Drug Link Studied : Abandoned Babies: Why the Surge?

The infant girl, wrapped in a man’s shirt, had been left on the cold floor of an Inglewood supermarket a few weeks before.

Now she lay with her head against a social worker’s shoulder, large dark eyes staring while news photographers took her picture.

Once again a public appeal was under way to identify an abandoned baby in Los Angeles. Once again, as happened numerous times in the last year, police had no witnesses, no leads and no clues.

“All we’ve got is the baby,” Inglewood Detective Ken Bush told reporters at a Feb. 9 press conference.

Recent Abandonments

Just a few days before, Covina police had reported a newborn abandoned in the front seat of an unlocked car. Last month, an infant boy was left on the doorstep of a Downey house, and died in a local hospital shortly after the homeowner found him. About the same time, another baby boy was found in a trash can in Gardena, strangled. These were only the most dramatic cases.

Child abandonment, some authorities fear, is an increasing criminal and social problem. While it is believed to occur in only 1% of reported cases of child abuse and neglect, nationally there were an estimated 20,860 abandonments in 1986. The Denver-based American Humane Assn., which collects such statistics, said that the number had more than tripled in a decade, and is probably too low.

“It’s vastly increased over the last two years,” said Michael Glenn, a supervisor for the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services, which assumes responsibility for abandoned children when they are found. His observation was echoed by many social workers.

No one is really sure why this is so because abandonment is virtually unstudied. “It is a form of neglect, part of the child abuse field, but isn’t often considered such,” Randy Silverston, research director for Childhelp, USA, the Woodland Hills-based anti-child abuse organization.

Dates to Antiquity

In a newly published book studying abandonment through the Middle Ages, Yale University professor John Boswell found the practice was a widespread and common one, dating to antiquity, and increased in times of war, pestilence or social unrest.

There is no comparable study of today’s abandoned. “I’m curious to know what the rate of abandonment was during the Depression, and are we going to have more now with more homelessness and drugs,” said Jeanne M. Giovannoni, professor of social welfare at UCLA. “But these are unknowns.”

The motives of abandoning mothers are largely unexplored as well. Giovannoni, who studies child abuse, believes this is so because abandonment is still statistically rare and because often the mothers remain missing.

“It’s a problem of fear and ignorance,” Thomas Hicklin, USC assistant professor of clinical psychiatry said. “This is a move of desperation.” Others believe that the drug epidemic fuels the problem.

In 16 cases tracked by The Times over the last year, eight babies remained unidentified, with the mothers never found. Among the eight mothers who were identified by authorities, all seemed to be on the low end of the socioeconomic scale. Four had drug problems. One was an illegal alien who felt overwhelmed and confused after a bad traffic accident. Two were teen-agers; one apparently was a prostitute and the other hid her pregnancy from her family by being tremendously overweight.

Another abandoning mother was worried that she was financially unable to care for her child, and one, after being evicted from an apartment and living with her baby in a cardboard box, left her child with transients while she committed a burglary. She was caught, and is now in prison.

Churches, Trash Cans

Four of these abandoned babies had been left at churches, and five in trash cans. Such cases, because they are often publicized as officials try to identify the children, are the best known. But according to Children’s Services Director Robert L. Chaffee, they are the least common type of abandonments, occurring in Los Angeles County “on the average of one baby a month.”

Accurate statistics on baby and child abandonment are difficult to obtain, since no separate figures on the problem are recorded by the federal government, California or Los Angeles County.

The county, for example, includes abandoned children in a category called “caretaker absence or incapacity.” While those numbers have increased 154% in three years, from 4,237 in 1984 to 10,780 in 1987, department officials do not know how many of these are abandonments.

Most abandonments are cases where mothers dump their babies or young children with relatives or baby-sitters, and disappear. Out of the five new cases she is assigned weekly, social worker Deborah Bennett said, “You could say (there are) roughly two cases where the mother abandoned her responsibilities.”

Drugs, particularly cocaine use, seems to be a major factor when mothers do this, she noted: “With cocaine, they don’t care about anything or anybody. They negate all responsibilities.”

Last July, for example, a 2-month-old baby boy and his 1-year-old sister were left with a baby-sitter in East Los Angeles, who only knew the mother as Maria. When she didn’t return, the baby-sitter went to authorities the next day.

These abandoned children are usually quickly identified. “In most cases children are identified within a two-week time period,” Children’s Services spokeswoman Ray LaMotte said.

The baby boy and girl were identified about 1 1/2 months later. Children’s Services held a press conference, and an aunt came forward.

The mother, whom the department would not identify in accordance with its policy of confidentiality, had a drug problem, La Motte said. Those babies now live with a maternal cousin.

An arrest warrant was issued for the mother, but she is still being sought. By state law, abandonment can be treated as either a felony or a misdemeanor, at the discretion of the prosecutor. But Bruce Campbell, deputy in charge of the district attorney’s sexual crimes and child abuse division, said he couldn’t say how many parents are eventually charged.

