ABANDONED BABY

Associated Press - breaking on the wire | July 12, 2002

[NYer]

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) _ An 18-year-old mother who gave birth to a baby boy in the bathroom of her father's Brookfield diner and dumped the infant in the garbage has been sentenced to four years in prison. Teresa Perez of Danbury was sentenced by Judge Patrick Carroll in Danbury Superior Court on Thursday.

The baby, named Christopher, was born Nov. 23. An employee emptying the trash found the infant several hours after his birth. The child barely survived the incident. His temperature had dropped to 85 degrees and he was treated for hypothermia at Danbury Hospital. He now lives with foster parents and is doing well, prosecutor Debbie Mabbett said.

The case demanded a prison term, Mabbett said. ``Society cannot and should not tolerate this sort of behavior where we just throw away children,'' she said. ``Here you have a newborn baby. It's thrown away like common trash. It was left for dead for four hours in the bottom of this trash can.''

After Perez left the bathroom and returned to the dining area her father took her home because she felt ill. ``Not once did she tell anyone, 'Go look in on my baby,''' Mabbett said. The infant would have died had the employee not found him, the prosecutor said.

Perez, who cried during the court hearing as she spoke about how she believed she hurt her family, initially told police that a customer took the baby from her while she was in the bathroom and that the customer placed the baby in the trash. At Thursday's sentencing, Perez said she placed the baby in the garbage so he would be found. In a plea bargain with prosecutors, Perez pleaded guilty to risk of injury and abandonment of a child.

Perez must serve five years probation upon her release. She must cooperate with the state Department of Children and Families, attend counseling and find a job. Connecticut has a ``safe haven'' law that allows a mother to take an unwanted baby to a hospital with no questions asked.

AP-ES-07-12-02 1032EDT

[MEGoody]

The pro-abortionists think that the availability of abortion keeps things like this from happening. It seems to me that incidents of this type have increased signficantly since abortion was made legal. Abortion didn't eliminate or even lessen the instances of woman abandoning, abusing or murdering their own childre. After all, if the baby can be killed right up to the moment it's little head pops out of the birth canal, why not a few moments after?

[ladysusan]

It's not always a 'way to get around a sticky problem." Sometimes the mother honestly does not know who the father is because she has slept around a lot. She may not have even known the last names of some of the guys she slept with.

this is a piece of adoption mythology, an urban legend, right up there with "your real parents died in a car crash" and "your real birth certificate was destroyed in a court house fire." granted that every once in a while these things do happen - women do occasionally sleep around AND become pregnant, fires do occasionally happen, real parents are occasionally killed in car crashes - but at nowhere near the rate these stories claim.
but mostly, the she-doesn't know who -the-daddy-is story is fabricated to facilitate adoption by getting rid of the pesky bio father.

let's face it - criminals have been found, tried and convicted with a lot less dna evidence that the putative father left inside the biomom. it wouldn't be THAT hard to determine who dad is. adoption workers simply don't WANt to.

[hot august night]

You are right about Steinberg being upper-class (Andrea Yates was middle class)...it just seems a lot of the stories we are hearing right now are about "inner city" cases... Should unwed fathers be responsible for the children they procreate?

For their financial welfare, absolutely. If a child is abused by her unwed mother, though, I don't think the unwed father should automatically be ordered to "adopt" the child...he may also be an unfit parent, and can end up heaping more misery upon the child because he will never love for it or care for it. I only wish we still lived in the day and age when people used to get married before having kids -- and then worked hard at saving the marriage before thinking of divorce (no "disposable marriages"). At the same time, however, some people are better off divorced than married...I am divorced (no kids) and it was a very painful -- and non-impulsive -- decision.

[NYer]

our youngest's father is listed as "unknown." they both have the same bio-mom...

My daughter is adopted. Her birth mom intentionally left her boyfriend's name off the birth certificate when he was too busy with softball to be at her side during delivery.

[NC_Libertarian]

At Thursday's sentencing, Perez said she placed the baby in the garbage so he would be found.

4 years is outrageous especially considering the obvious lack of remorse.

[ladysusan]

Should unwed fathers be responsible for the children they procreate?

the reason i ask is that we always hear about unwed moms and hardly ever about unwed dads. why is this? as i see it, he's as responsible for the pregnancy as she is. why do we hardly ever consider his part in these situations?

i wonder if the specter of eighteen years of unwanted financial responsibility would cause these young men to, at the very least, use a condom. certainly, we are not doing anyone any good by letting these young men turn tail and run.

[ladysusan]

My daughter is adopted. Her birth mom intentionally left her boyfriend's name off the birth certificate when he was too busy with softball to be at her side during delivery.


evidently, this isn't illegal. however, it should be. we do not play with the legal facts on a whim...do we?

[ladysusan]

4 years is outrageous especially considering the obvious lack of remorse.


i completely agree. this was attempted murder, and all she gets is four years?

she should get twenty.

