Positive pregnancy test. (CC/Klaus Hoffmeier)
The daughter, a virgin, miscarried at 14, but went on to have a baby at 16 after inseminating herself with sperm bought online by her "domineering" mother because she was too scared to refuse.
The adoptive mother is now serving a five years in prison after admitting child cruelty, reports The Guardian. In a high court decision, family judge Justice Jackson described "an abiding sense of disbelief that a parent could behave in such a wicked and selfish way towards a vulnerable child."
The mother had adopted three children as babies from abroad, twice when she was married and once as a single parent after divorce. Because of a health condition she chose not to give birth and had undergone elective sterilization.
When she was denied approval to adopt a fourth child, she began a program of artificial insemination for her daughter. The mother subjected her to a "degrading, humiliating and, on occasions, painful" ordeal. The daughter had to inseminate herself seven times, "alone in her bedroom, using syringes of semen and douches prepared by the mother."
The mother forced her daughter to use painful acidic douches containing vinegar or lemon and lime juice, and eat a special diet, in the belief it would produce a girl.
When the daughter did conceive at 16, health workers were told she had spent the night with a boy who then left her and went abroad.
Midwives were alarmed at the "pushy and insensitive" mother, who tried to prevent her daughter breastfeeding the newborn, saying "we don't want any of that attachment thing." Midwives called child protection workers when the mother attempted to remove the baby from the ward.
The mother, described as "highly articulate," had isolated the family. The children were schooled at home, and the adoptive father of the eldest two was deliberately excluded.
The daughter, who had no friends of her own age, later told investigators she was "shocked, pretty shocked" when her mother first asked her but also thought, "if I do this, maybe she will love me more." In a list written by the daughter of things she could give her mother for Mothers Day, she included a picture of a positive pregnancy test kit.
