A YOUNG woman, who lost her baby due to a miscarriage, was left traumatised after photographs of her unborn child were used in a Facebook campaign by an offensive group.

Clare Keeley lost her daughter Skyla two years ago just after Christmas when she was 16 weeks pregnant.

She joined a support group on Facebook to share her emotions with other women and posted pictures of her baby from a scan.

But another group on the social networking site has called for such images to be removed and banned – reposting them on the site with derogatory comments, blaming the mothers for their death.

Photographs of children with Down’s syndrome and other disabilities have also been taken from other Facebook users and posted on the group’s page, with highly offensive comments made about the children and accusing their mothers of being to blame for their disability.

Miss Keeley, from Basingstoke, has reported the group called “Remove and Ban these images” to Facebook several times.

The 21-year-old said: “It makes me feel sick. A lot of my friends have been upset. My photos were taken from a support group for people who have had miscarriages so a lot of my friends from there have had their photos used as well.”

Her friend Kirsty Russell works with children who have behavioural problems, and said when she saw what the Remove and Ban group had done, she was shocked.

The 20-year-old added: “I have reported the group about six or seven times but nothing has been done, and people have also gone to the police. It does worry me that people can do this so easily and nothing is done about it.”

The offensive group was set up around three weeks ago. It has been taken down but has reposted several times. No one is able to identify who has set up the group, but 314 Facebook users have listed it as one of their “likes” on their profile page.

Laurie Erlam, account executive for Facebook, said the group has now been removed again.

He added: “We have devoted significant resources to keeping offensive material off Facebook, including having a robust reporting infrastructure and large team of professional reviewers who remove material which violates our policies.

“There’s always room for improvement, which is why we have a team of security experts and engineers working on these systems and developing new ones.”