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British baby smugglers get more than two years; Romania deals harshly with couple

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The Washington Times

Author: REUTERS

BUCHAREST, Romania (Reuters) - A British couple is in shock after they were sentenced to two years and four months in jail by a Bucharest court yesterday for buying a baby and trying to smuggle her out of Romania in a box.

"They are not too good. They are in a state of shock," defense attorney Ioana Floca said after consulting her clients, Bernadette and Adrian Mooney.

The couple are the first foreigners prosecuted under tough new Romanian adoption laws aimed at stopping a wave of baby trafficking since the 1989 collapse of communism shed light on gruesome orphanages packed with thousands of children.

Ms. Floca has filed an appeal but has yet to get the written judgment explaining the harsher-than-expected sentence.

While the Mooneys could have gotten five years, they hoped for a suspended sentence. They remain free on bail pending an appeal hearing - no date has been set for another appearance.

"They are out and they will stay out," Ms. Floca said. "They are waiting for the appeal because they are very confident that the appeal judges will see that they are not so guilty."

The Mooneys were arrested at the Hungarian border July 6 with a 5-month-old gypsy baby, Monica, hidden in their car.

They are in Bucharest with their 3-year-old daughter, Grace, legally adopted from Romania in 1991. Ruled too old to adopt - she is 40, he 42 - the Mooneys took another route, paying a middleman $6,000 to find them a baby.

Monica's teen-age parents say they got $500 for the child.

In Britain, the Mooneys' relatives were shattered.

"We're absolutely lost for words," said Adrian Mooney's stepfather, Ron Chimes. "We'd always been led to believe that they'd just get a rap over the knuckles and be deported."

The court ordered the Mooneys expelled from Romania once they served their sentences.

Three Romanian men convicted of arranging the sale were sentenced to two years and eight months in jail. Monica's unmarried 17-year-old parents did not appear and were ordered to serve a year in jail when they turn 18.

Monica is in a Bucharest orphanage with 400 other children among the 80,000 Romanian children in so-called "cradles" around the country. A handful are genuine orphans.

Caption:

Photo, Monica Baiaram, 5 months, lies in her cot at an orphanage in Bucharest. A British couple "bought" her and tried to smuggle her out of Romania., By Reuters

1994 Oct 15