before being trafficked. millions of children are victims of trafficking around the world. it could have gone both ways, but we did manage to spot her and rescue her immediately. so that was an awesome effort. in 2022, a charity called project rescue children, said it rescued a newborn baby from a busy marketplace in the gambia, west africa. when you are aware of such an incident, you are supposed to report it to the authorities. the charity said it adopted a baby, placing her in one of its rescue centres. so she is in a family unit, so she is notjust with one or two individuals, she is with a family unit. the head of the family is adam whittington, a former metropolitan police officer who now spends his days posting updates of his charity's work around the world. i will also confirm now

everything i state is factual, as in all my posts and videos. but the bbc has analysed his social media accounts, uncovering false and misleading posts, and find that he is exploiting vulnerable people to solicit funds from abroad. translation: it pains my heart that someone is using photos i of my child to source money. translation: stop it. if they are doing that in other countries, stop it. it is not doing good things. it should be stopped. it is a story about deception and manipulation. he was just trying to use me and i can feel that he was trying to put me and my family into a problem. a story that adam whittington has tried desperately to stop from being broadcast.

i am hayley mortimer, a reporter based in the uk. i first came across project rescue children while working on a different story in the gambia. i saw their poster stuck to a wall near a beach. curious, i searched the name online and came across adam whittington and all of his videos. hundreds of thousands of children go missing from many countries around the world and never get found, so it is very concerning and that is why i thought i would do a quick video. i was so impressed that i asked him to be part of a documentary i was making. we spoke on the phone and he seemed interested, but then he suddenly changed his mind and blocked me from following any more of his content online. my search to find out why has taken me across africa, uncovering a web of lies. anybody who knows me knows

i don't like to sugar—coat things, i like to say it as it is. adam whittington is a british—australian citizen. he started working with children after leaving the police. he set up company retrieving children taken abroad by a parent following a custody dispute. but his tactics are controversial. what's worse than a paedophile? a uk court described him as a mercenary. he has been accused of pepper—spraying a grandfather in poland and was jailed in singapore after attempting to grab a toddler. but it was in lebanon that adam got himself in real trouble. last month, the authorities in lebanon released an australian mother and a 60 minutes tv crew accused of kidnapping two children involved in a custody dispute. adam's team grabbed the young boy and girl, but the police caught up with them. adam, the mother and the tv crew were all thrown in a beirutjail, facing kidnapping charges.

the events were covered extensively in the australian media. now the man at the centre of the operation left to rot in a beirut prison. adam whittington. how much of that was your fault? . they just want to keep me quiet, honestly. they don't want the truth to come out. the mother and the tv crew were all released swiftly. adam was never prosecuted but spent four months in jail, where he says he came up with the idea of starting a charity. at project rescue children, we exist to rescue victims of child trafficking and exploitation as we believe rescue is the first step to life of freedom. adam registered prc as a charity in australia in 2017 and has since used social media and his website to raise money around the world. so i just firstly want to thank everybody, all of you, for supporting us.

we can't do this without you guys. the amount of support we have received just over the last few months is astronomical. adam's updates are unlike anything i have seen from a charity working with children. some of it is too graphic to show. but his uncensored approach has seen his social media pages soar to over a million followers and he has attracted celebrity support, like sam faiers. she is a british tv personality with a huge online following. in 2023, she became a prc ambassador and was taken to uganda. ifeel like being here, we really can make a difference. the plan would be to build more. and itjust gets the children off the streets. she asked her millions of fans to donate money for a new prc rescue centre in uganda.

it eventually reached £137,000. the rescue centre was to be built and run by make a child smile, an ngo in uganda that partnered with prc in 2022. he asked me about some of the cases i worked on, i sent him some of the work i have done so far, and then, one day, he actually told me that he would love to come to uganda. he took pictures. "i'm going to sponsor them, "i'm going to take care of them." to me, it was like a god—answered prayer. adam visited uganda three times. he was taken to meet survivors of trafficking and police officers working on cases. but alexander became concerned about what adam was posting on social media, taking credit for child rescue operations that he had not been involved in. iasked him, please,

we need to be transparent. you have never done this operation. i think it is better that you tell people the truth. remember, celebrity sam faiers told donors the money raised would pay for the construction of the uganda rescue centre and its ongoing running costs. i was so excited. i was very happy. we thought this money could even run the shelter for a full year. prc began sending money to make a child smile, a few thousand pounds at a time, but it wasn't enough. in the end, alexander received around £58,000 — less than half of what was raised by donors. because i don't know where the money has gone. and when i talked about it, adam became furious. he went mad. he went mad!

