Paternity Fraud victim attempt to claim damages

Paternity fraud victim Mr Webb claims he endured “17 years of lies and deceit” when Lydia Chapman became pregnant by her lover but convinced him that he was the father and not her lover. The 47-year-old is now pursuing her, and the person he claims is her girl’s true father through the courts in a try to claim compensation from them for the cash he spent on raising the girl. His attorney, Nicholas Mostyn, QC, informed the Appeal Court in London the supposed paternity crime case raised “profound questions” about a partner’s “duty of candour”. “Honesty and good religion lie at the heart of the contract of marriage,” he revealed. The court heard the child was conceived during “an act of unprotected sex” between Mrs Chapman and her lover at a hotel in 1985.

But Mrs Chapman, a 45-year-old who is living in Southampton, told her partner that he was the biological father, and when the baby girl was born she was registered as their child.

Judges were told that when she was just 3 months old, her mother and her lover met again at a summer barbecue and had sex in a picnic area.

They are claimed to have debated her paternity and “set out to deceive” Mr Webb into believing he was the child’s father. Mrs Chapman was described as an “inveterate liar” who for many years had a “fixed and certain knowledge” that her husband wasn’t the father of her child. It wasn’t till the girl was 18 years old that DNA paternity tests proved that Mr Webb wasn’t the girl’s father, and his wife filed for divorce.

Mr Webb first launched a claim for damages against his ex and her lover at Bournemouth County Court, accusing them of cheating him about who the girl’s pop was.

But this claim denied by the couple was discharged by a judge. But he added that if it went ahead, it might “visit on the litigants enormous burdens, both monetary and emotional, which are disproportionate to any prospects of success”. The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Aikens and Mr Justice Bennett, concluded : “This entire case can be classified as a setback to all those engaged in it. I wouldn’t wish to be the one to extend their setbacks further.”.

The sole option remaining to Mr Webb is to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights.