Monday, 15 Dec, 2008 Offbeat

Belgian police arrested a 31-year-old mother, who was accused of treating her newborns in a debasing way and with fraud after a Dutch couple informed authorities that she had conned them. According to the police, Sonia Ringoir, sold her newborn twins for GBP9,000 ($13,500) so she could have a liposuction operation. To sell her babies, the woman engaged in an online rent-a-womb trade, where different women, who desperately wanted children, offered their price.

According to Tamara and Gideon Stegeman, the couple who wanted to buy the twins, the woman had run so-called "sperm parties" in her big family house located in Lovendegem, a small village near Ghent. Mrs Stegeman said that Ringoir charged GBP300 a time in order to be inseminated with her husband's sperm. She added that the event looked like a coffee party where people drank a cup of coffee and then went into a room with a syringe.

The Dutch couple confessed that they attended three "sperm parties" and spent GBP900, hoping that the woman would bear them a child. Both Tamara and Gideon were unaware that Ringoir made the same promise to another couple over the Internet and charged GBP1,800 for 5 impregnation trips.

It was reported that the woman has operated as Sary Levy. However, her real identity was revealed by a Dutch TV program. The Network's reporters followed Ringoir to her home. The operation was part of an investigation into an online surrogate baby fraud between Belgium and the Netherlands.

The arrested woman is the mother of five other offsprings aged between 3 and 13. She decided to give her twins to a friend and the Stegemans were left with nothing. Ringoir said that she did not ask money from her friend. However, her 48-year-old husband Marc Poppe, told an undercover reporter from Holland that the woman charged money in order to pay for a liposuction operation.

After breaking up with her husband, Ringoir found herself a new boyfriend who gave an interview to a Belgian newspaper, saying that it was her former husband who pushed Sonia Ringoir to "have her body rebuilt".

The woman cannot be charged with trading her children due to the fact that according to the Belgian law this is not considered crime. Ringoir may face 1 to 5 months in jail if found guilty. This case raised serious concerns in Belgium and politicians have already started thinking about changing the law, reports Daily Mail.