i would confidently say the rest of the money has been eaten, by adam... prc, actually. and i am so sorry, actually, for the donors who donated to this cause and i apologise on behalf of of every one of us who are involved in this. construction in uganda is currently on hold until alexander can find a new partner and more money. sam faiers sent us this statement. prc told the bbc it sent funds which it deemed to be sufficient to complete

the construction but stopped sending money when it terminated its partnership with make a child smile. it blamed alexander's refusal to sign a contract and accused him of mismanaging the funds. it said the remaining money has been used to help other children. 300 kilometres away, renovations to another prc rescue centre were apparently already complete. it was time to see for myself. prc says it has a rescue centre for trafficked and abused children on the outskirts of kisumu. it is supposedly run by a woman known as mumma jane and a sponsorship programme allowed people to send monthly payments to the children in its care. within weeks of launch, all the children were sponsored. mumma jane is a lady

who invites us into her home. we tell her we are from the bbc and we have questions about project rescue children. she lets us in. this is project rescue children's rescue centre in kenya. it is meant to be a place where children who have been trafficked, sexually exploited or orphaned can come to be looked after, but there are no children here and the owner of this house says it has never been a rescue centre. in fact, she has shown me around and it is just a house where her and her husband live. she tells me that she has provided food and shelter for some local children in need in the past, but she has never received any funding for that, not from prc or anyone else. jane tells us that her son, cooper, was prc's director in kenya and that he brought adam to visit her home. adam said he wanted to visit a rescue centre on her land.

he came with food and footballs and took photographs of local children, but then never came back. she says he sent money to fix the roof, install solar panels and a new gate. he used pictures of this work online to promote the existence of a rescue centre. translation: i feelvery bad about it because he came - to seduce me with a few kids i gathered. he then goes and says he will come back. he says he will come back to put in water for us and i gave him some land to build a home for those children who are orphaned and do not have parents, and so he is defaming me. he should compensate me for damaging my name. the children are featured on prc's website live nearby. joseph's son eugene was pictured. he was listed as a sponsored child who had been orphaned, homeless, was a victim of trafficking or exploitation. joseph tells me none of this is true. translation: should i get any

chance to meet this person, - i can ask him, whose right did you get to take a photo of sent of my son to get money? when the photo was taken, eugene was told he would receive food at mumma jane's house and money to pay for his school fees. and did they pay for his school? translation: no, nothing. there is nothing there for him. not long after eugene's photograph was taken, he became sick and died, but his picture remained online and according to prc's website, people continued to sponsor him. translation: it pains my heart that someone is using _ the photos of my child to search for money. adam whittington came to kenya promising to help. instead, he preyed on the people who live here. there is no prc rescue centre because there are no rescue

children, and jane had no idea that her name and her house were being used to raise money online. mumma jane and the rescue centre is really important to us and especially myself. when we put our findings to prc, it told us that it stands by its claim, thatjane's home is a prc rescue centre that is used to assist children. it said that all funds and invoices for work carried out there were submitted to the australian charity commission and that there were no missing or misused funds. it described our allegations as completely without merit, misleading and defamatory. it is not long before the news of our visit to kenya gets back to adam whittington and he posts about me on his social media. the smear campaign she is directly involved with gets

more amusing and ridiculous. mortimer will soon learn being a journalist does not make you immune to the law. we are so happy to have declined your request to work with you. but adam's reluctance to work with me in the gambia may have been because he had something to hide. 3,500 miles away from kenya is a tiny country on the west coast of africa, the gambia. it is here that adam whittington says that he carried out the most unbelievable rescue mission. he says that his team received a tip—off that a newborn baby was going to be handed over to traffickers at a busy market place in the gambia. when they saw two men carrying a basket, they decided to follow. that two men got spooked and ran away, dropping the basket on the floor. inside, a newborn baby.

