Abbie's aunt makes second plea

ALMOST two weeks after newborn Abbie Humphries was abducted from a Nottingham hospital, her aunt will continue to wait by a special telephone hotline today after making a second emotional appeal for the baby's kidnapper to get in touch.

Josie Clark, 36, sister of Abbie's mother Karen, 32, begged the woman who took Abbie to bring some relief to her distraught parents by contacting her to say whether the baby was well.

Holding a yellow card bearing the hotline number - 0602 810567 - Mrs Clark pleaded: 'Karen needs to know that she is gaining weight and all the things that a mother would care about. Please phone, please phone the police, please let them know and let me know. I will be here. I will be available and I will be able to pass on the message to Karen.'

Holding back tears, Mrs Clark, a mother of two, spoke of the unrelenting torment of Karen and her husband Roger, 33, since Mr Humphries was persuaded to hand over his four-hour-old daughter to a woman disguised as a nurse. 'It has been 12 days since my sister held her baby in her arms. It has been 12 days of hell for my sister. She is distraught.'

On Saturday, Mrs Clark made her first appeal for the kidnapper to get in touch. She said her sister was going to bed every night in tears clutching the blanket in which Abbie had been wrapped before she was abducted.

Holding to the theory that Abbie's abductor is a woman who has lost or is desperate for a child of her own, the police have relied heavily on public appeals but the kidnapper is refusing to respond.

At the Queen's Medical Centre, the hospital from which Abbie was abducted, new surveillance cameras, digital door locks and a swipe card system are being introduced to tighten security.

Catherine Bailey, wife of the photographer David Bailey, was arrested in a store in London's West End yesterday after failing to give details about herself or the three-week-old baby she was carrying. It turned out to be her son, Sascha. Mrs Bailey said she tried to tell police the baby was a boy but they had not listened.