Abused Babies Overflowing Shelter in O.C.

Adam and Timmy were dumpster babies.

Brett, by comparison, was a little better off. Unlike the others, dropped near trash bins while still bloody from birth, he was found outside a Mission Viejo hospital next to a bag of diapers, a $20 bill and a note reading: “Hi, my name is Brett. Please find me a good home.”

Now there is Noel, so dubbed by hospital nurses in honor of the Christmas season. She was about 2 days old when found last Wednesday by a San Clemente man who walked out his front door to get the morning paper. He spotted her bundled in blankets and cradled in a cardboard box that was left in a street gutter.

Abandoned newborns have historically been rare in affluent, family-oriented Orange County. Officials say that never before have four turned up in a single year. Yet these newborns represent only the most noticeable sign of a different kind of baby boom that has been overflowing county facilities for the past eight months--a boom of abandoned, abused and neglected infants.

At least six other abandoned babies are currently in the custody of Orangewood Children’s Home, the temporary shelter where mistreated or neglected children up to age 18 wait until the juvenile justice system returns them home, entrusts them to relatives or places them in foster care. One day two weeks ago, when the home’s ever-fluctuating infant population surged to 28--although the nursery was designed to accommodate only 14--Orangewood officials rushed out to buy three additional cribs.

The overcrowding has been so acute that officials at the sprawling, 166-bed facility on The City Drive South have had to open a second nursery.

“The worst thing that can happen is to have a baby come in and have no crib for him or her,” Orangewood Director Robert B. Theemling said recently. “We cannot shut (the doors) and put up a ‘No Vacancy’ sign. We don’t have that option.”

Unlike the newborn dumpster babies who capture headlines and move more quickly toward adoption because there is no dispute over their custody, other babies at the home usually attract little public attention, although their plights are no less saddening and dramatic.

Like 9-month-old Alexis. She was brought to Orangewood after being left with a 12-year-old baby-sitter in Huntington Beach. Social workers say the infant’s 15-year-old mother asked the sitter to keep her while she attended a party at the Newporter Inn. The two women had met only the day before. When more than 36 hours passed and the mother failed to return, the sitter called police. And the baby became a resident of Orangewood.

That is how it usually happens in Orange County, officials say. Most abandoned babies are left with sitters by parents who never return. Most of the others are left with relatives who later turn them over to authorities.

When they enter Orangewood, the babies become nursery mates to victims of a variety of social ills: Some are born addicted to drugs. Some are physically or sexually abused. Some are siblings of children who have been abused. Some are simply neglected.

The babies can range in age from 2 days to 17 months.

In past years, Orangewood officials say it was not unusual for the nursery’s daily population to peak at around 18 babies a couple of times a year. “It was cyclical,” Theemling said. “But for the last eight months we have been unable to break that cycle . . . we have been averaging at least 23 (babies a day). . . . “

Drug abuse is the most common denominator: Last year, the county took custody of about 14 babies a month who were born addicted, most often to cocaine. This year, the number of addicted babies has doubled.

“(These cases) cut across all class lines, city lines or racial lines,” Theemling said. “You can’t just say it’s one economic grouping or (ethnic group). It’s happening with all kinds of families.”

Joseph is one such statistic. Only 3 months old, he was born addicted to cocaine because his mother is a frequent cocaine user, county officials say. A Juvenile Court appointed Joseph’s maternal grandmother to be his guardian. But his mother forcibly took him away. About a month ago, she left him with a baby-sitter in Santa Ana, saying that she was briefly going to look for a job in Los Angeles. When two days passed and she had not returned, the baby-sitter called authorities.

Six-month-old Randy is not addicted to cocaine, but social workers say his mother’s long history of drug use is partly responsible for his being in Orangewood. The mother recently quit her job, and because of her inability to care for her baby, a Juvenile Court judge awarded temporary custody to the child’s maternal grandmother. However, after a few weeks, the grandmother called authorities to say that she could not afford to provide care. So county social workers stepped in.

During one recent visit, the Orangewood nursery was a scene of contradictions.

About five babies screamed from the stainless steel cribs that line the 20-by-30-foot room. A few others obliviously played in cribs nearby.

“These kids bring warmth and joy to your heart,” group counselor Daphne Jennings said. “But when you hold a baby and find out that he’s there because he has a broken rib (from abuse) or something like that, you want to cry.”

Six-month-old Jonathan lay in the middle of a nursery playpen, surrounded by colored plastic toys and crawling infants. His teen-age mother sat alongside and tickled his stomach until he rolled over in laughter. The attention attracted his playpen mates. So Jonathan’s mother swarmed over them, tickling their “tummy, tummy, tummy.” They, too, laughed and rolled.

The Orangewood nursery is the home that Jonathan knows best. His mother was a victim of abuse and had been admitted to the shelter just before giving birth. Mother and child had been placed in a family home, but they returned to Orangewood when the arrangement, Theemling said, “did not work out.”

The teen-age mother spends time with her son every day. She sometimes lends a hand to Jennings and other nursery attendants who bustle around feeding one infant, changing another’s diaper or trying to comfort a crying baby--sometimes all at once.

Orangewood employees say the surge of babies caught them virtually unprepared.

As Jennings cradled a month-old infant recently taken from the custody of her mother, a drug-addicted prostitute, she talked about the special care required by babies who are born addicted or who are abused.

“These kids need special care to establish some kind of bonding in these formative years,” said Jennings, a children’s services worker for three years. “If they don’t get it now, they’re scarred for life.”

Nurses have to “force-feed” babies born addicted by gently massaging their throats. Since these babies shun bright lights and are irritated by noise, they require special facilities, away from the noise of the other crying babies.

