Pictured together: Runaway lesbian mum and her ‘sperm donor lover she wants to wed’
THIS is the lesbian mother who is accused of abducting the daughter she raised with her wife and eloping with a man.
Teacher Lauren Etchells has sparked an international hunt after fleeing to Britain with Marco van der Merwe – said to be a sperm donor for another child for the couple.
She is accused of lying to passport officials to leave Canada with her elder child Kaydance, who she had while married to wife Tasha Brown.
The 31-year-old then flew to Britain with IT expert Mr van der Merwe, who is believed to have moved in with the women while Miss Etchells was trying to conceive their second child by him – and they got engaged.
As Interpol searched for the fugitive mother last night, Miss Brown spoke of her heartbreak after her wife returned to the UK with the ‘sperm donor’ and both children.
She told the Mail she had been ‘erased’ from Kaydance’s life overnight, adding: ‘I was such a fool. I was played by Lauren.
‘I welcomed Marco into our life because I thought he was no threat to our marriage and it would help us have more children as we had always planned.
‘The last time I saw my daughter I put her in her car seat, gave her cuddles and a kiss, and waved her away thinking I would be seeing her again in a few days.’
Miss Etchells was born in South Shields, Tyneside, but emigrated to Canada with her electrical engineer father Brian and mother Angela.
She met Miss Brown online and after their first date in February 2008 they married in 2012.
Miss Brown, 43, said the couple had always wanted children and agreed that her wife would carry them because she was younger. Kaydance was born in 2014 after they found a sperm donor online. But when they came to try for a second child, the original donor no longer wanted to help because he had a new girlfriend who was uncomfortable with the idea.
Things went downhill when they are said to have invited Mr van der Merwe, an old school friend of Miss Etchells, to be a sperm donor and he stayed with them during the summer of 2015.
‘There started to be this weirdness,’ she said. ‘Lauren started being short with me and Marco was carrying Kaydance around and not acknowledging me as the mother. I knew something wasn’t right. Soon afterwards we separated. I was shocked and crushed.’
Months later, as the couple attended a ‘parenting after separa- tion’ class, Miss Etchells broke the news that she was engaged to Mr van der Merwe – and expecting his child. Miss Brown said: ‘That was my baby. That was the whole reason Marco was there.’ She added: ‘I’m not a man-hating lesbian. I wanted the best for Kaydance. But I was still her mother too.’
She saw the new baby, a boy called Marcus, soon after he was born. ‘It was a shock to see him,’ she said. ‘What my life was supposed to be flashed in front of me. Everything that I thought I knew had been snatched away.’
To complicate matters, Miss Brown had previously allowed to have her name temporarily removed from Kaydance’s birth certificate because they both planned to teach in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal.
Fearing they might run away, she obtained a court order in April preventing her estranged wife and Kaydance leaving Canada and Miss Etchells was ordered to surrender her British and Canadian passports. But unbeknown to her, Miss Etchells applied for a new passport in defiance of the court order.
A neighbour of the family later told her that they’d travelled to see relatives in the UK. A Canada-wide warrant has been issued for the arrest of Miss Etchells and the police have alerted Interpol.
Sergeant Jereme Leslie said: ‘Lauren is causing Kaydance no end of psychological damage, including being able to form any sort of trusting long- term relationship.’
Last night Mr van der Merwe denied that he had agreed to be a sperm donor. He said he had no idea where Miss Etchells is and had no contact with her after she broke off communication with him.
He said she told him she was able to travel when they boarded the flight to the UK together.
Mr van der Merwe said he had been in contact with Canadian police and told them everything he knows. In a separate email to a Canadian newspaper, he said: ‘I did co- operate with the authorities, they just didn’t want to believe what I had to say.’
Lesbian runs away with sperm donor ‘after abducting her toddler’ From the last edition of yesterday’s Daily Mail