It’s no secret that it can be really easy to get scammed on the internet and that everything is not what it seems from one side of a computer screen.
People learned that lesson after an anonymous mommy blogger’s identity was exposed after she led her readers to believe she was pregnant with a terminally ill baby and was sent donations and gifts. Little did they know, it was all a lie.
It was 2009 when an anonymous, unmarried, Illinois woman began blogging under the name ‘B,’ making posts about how she was pregnant with a sick baby girl she named April Rose. On her website, she made blog posts about her unborn baby, who had Trisomy 13 syndrome, a defect that could cause intellectual disability and even death.
‘B’ was a Christian mommy blogger who rallied a largely Christian audience after posting that she was choosing to carry her baby to term instead of terminating her pregnancy because of her faith.
She posted very elaborate, emotional stories about her experiences as a single pregnant woman, telling her viewers she had no support from her family and had been cast out of her church for being an unwed mother.
Not only did ‘B’ write about her alleged experiences being pregnant with April Rose, but she also shared notes from her doctor’s appointments and images of ultrasounds, as well as intricate details about her baby’s health.
Because ‘B’ claimed to have had little to no support in her daily life, she asked her readers to help her by setting up a P.O. box they could use to send her gifts and money. At one point, she gained around one million readers, and people were desperate to help, admiring her strength and bravery.
However, suspicions started arising the closer ‘B’ got to her alleged due date, which she had changed several times in her blog posts. Readers were also puzzled when she posted that she’d deliver April Rose at home instead of in a hospital.
After posting a long-winded blog about her labor story with April Rose, ‘B’ announced that her baby girl had sadly passed away not long after being born. Then, she posted a photo.
The long-awaited photo of April Rose stunned ‘B’s’ readers, as they quickly discovered she had posted a photo of a very realistic-looking baby doll. It didn’t take long for one of her readers, who made similar dolls in real life, to detect her lies.
Once the photo of April Rose was released, many of her followers did some online digging to uncover ‘B’s’ real identity. It didn’t take long for them to find out ‘B’ was a 26-year-old social worker named Beccah Beushausen who lived in a suburban town called Mokena.
Beccah wrote a final blog just before her website was removed, apologizing to her followers and explaining that she hardly made any money from the blog and would donate the few gifts she did receive from readers. Police did not get involved in the matter.
In interviews, Beccah stated that in the years leading up to making her blog, she had lost pregnancies and used the blog as a form of “therapy” after losing her son shortly after giving birth to him in 2005.
While not many know what Beccah is up to these days, her scandal is quite memorable, especially for her readers, as many of them are still in shock.
