A woman has been jailed after tricking her partner into twice believing she was pregnant, with her lies only discovered when she turned up to a maternity ward wearing a fake pregnancy bump.
At Workington magistrates court, Libby Vernon was sentenced to six months in prison, having previously pleaded guilty to 10 charges relating to sending false communications.
Pamela Fee, for the prosecution, told the court that Vernon, 23, from Staffordshire, had met her former partner online and told him she was pregnant by an abusive ex-boyfriend. Vernon also told him “she was a partner in a nursery business [and] owned her own home via a mortgage – none of that was true,” Fee told the court.
Vernon had said she was pregnant with twins, and the then couple agreed to raise the babies together, the court heard. She later told her partner that one of the babies had died. Fee told the court the couple had “discussed the loss and they grieved together”.
Fee said Vernon had “told him the other baby was still healthy” and claimed she had a rare condition where she had two uteruses.
In December 2023, Vernon sent her then partner a picture of a baby wearing a white hat with the words “someone wants to meet you”, later also sending him photographs of a baby in a car seat and in a cot.
While on a call with her then partner, he could see the cot but not the baby, and heard Vernon say “Athena”, the name of the supposed infant.
Fee told the court that Vernon had then sent him a “frantic text message saying the baby had stopped breathing”. She said an ambulance had taken them both to hospital, but she had been sent home, and the baby had died from sudden infant death syndrome [Sids].
She later sent him a picture of a fake death certificate in the name of “Athena Grace”, which it later transpired she had made herself.
“We now know that baby Athena never existed, Vernon was never pregnant,” Fee told the court. “A baby girl was never born, and a baby did not die of Sids.”
By early 2024, the couple’s relationship had become intimate, and Vernon again told the victim that she was pregnant, telling him in February she was again having twins.
They had named the babies, with one named for the victim’s grandfather. She came to visit him in Cumbria with an envelope, which she said contained the sex of the babies that she said had been revealed at a scan.
They held a gender-reveal party, with confetti-filled balloons revealing to the victim’s family that they were having twin boys.
When the couple were intimate, Vernon would not remove her top, claiming she was self-conscious about stretch marks and a rash on her stomach, the court heard.
Vernon told him multiple times that she had miscarried, the first time early on, when she said she was bleeding and sent him a picture of a blood clot. On a separate occasion, she created a letter purporting to be from the NHS “confirming her miscarriage”, and offering support.
Vernon’s lies were eventually revealed when she texted the victim telling him she was in pain and bleeding. He told her to go to hospital, and that he would meet her there. She told him that her scan time had been pushed back, and growing frustrated, he went on to the ward with her.
“Eventually, that’s when the truth was revealed,” Fee told the court. “Miss Vernon was not pregnant, she was wearing a fake baby bump, and everything she told him was lies.”
She said Vernon’s deception had had a profound impact on the victim, as well as his mother, grandmother and sister, who had all been preparing to welcome a baby. He had moved out of his mother’s house, and found and decorated a house for him and Vernon to live in with their children, the court heard.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, he said: “I thought I was going to be a parent and I changed my whole life to step up and be ready for that.”
“The obvious question is why?” said Michael Woolaghan, defending, adding that it was a “difficult question to answer”. A pre-sentence report, he said, suggested Vernon “struggles to comprehend herself what she’s done”.
In mitigation, Woolaghan said she had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, and was of previous good character, having “never troubled the criminal justice system at all”.
Sentencing Vernon, Christine Williams, chair of the bench, who also imposed a two-year restraining order, said: “This was a sophisticated, well-planned and intentional series of deceptions, which have caused serious harm to both your victim and his family.”
She said Vernon had offered no strong personal mitigation, telling her: “You are unable to say why you committed these offences.”