they called her maraya, a name that means, a miracle. she is doing so well and she is going to be completely taken under prc's wing. after the rescue, adam posted this picture of a baby wrapped in a gold blanket on social media. he told his followers that he had adopted her and that she was being looked after at prc's rescue centre in the gambia. so she is in a family unit, so she is notjust with one or two individuals, she is in a family unit. this is alex, a young woman from southampton and a social media influencer. she was prc's uk director and adam asked her to adopt a child with him. a copy of a genuine birth certificate was posted on social media and alex told her followers about her new child. she said, "our amazing organisation intercepted "a beautiful baby girl from being sold to a human "trafficking syndicate. "we knew she was meant to be with us, raised by us at prc,

"so adam and i became a mum and dad. baby, i love you! alex visited her at prc's rescue centre in the gambia. she took photos and videos, playing with a beautiful baby girl, and it went viral. her story was seen by more than a0 million people around the world and the money came pouring in. but alex became suspicious when adam asked her to sign a nondisclosure agreement and so she decided to ask questions. only assassinate my character... but they are unlawfully withholding access to my child.

she stopped receiving updates about their baby and adam went on the attack, branding alex a drug addict who was wanted by police in the gambia. of course, this was not true. the baby, the child that i named, she bears my middle name, maraya rose, i named her that. alex really did believe that she had adopted a baby rescued from traffickers. she began looking into prc's activities and discovered this photograph had actually been taken from the internet. it had been posted by a maternity unit long before she had even been born. i'm sorry. how evil you have to be to put somebody through this torture. prc said it used the image to protect the baby's true identity and said it apologised

publicly for the confusion. it said it terminated its contract with alex because they felt she was exploiting children for social media gain. alex told me she was recruited to prc to bring social media attention to the organisation. she refutes the claims against her and says she has always acted with honest and pure intentions. so what happened here? a baby has been registered in the gambia and alex did meet a baby. you cannot pick up that child and give it to someone, that is illegal and it is a criminal offence. but the authorities in the gambia have no knowledge of a newborn baby being rescued from traffickers. at the end of the day, you don't have an organisation that can simply take care of a trafficked person without involving the authorities, so having to fail to report its concealment, and concealment is a crime.

so today is a big day as we begin our search for the baby. our first stop is the location of project rescue children's rescue centre, around an hour or so drive from the tourist area in the gambia, and this is where adam whittington says baby maraya is being looked after, along with other children who have been taken into their care. we were able to work out a rough location by piecing together information from photographs and documents adam whittington had posted online. so this is project rescue children's rescue centre in the gambia and it is the same story as we found kenya. it is not a rescue centre. no children have ever lived here. and the man who owns this property has told us it is just a family home. the property belongs to david. his son was recruited as prc's director in the gambia.

prc came here, it fixed the roof and installed a fresh water supply, volunteers put footballs and food for the children who live nearby, and it was all documented on the charity's social media pages. and here, the whole surrounding village children will spend the whole day... david did not know that prc had used money raised for a rescue centre to renovate his house. there is no doubt it has improved life for his family, but it was meant to help rescue children, including the baby. and there is no sign of her here. but david says she does exist. but she does not live here? no. she lives nearby? yes. back on the road, we arrive at a small village. we are just out of the car when we see a toddler. we recognise her immediately. is that her? i just can't believe

she is here. it is quite emotional, actually. and she is just so beautiful. she is wearing the same necklace in pictures we have seen of her online. so we have found the baby and nothing we have been told about her is true. she was not rescued from traffickers at a busy market place, she was born right here and she has been living here with her mother ever since. their mother did not want to be identified but told us that prc approached her, saying there was a potential sponsor who wanted to meet her baby, which she agreed to. she never received any money but she was given a small amount of groceries. she is doing so well and she is going to be completely taken under prc's wing. the mother was in complete disbelief about the stories being told about her child. so word spreads really

fast in the gambia. it has been just a couple of hours since we left the location of the rescue centre and ebu bass, the son, has given us a call. he has confirmed much of what we already know, the rescue centre is just his family's house, and the story about the baby is completely untrue. at the end, he was just trying to use me, and i can feel that he is trying to put me at my family into a problem. ebu is no longer prc's director in the gambia. he has stopped talking to adam and says he is willing to tell us everything. whose idea was it to say that maraya had been trafficked? it is adam's idea, to be honest. it is adam's idea. adam was like, yeah, we definitely need to put it in the media. why did you go along with that? i did not help adam with the lie.

