April’s Mom blogger ran an anti-abortion website. She told of being a single mom, pregnant with a terminally ill baby, who refused to have an abortion because of her deep Christian faith.
Followers prayed for her and her baby. They sent gifts and letters to a post office box. They followed and supported her for 2 months. Then on Sunday ‘April’ was delivered at home and supposedly died. April’s Mom posted pictures. Soon a few of the followers realized they had been duped. It was all a hoax. Social worker Rebeccah Beushausen supposedly was April’s mom. She admitted to getting addicted to the attention of the followers.
There was no baby. A doll maker recognized that ‘Baby April’ was a life-like doll. Stories are surfacing all over the internet over this hoax:
Beushausen said she started the blog in March to help recover from the loss of a son shortly after his birth in 2005, but then became addicted to the attention it was generating.
“Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand,” Beushausen told the Chicago Tribune for a story Friday. “I didn’t know how to stop. … One lie led to another.”
Supporters said they were drawn by their own beliefs, a desire the support the woman, known only as “B” or “April’s Mom,” and her beautiful writing. Now they just feel used.
“I feel emotionally exploited,” said Jennifer McKinney of Minnesota, who now said it seems Beushausen seemed overly concerned with attracting hits to her Web site. McKinney, who writes a Christian blog, said Beushausen asked for help promoting her blog.
There is no evidence Beushausen committed a crime or received any significant financial gain.
She said she plans to write one final blog, to apologize.
“I know what I did was wrong,” said Beushausen, who said she’s been getting hate mail. “I’m sorry because people were so emotionally involved.”
How cruel to deceive people in this way. How cruel to the right-to-life folks who became all emotionally wrought up with April. How deceptive to the pro-choice people by spreading misinformation. It was just dead wrong. Spreading information for one’s own political purposes is just dead wrong, whether for anti-abortion, pro-choice, anti-immigration or for any political purposes. Next thing we know someone will be fear-mongering over the swine flu and trying to scare people into fearing certain segments of our population. Say it ain’t so!
Just one more of many frauds on the internet. I’m sure in regard to the swine flu there’s probably already websites out there trying to take advantage of people in one way or the other. The internet is just full of people out to either make money off of people by fraudulent means, or take advantage of them one way or the other.
This is another attempt to affect political policy through hoax and emotion. The black velvets are attempting to scare people who live in the West Gate area by saying that the child with swine flu is an illegal alien. Nothing has been released by the school system or the press to indicate that is the case. So yes, Moon-H, there is already fear-mongering going on. The black velvet king is trying to whip his followers up into a freny similar to how the social worker was trying to whip anti-abortion people into an emotional frenzy.
What does this “April Mom’s” thing have to do with BVBL? That’s ridiculous.
Internet hoaxes that play on people’s emotions? The dead baby is obvious.
Deadly swine flu victim goes to Westgate school and is an illegal alien seems a bit speculative at best since the child’s name has not been released nor would the school even know that the child (or the parent which I believe was suggested) was an illegal alien. –not so obvious
So the BVBL crowd is sticking to its tradition of picking on children.
No better than this lady using a child–real or imagined–to scam people.
They all ought to get together and have a sicko-party.
Gospel Greg’s blog is an echo chamber of 8 people who take him seriously. The rest of us only check in there to see what ugly disgusting and racist lie he comes up with next. This baby hoax is shameful, but I can’t see how it made any more impact that Sarah Palin’s real life story. I’m sorry to hear that Gospel Greg is still a shameless ass, but I’m not surprised. And not surprised he is using swing flu to scare his Idiot Eight.