Lawsuit over shocking advice to parents

From the Daily Record

Two couples left with the wrong children after their babies were swapped at birth have been told by a psychologist to pretend the kids they raised are dead.

The shrink even urged the couples to put gravestones for the tots in their back gardens. Both sets of parents blasted the advice.

Czech couples Jan and Jaroslava Cermak and Libor and Jaroslava Broza are still struggling to come to terms with the mix-up that saw them take each other's daughter home from hospital last December.

And Jan, 26, said the advice from psychologist Olga Hlinkova had made the nightmare even worse.

He added: "We have agreed to get rid of the shrink.

What a terrible, cold, inhumane suggestion - pretending the baby we had raised had died. Where do they think these things up?" Libor and his wife are also refusing to have anything more to do with Hlinkova.

And both couples have agreed to abandon a rigid timetable for swapping the children back.

Libor said his partner and Jan's wife were planning to go away together with the babies, Nikola and Veronika, to a secluded cabin so the children can gradually get used to their real mums.

He added: "They will prepare themselves for the exchange and decide finally if they can really go through with it."

Libor's partner said: "Nikola and I have shared so many moments and now everyone seems to think I am just going to let her go. I do not think I can do it."

The couples plan to sue Trebic Hospital near Brno for £250,000 compensation. Police are investigating whether the babies were swapped deliberately.