i was just trying to be good to the child, try to support the child. prc faked the rescue of a newborn baby and found a child to use as a prop, exploiting a vulnerable young mother to raise money. they pretended to house her in a rescue centre that does not exist. if you want to operate, you don't have to operate dubiously in this country. you have normal process and normal registration. this man says multiple laws may have been broken and is now working with the authorities in the gambia to investigate adam whittington and project rescue children. for how long have they been in the country? where would be their official address or location? if these things are not known to me, then that raises an issue of suspicion. prc insists that the story is true and told us that she was rescued by prc in collaboration with the gambian authorities. it maintains that the home of david is a prc rescue centre and says that the baby

was not at the property because she was overseas visiting relatives. it has not been possible to find out what has happened to all the money raised for prc, or where it has been spent. adam whittington has companies and charities set up in multiple countries, many of which have never filed any detailed accounts. but we do know that donations have not reached their intended targets. adam whittington is currently living in russia. he did not respond to our request for an interview. since we started our investigation, content has been removed from prc's website, adam's this site has been banned from instagram and he instructed solicitors in kenya, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to block this programme being broadcast. he has also launched an online campaign against me, calling me a liar and

a roguejournalist. we also had news from the australian charity commission. they told us prc's charity status has been revoked. more countries are wanting our services, more requests for help from different parts of the world. adam whittington is currently travelling back and forth to the philippines, where he is raising money for another rescue centre, and he has plans to expand. to be honest, if we had enough manpower and enough funding, we would be in every single corner of the globe. that is our goal. long—term. and if you would like to hear a longer version of this documentary, search file on four: the child rescue con, on bbc sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

hello there. thursday brought with it quite a humid feel and a lot of cloud across the country. at times, it was thick enough for some heavy rain, some poor visibility across the channel isles and some choppy seas, so not a day for being by the seaside. but as we move into next week, high pressure is going to build. that will quieten things down considerably with some sunny spells around and certainly warming up, particularly down to the south. but for friday, we're still under this influence of low pressure. still the wind direction coming from the west, so not the warmest of sources. and that is going to drive in a few scattered showers, chiefly to the far northwest to begin with. but as we go through the day, anywhere along the west we'll see those showers drifting further inland, perhaps across east anglia and south east england staying fine and dry, but still those temperatures disappointing for this stage injuly. a scattering of showers into wales, 20 degrees the high here. more frequent showers into northern ireland and southern scotland and some of these possibly heavy.

so, temperatures again a little bit more subdued — we're looking at highs of 15—19 degrees. so, that is how we close out friday afternoon. friday evening into the early hours of saturday sees the isobars open up, the winds fall light. clear skies for a time. but we have got this little weak weather front starting to develop, enhancing more showers out to the west but it means low single figures to greet us first thing for the start of our weekend. a quiet start for many, particularly in sheltered eastern areas but, once again, we'll continue to see a few showers breaking out from the west and these will move through the irish sea into wales, across north west england and into scotland by the afternoon. again, to the east of the pennines, we are likely to see the best of the drier, sunnier weather but those temperatures still not particularly exciting for this time of year — once again ranging from 15—23 celsius the high. but after saturday, an area of high pressure will start to build in from the west.

as we go into next week, that's going to quieten things down considerably. weather fronts will try to topple in across the high but all in all, it looks quite decent with that southwesterly flow allowing those temperatures to climb potentially into the high 20s. and for many of us, there's going to be a good deal of dry, settled, sunny weather to look forward to for at least a few days.

live from washington, this is bbc news: vice—president kamala harris meets with israel's prime minister after skipping his address to congress. bada. israel has a right to defend itself. _ bada. israel has a right to defend itself. and - bada. israel has a right to defend itself. and how . bada. israel has a right to defend itself. and how itl bada. israel has a right to - defend itself. and how it does so matters. the us justice department announces the arrests of two leaders of a mexican drug cartel. and the bbc examines the newest deadly russian threat prowling ukrainian skies.

hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. the us vice—president kamala harris says she will not be silent on the suffering of palestinian civilians and says she conveyed that message to israel's prime minister, benjamin netanyahu, in a white house meeting thursday. in a signal of the change of tone that might come if she's elected in november, the vice—president told reporters that, while she continues to affirm israel's right to defend itself, was time to end the "devastating" war and get a hostage deal done. it is time for this war to end, and end in a way where israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of palestinians in gaza ends, and the palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and

self—determination. there has been