Body of Third Dead Baby Found in O.C. : Profile: Most mothers who abandon or kill their babies are desperate, resourceless and scared.

Often they are naive teen-agers who keep their pregnancy a secret. They may struggle for months, dieting and wearing baggy clothes, to hide the truth from strict or intolerant families.

When the babies are born, the young mothers are forced to confront reality. Some act desperately, tossing the newborn into a dumpster, dumping it in a toilet or even casting it into the ocean.

It is still unclear why, in the space of four days, two Orange County newborns were apparently tossed into the sea right after birth or why a third infant, who also died, was abandoned at a San Clemente apartment complex. It is not known who is responsible in any of the cases.

But many experts say enough such cases surface nationwide each year to give them some notion of what the parents’ motives might be.

“They don’t have a (mental) illness that sets them apart from the rest of humanity,” said Dr. Park Dietz, one of the best-known forensic psychiatrists in the country, who has testified in infant homicide cases. “They do have a motive though. This baby is not wanted and . . . for whatever reason, abortion is not available as an option.”

Dietz said such mothers often deliver the infant themselves--an experience that is terrifying to them--then kill the child quickly and “dispose of it in whatever way is most convenient.”

“When they get caught, they may tell a story of the infant turning into a monster,” he said. It is their way of “trying to protect their parents from the shock of what they did and protect themselves from punishment.”

Others continue, even in the face of condemning evidence, to maintain that they did not know they were pregnant, Dietz said.

Dietz and other mental health experts said mothers who kill newborns often are from families that are extremely religious and adamantly opposed to both premarital sex and abortion. The women frequently are afraid to tell their families of their pregnancy but may confide in one or two friends. Sometimes they do not know they are pregnant until it is well past the time they can obtain a legal abortion.

They tend to come from disadvantaged families, with limited education and economic means, which narrows their view of life’s options, experts said.

“I think lack of sophistication plays a part,” Dietz said. “They tend to have very limited, narrow worlds that don’t extend much beyond the family.”

In one Orange County case, a 22-year-old woman convicted of attempted murder in 1993 for dropping her newborn son out of a first-story window was severely mentally disabled and scarcely had the means to buy food, a deputy public defender said.

“She was afraid to tell her (adoptive) mother she was pregnant, and the alleged father wanted nothing to do with her,” said Marri Derby, who defended the woman at her trial.

The woman, who ultimately was deported to El Salvador, did not intend to kill the child but was hoping neighbors would find it and care for it, Derby said. The baby survived.

Mental health experts point out that mothers--or fathers--who kill their newborns are not necessarily young. They may feel trapped for other reasons, such as an all-consuming drug habit or tight finances. As in the case of the mentally retarded woman, some are ill-equipped to support themselves, let alone a child.

With the Orange County bankruptcy and the general movement to reduce social programs, “I think we’re going to see a lot more indications like this of difficulties among families,” said Susan Einbinder, an assistant professor of social policy at USC. “All of these factors put psychological and social pressure on parents.”

Dr. Louis J. West, a UCLA psychiatrist, agreed that a mother’s financial means can make a big difference.

“In populations where you have high rates of single parenthood and economic hardship, where (mothers feel) there is no money to deal with the situation in any other way, you get infanticide,” he said. “Babies end up in furnaces, the garbage, flushed down the toilet . . . buried in the woods or the back yard or, if it is handy, tossed in the sea.”

The phenomenon, he and others said, is much more common than statistics kept by coroners suggest. Experts suspect that many of these tiny victims, whose birth may not be a matter of record, are never found.

According to the state Department of Justice, 33 infants under 1 year old--only eight of them newborns--were killed in California in 1993, the latest year for which numbers are available. This was only a tiny fraction of the 4,095 homicides reported that year. No homicides of newborns were recorded in 1994, although some deaths remain under investigation.

Despite the small numbers on record, many experts believe newborn homicides are part of the overall pattern of growing violence in the United States.

“These poor little infants, they are just a small fraction of the whole violence epidemic in America,” West said. “As it happens, I think it’s probable that these desperate, frightened and resourceless girls whose newborns are found in these circumstances are among the least reprehensible (perpetrators). They are victims too.”

Those who would kill or abandon their newborn babies often have been the subject of physical, emotional or sexual abuse themselves and lack the skills to resolve their dilemma more rationally, experts said. They act impulsively, even recklessly, without pausing to reflect on possible consequences.

Thus, even women who abandon babies in hopes they will be found neglect to take such precautions as putting them in obvious places such as hospitals or alerting people by telephone about where the infants may be found.

It is important for women to know that there are options, including the possibility of placing the baby up for adoption, said Greg Flint, director of social services at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“The biggest thing is there are thousands of people who want to have kids and try and try but aren’t able to because of a variety of medical reasons,” he said.

Flint said there are organizations that provide young mothers with pre-adoption counseling, shelter for themselves and their newborns and low-cost or free prenatal care. Also, he said, “just about every school district has a teen parent program” that would enable a young mother to continue her education.

Times staff writer Leslie Berkman contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Call for Help

If you are pregnant and need help or are simply afraid of what you might be facing, here are some sources of help. All are in the 714 area code:

* MOMS (Maternal Outreach Management/Services): 453-8064

* UPP/BEAT (Orange County Health Care Agency): 834-7866

* OC CAR (Orange County Child Abuse Registry): 938-0505

* Children’s Home Society: 542-1147

* C-CAP (Coalition-- Children, Adolescents, Parents): 972-4859

Source: Children’s Hospital of Orange County