Czech Woman to Girl to Boy to Jail

From Europe comes the convoluted story of 33-year-old Czech woman, Barbara Skrlova, who allegedly passed herself off as being a 12-year-old girl and was adopted and, later, passed herself off as a 13-year-old boy who attended a Norwegian school for several months.

Police in the Czech Republic say she's a key witness in their investigation into allegations that a woman brutalized her two sons. Skrlova, posing as a 12-year-old girl named Anicka, lived with the family as the woman's stepdaughter until police found one of the boys locked in a closet last spring, according to the Prague Daily Monitor.

"Last fall she enrolled in an Oslo school as the bald, effeminate son of a Czech theater manager and dramaturg named Martin Fahrner -- who had also moved to Norway, though he had a wife and a real son in the Czech Republic named Adam," Spiegel reports. "Skrlova attended classes for several months before fleeing to a Norwegian children's home, where 'Adam' claimed to be the victim of child abuse. Then, on December 16, 'Adam' disappeared from the home."

Norwegian authorities mounted a massive search for the missing boy, and then discovered he didn't exist when they found Skrlova living in an Arctic town. "Not even we have been able to figure out what is up and down in this case," Norwegian police attorney Sven Roer tells the Associated Press.

Skrlova is back in the Czech Republic facing a charge of "harming other persons' rights" by pretending to be an underage girl.