoned babies and babies snatched from hospitals, as well as others about lost elderly people, injured dogs and missing children.
We’ve often seen posts like this being changed after reaching a large audience, so that they advertise surveys or housing websites instead.
Image courtesy of Pexels
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the image accompanying this Facebook post shows a newborn girl found in London in 2019.
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