Report: USC student charged with abandoning newborn also investigated last year

KESQ.com ^ | 10/16/05 | AP

[wagglebee]

LOS ANGELES A U-S-C student charged with murder in the death of her abandoned newborn was reportedly also investigated last year in connection with the stillborn birth of a child whose body never was found. Holly Ashcraft was not arrested or charged with a crime in the April 2004 probe.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Ashcraft went to the Good Samaritan Hospital downtown last year. She was hemorrhaging and doctors determined that she had recently given birth, but she said the baby was stillborn and she had disposed of it.

The Times says police did not extensively search for the body because detectives believed that too much time had passed and it would be impossible to determine whether a crime had occurred.

Twenty-one-year-old Ashcraft is a third-year architecture student at the University of Southern California. She was charged Thursday with one count of murder and one count of child abuse after a baby was found in a trash bin near her apartment.

[wagglebee]

So, she is a serial baby murderer.

[Theresawithanh]

Good find, even if she was only "reportedly" investigated for something like this before. As I said on the earlier post, the young lady had other options, and the baby did not have to die. Just incredibly sad.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

This is one fine little piece of Kalifornia trash!

[conservative cat]

Thanks for posting this! It seems like she is a seriously disturbed individual.

[HangnJudge]

Argh!!!!!!

I have no words for this

[skaterboy]

Remember lets be compassionate here...she was scared and alone and stuff

Tell it to the judge honey

[LWalk18]

Technically, she is from Montana. She only goes to school in California.

[SuziQ]

Good grief, has this budding career woman never heard of birth control?

[Gondring]

Thanks for posting this! It seems like she is a seriously disturbed individual.

If USC is anything like what I saw and Cornell, this

...architecture student...

explains it.

[LWalk18]

I'm curious, what does her being an architecture student have to do with this?

[dennisw]

The Times also reported that Ashcraft was a full-time student in her third year. She was suspended pending the outcome of the criminal case, the newspaper said.

Ashcraft was scheduled to appear for arraignment Nov. 9.

An attorney representing Ashcraft said people shouldn't rush to judgment.

“A lot of information is yet to come,” Paul Wallin, of the criminal defense firm Wallin and Klarich, said in a telephone interview Friday afternoon. “We're hoping the ultimate result will be a positive one for our client.

Results of an autopsy performed on the child this week will not be available for at least a month, though police said the child was born full-term and alive.

A California law allows mothers to surrender newborns to hospital emergency rooms and some fire stations with no questions asked and no legal repercussions. Montana has a similar law allowing a parent to surrender a newborn baby to emergency services providers, such as hospitals, fire departments or law enforcement agencies. The child is then put up for adoption.

Terry Ashcraft was separated from Holly's mother for some time before they divorced in 2000 or 2001. It's been years since he lived under the same roof with his daughter, whom he described as “very bright, athletic and very upbeat.”

He did not know whether his daughter was pregnant and said he hasn't heard from Holly or her mother, who lives in Washington state, since Holly's arrest. What little he knows about the case has come from monitoring media reports, he said.

“There's so much confusion right now,” Terry Ashcraft said. “I'm confused; there's confusion in Southern California. There's so much going on down there that I don't know about that I just don't want to comment.”

Terry Ashcraft said his home telephone and cell phone had been ringing off the hook on Thursday and Friday, mostly from concerned relatives and friends. He would not be able to visit his daughter for at least two weeks, he said.

Wallin said he had more than 35 media inquiries ............

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?tl=1&display=rednews/2005/10/15/build/local/20-ashcraft.inc

 

[sgtbono2002]

A 3rd year Architecture student who doesnt know how the birth process works.

Cant keep her legs closed and too stupid to use birth control.

I wouldnt want to spend a day in a building she helped design.

Tell Mom and Dad to save the money they are spending on her education and put her to work at the Chicken ranch.

[GSlob]

"As I said on the earlier post, the young lady had other options..."
Well, a lady she doesn't seem to be. In an university student one would expect more brain, even if she studies architecture and not theoretical physics.

[speekinout]

She does have serious problems. And she should pay for what she did.

But where were her family, friends, University counselors, and our social workers last year? Or even during this pregnancy? I think it's sad that a young person can be so isolated that she could do this twice with no intervention from a caring friend, relative, or professional social worker.

[cynicom]

Morals???? She has none.

[purpleland]

"So, she is a serial baby murderer. "

At what great pathetic cost! Women who do not respect their body as a catalyst for life, who do not respect conceived life, who do not accept the responsibility of their awesome status in nature, cannot be respected. Contraception is a small price and effort to pay for enduring self-respect and respect for life. Mothers are not instructing their daughters about the lessons of life. Mothers are the first teachers...

[skr]

She's apparently using the post-birth method.

[Alouette]

<angry feminist>If ABORTION was safe and legal and if teenagers had ACCESS to BIRTH CONTROL and if SEX EDUCATION were taught in public schools from the elementary level and if....</angry feminist>

...Oh, wait...

[Mila]

Yep, that was my first thought. Bright enough to be studying architecture but, not smart enough to figure out how to prevent a pregnancy. Sheesh!

[Mrs. Don-o]

You wrote: "Contraception is a small price and effort to pay for enduring self-respect and respect for life."

Over 40% of the women who abort their babies in this country were using contraceptives at the time they conceived.

Contraceptives do not make conception impossible. They just lower the statistical probability, while increasing the frequency of intercourse, which makes conception practically a certainty.

Birth control does not "lead to enduring self-respect." SELF-control does that. And a woman who offers physical intimacy to a man who doesn't even care for her enough to marry her, is going to suffer disastrous drops in her self-respect over and over again.

And I don't think I need to comment on what murdering a baby will do to your self-respect.