Jennings pointed to a desk telephone near a crib in which a 2-month-old, drug-addicted baby slept. “If that phone rings and he wakes up, he will freak out,” she said.

Jennings said the current 5-to-1 ratio of babies to nursery attendants is too high.

A few weeks ago, county personnel officials approved a request from Theemling to hire seven more full-time attendants to handle the surge of babies. But Jennings said that the nursery will need an additional seven to achieve the 3-to-1 ratio that experts recommend.

The second nursery is in a separate building on the Orangewood grounds. There, two folding tables were turned on their sides and squared against a room corner to form a makeshift playpen. Four babies played inside. A cloth diaper was draped over a lamp on the floor, softening the light. And the sweet scent of baby wipes filled the air.

Since the surge in the baby population, nursery attendants have tried to house most of the drug-addicted babies there. It is more serene.

Seven-month-old Somone frolics in a crib in the shelter’s nursery annex. But Somone’s playfulness hides the pain she suffers from almost daily seizures. She was born addicted to cocaine. Because she is black, social workers say, finding a home for her in Orange County will be extremely difficult. She was placed in a foster care facility in Riverside. But not long afterward, she was returned to Orangewood. Her frenzied outbursts, attributed to the drug addiction, had emotionally drained the foster family.

Orangewood babies spend an average of 27 days at the shelter, although their stay can range from a few hours to several months. Of the 225 releases from the nursery during the last year, 29% of the infants were returned home to parents, 32% to relatives, 22% to other emergency shelters, and 17% to foster care.

Sometimes they leave the shelter for group homes only to be returned again.

Jane Stephens, manager of a county adoption program, says there are not enough foster parents in Orange County to provide homes for the infants who leave Orangewood. County social workers sometimes have to search nearby counties for potential placements.

“Basically, we may have almost enough people who want healthy Caucasian babies,” Stephens said. “But we almost always have a need for families willing to accept Latino and minority babies.”

Theemling says that Orange County maintains a pool of about 600 registered foster parents. But to handle all the children released from Orangewood in a year--from infants to adolescents--200 more parents are needed.

“We are running out of beds,” Theemling said. “We desperately need people to come forward and provide homes for our children.”

In the meantime, officials plan to expand the Orangewood nursery as they anticipate a new wave of abused, abandoned and neglected babies in the coming year.

The increasing number of older abandoned children in Orange County is also a trend that county officials say they have noticed over the last two years. Theemling says that Orangewood attendants have handled cases in which children literally returned home from school one day to discover that their parents have moved, “lock, stock and barrel.”

Of the 2,694 children admitted to Orangewood in 1987, only 2% had been abandoned. But the percentage rose to 8% last year, even though the total number of admissions--2,683--dropped slightly.

Theemling concedes that some of the increase could be attributed to an amendment to the state Welfare and Institution Code, which redefined the way children are classified as ‘neglected” or “abandoned.” But he said he expects this year’s figures to show an increase in both the percentage and number of abandoned children.

At 5 weeks, Able is the nursery’s youngest baby. Officials say he is a victim of abuse. He was taken into the custody of social workers because he “failed to thrive” in the care of his parents. A medical examination indicated that he suffered from malnourishment and anemia. Able has two older brothers who are at Orangewood, also victims of physical abuse.

Amber is the oldest baby at 17 months. She is blond and blue-eyed, and flashes a smile that exposes her two lower teeth. This is her second stay in Orangewood. The first came after her mother reported that the infant had been kidnaped. When authorities found her lying in the underbrush of a remote region of the county, they came to suspect that her mother--who suffers from mental problems--left her there, officials say. After a short stay in the county shelter, the infant was returned home. But she was brought back when doctors determined that her baby brother was a victim of child abuse.

Adam, one of the two dumpster babies to draw public attention over the past month, owes his life to luck and Santa Ana Police Officer Michael Buelna.

The officer was dispatched to a drug-infested neighborhood to search for suspects in a stabbing. Instead, Buelna found the tiny newborn, weighing 4 pounds and 4 ounces and barely breathing. The infant was naked, blue with cold, and lying face down on the asphalt near a large commercial trash bin.

“I looked at all the mucus, and the blood and the umbilical cord (still attached to the infant) and I said, ‘God! Why me?’ But my instincts took over and I administered CPR. I thanked God when I heard him cry. . . .

“I knew that the hospital would call him ‘Baby Doe,’ ” Buelna continued. “So as the paramedics took him away, I yelled, ‘Tell them to call him Adam. Call him Adam.’ ”

At the time, Buelna says, he was thinking about Adam Walsh, the child who drew national attention in 1981 after he disappeared while shopping with his mother in a Florida department store and was later found murdered.

Buelna’s Adam never entered Orangewood. On the day he was found, there was simply no room--the nurseries were jammed with 26 other babies. Social workers kept him instead at a Santa Ana hospital until he was temporarily placed in the home of a family that contracts with the county. Timmy and Brett were also placed in shelter homes, and Noel remains in the hospital.

“Dumpster babies are one thing,” said Tim Healy, a child-development specialist who works for the county. “But tragically, a whole lot of others go undetected. . . . When you count the many parents who have psychologically abandoned their kids because of drugs or some other reason, we’re talking about an epidemic.”

ADRIFT:A gallery of 18 infants in Orangewood’s nursery. A28

The Babies of Orangewood

Nine have been abused, seven have been abandoned and two were born addicted to drugs, according to county officials. On Dec. 8, these 18 infants filled the nursery at the Orangewood Children’s Home, where mistreated or neglected childen wait for social workers to return them home, entrust them to relatives or place them in foster care. On this day, the nursery was only four over capacity--for the past eight months, the daily average has been 23. Officials see it as a discomforting trend, a different kind of baby boom. Their faces were captured by Times Photographer Kari Rene Hall.