Of the 16 cases followed, only three mothers were charged. In one, a 17-year-old South Los Angeles resident put her four children, ranging in age from 3 months to 2 years, in a shopping cart and walked three miles to the home of a man to whom she had reportedly prostituted herself. He had failed to pay her, officials said, so she left her children for him.

She was charged with eight felony counts of child endangerment and desertion, and four misdemeanor counts of abandonment. She did not appear at her arraignment, however, and a bench warrant has been issued for her arrest. Her children were placed with relatives.

In another case, a woman left her sons, ages 3 and 5, with a baby-sitter near the Los Angeles Convention Center and never returned. After Children’s Services held a press conference seeking public help in identifying them, the woman came forward at the prodding of her boyfriend, who saw the children on television. The woman pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor child abandonment, according to the city attorney’s office, and was sentenced to 30 days in Los Angeles County Jail. Her children are in foster care.

A third case involved a teen-ager who had hidden her pregnancy through her obesity, and had left her baby in a trash can in Carson. The baby wasn’t discovered for four nights, but miraculously survived. This mother pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted murder, and awaits sentencing.

Robert Thoreson, a detective in the LAPD’s Rampart Division, who says he sees abandonment cases “a couple of times a month,” said, in his experience, “Very rarely does the D.A. prosecute in these cases. They’re just really human tragedies.”

“It’s hard to prove intent,” Sheriff’s Detective Alice Goodsby, who investigated the Carson case, commented. “I’ve had some that walk away and then say, ‘I didn’t mean it; I panicked.”’

An abandoning parent who ends up keeping the child is likely to become an abusive parent, Childhelp’s Silverston believes. “The baby is either not wanted or can’t be cared for,” he said. “The mind-set may be very similar to an abusive parent, a person who doesn’t view the child other than as an object.”

The fact that relatively few such babies apparently die after being left exposed--in a church yard, trash can, car, or store--can be explained medically, said Michael P. Sherman, associate professor of pediatrics at UCLA. The crucial factors, he said, are outdoor temperature, whether the child is left clothed or covered, or if the child was full-term and thus more likely to have natural fat insulation. “If they have no nutrition at all, people have calculated seven to 10 days before they would use up their body water,” Sherman added.

When a baby or young child is found, Children’s Services workers and police try to identify the parents or relatives. Meanwhile, the baby is either placed in a foster home or with relatives.

If no parent comes forward and no relative is found, Children’s Services can make recommendations to the Juvenile Court to put the child up for adoption, under a legal guardianship or in a long-term foster home.

Some believe that abandonment could be mitigated were there more services available to distraught mothers and better dissemination of what help is available.

“We need more public information to let people know you don’t have to abandon babies,” Children’s Services Director Chaffee said. “There needs to be better information in the schools, in newspapers, a variety of ways so that if anybody is considering abandoning a baby, they could get some help.”

“I don’t think there are enough support services in general for single parents and mothers to make alternative decisions,” said Childhelp’s Silverston.

Meanwhile, the investigations continue.

The search for the identity of the Inglewood baby has centered on the Ralphs Giant supermarket, where she was found by an employee on a restroom floor, Detective Ken Bush said. “We couldn’t find anybody that had previously used the bathroom. Nobody saw anybody enter,” he said. “Nobody saw anybody leave.”

The baby is still officially a Jane Doe. Children’s Services placed her in a foster home, where she is called Olivia.

The newborn boy found on a car seat in Covina is also still an unknown, Sgt. Chuck Rosales said: “We’ve canvassed the neighborhood. We’ve sent out flyers. We put a plea out to the newspapers. At this point the investigation is stalled.” Children’s Services has placed the baby in a foster home.

Gardena Detective William Moreno, investigating the death of the strangled 7-pound infant boy found in a trash bin, said his search has so far been nothing but dead-ends. Witnesses saw a brown 1977 Chevrolet Nova near the trash bin about the time the baby was left there, but he has not been able to locate it.

Since the infant was only about 5 hours old, and clearly born outside of a hospital, Moreno also put out a “medic alert” to area hospitals, he said, to find “any females having aftereffects from birth.” That has brought nothing.

Downey detectives have had no better luck tracing the mother who left her now deceased infant on a doorstep in a residential neighborhood of that city. Officers went house to house in the area, contacted churches, local schools and unwed mother agencies, Detective Larry Pollin said, looking for “somebody who was pregnant and no longer is, and there’s no baby.”

The search led nowhere. “There’s not much I can do,” Pollin said. “The only thing I can do is hope somebody calls me.”

The baby’s body, like that of the Gardena infant, is at the county coroner’s. Eventually both will be sent to the county morgue for cremation, a spokesman said. The ashes will be kept three years, in case relatives are ever found.