[hellinahandcart]

I don't know if I buy the "denial" thing. Unless it's possible, while *utterly denying* the possibility that you are indeed pregnant, to deliberately, methodically, and consciously conceal your not-a-pregnancy (which is going to involve buying a lot of new clothes, binding your stomach, or starving yourself so you don't gain as much), steel yourself to go through labor and delivery alone and without making a peep, and have a definite plan in mind for what to do with that not-a-baby once it's out. Is that possible? I just don't see how.

[hot august night]

I agree -- the fathers should be held just as responsible as the moms. I don't believe in double standards, either.

[ladysusan]

dunno, hiahc -
it may be more a matter of not wanting to see the truth for a great many months. many many women go through months of simply not knowing. i distinctly recall being asked by a young, healthy, married woman if there was any good reason for her periods to stop for four months. i told her yes, i could think of one. in my professional life i have encountered women in active labor who have no idea they are about to give birth- and they are crowning!
how can you not know? the mind plays all sorts of tricks. for instance, how many americans were taken by surprise on sept. 11 , although the idea that terrorists attacks were a distinct possibility had been openly discussed in the media for years beforehand. but how many of us actually thought they would ever become reality. kids and adults think, "it can't happen to me." then, when it does, there is generally a period of denial.

you have to admit two things- 1)even if she wasn't in denial of the pregnancy, she was in denial of the consequences of dumping the baby - she thought she wouldn't get caught???

2) certainly her family was in denial- couldn't they see the physical changes? how can that be explained except to say they didn't see what they didn't wish to see.


lady susan

[MarkL]

lol, latina! listing the father as "unknown" is a very old way to get around a sticky problem. was mom unconscious when she got pregnant or was she gang raped?

lady susan

Don't laugh, but some of these women seem to have so many encounters that they can't keep the guys straight!

I was once threatened with a paternaty suit, and had to remind the "mother" that we had never had sex!

Mark

[ladysusan]

Don't laugh, but some of these women seem to have so many encounters that they can't keep the guys straight!

I was once threatened with a paternaty suit, and had to remind the "mother" that we had never had sex!



mark-

had you slept with her, a dna test could have cleared it up.
this "sleeping around" story obviously happens- just not as much as the adoption agencies want you to think.

and mark, if you had slept with her, would you have wanted to know if the baby was yours or not?

[ladysusan]

I agree -- the fathers should be held just as responsible as the moms. I don't believe in double standards, either.


the man abandoning the pregnant woman is a story as old as the hills. how would you go about holding these men responsible?


lady susan

[Anamensis]

the lovely lady in brooklyn who threw her minutes old daughter to the starving family dog.

WHAT???

[montag813]

What a ridiculous wrist-slapping. She left this poor child for DEAD...HOPED it would die. What is the sentence for attempted murder? In Texas it is way more than 4 years. Frankly, this animal should be put in prion until she is no longer able to conceive, or 10 years minimum and a consent to be sterilized.

[NYer]

She left this poor child for DEAD...HOPED it would die.

MEGoody has it right ......

After all, if the baby can be killed right up to the moment it's little head pops out of the birth canal, why not a few moments after?

Last year I read about a legislator who wishes to introduce a bill that would extend abortion beyond 9 months. That's right, this would be a post-abortion law, enabling parents to terminate their live child's birth, up to 1 month after birth. As MEGoody pointed out, if it is legal (hence, okay) to abort (hence, kill) your unborn child up to the very minute of birth, then what has changed in the minute following birth? The baby can now breathe on its own? Ladysusan rightfully reminds us of the other stories that made the news this year (notice that these stories are no longer front page. They have been moved deeper into the newspapers because they no longer trigger sensationalism in the public's view.)

Add to these atrocities the children who are locked up in cages in their homes or starved to death because a parent believes the child is "possessed". We live in a very sick world.

Meanwhile, there are those who would do anything for a child ... well, almost anything. Some of them are so greedy, that they insist on it being of their own flesh - even if it means investing thousands of dollars in destroying the lives others to produce a clone. Or what about the 2 homosexual men who have contracted with a surrogate mother and are now awaiting the birth of quadruplets? There are children walking the streets of So. America, homeless and starving.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

[F16Fighter]

If it could be determined that the baby was "gay", based on 'Hate Crime' statutes, the sentence would have probably been "100 years to life" at Leavenworth...

Instead, the Left, Planned Parenthood, and the Party of Bill Clinton tacitly impose a bullsh!t sentence on what essentially was a post-birth abortion, while once again showing their utter distain for life.

[MarkL]

mark-

had you slept with her, a dna test could have cleared it up. this "sleeping around" story obviously happens- just not as much as the adoption agencies want you to think.

and mark, if you had slept with her, would you have wanted to know if the baby was yours or not?

This was one of the most painful experiences of my life. It was someone that I loved and trusted, who told me that she was saving herself for marriage. I honored her beliefs, and we actually spoke about marriage. Months later, I found out that she was having sex with three different guys while we were "dating." I confronted her, and broke off all contact. It was three months later that she had forgotten that we hadn't had sex.

And I was a virgin at that time, and for years afterward...

Mark

[ladysusan]

This was one of the most painful experiences of my life.


I am sorry for your pain. We can cuss at her all we want, but she has to live with what she did.

lady susan