Death of Abandoned Infant Death Points Up Difficulty of Reaching Mothers in Distress

If Dennis Zine had his way, the trash bin near USC where the body of an abandoned infant was discovered last week would have been plastered with a big, bright sticker explaining where to safely drop off an unwanted newborn.

Zine, a Los Angeles city councilman, sponsored a September 2004 motion calling for such stickers on all dumpsters in the city. But the sanitation bureau pointed out how difficult and expensive that would be, given the 150,000 trash bins in the city of Los Angeles.

The idea was dropped quietly.

Holly Ashcraft, a 21-year-old USC architecture student, is facing murder charges over the Oct. 10 discovery of her newborn’s body behind a popular student bar.

Today, Zine cannot say whether a sticker promoting California’s “safely surrendered” law would have saved the infant. But he still thinks it was worth a try.

“What I wanted to do is find a way to speak to someone at that moment when they’re at that dumpster,” said Zine, a former Los Angeles police sergeant. “This seemed to be a logical place to make the notice.”

Zine’s frustration points to a fundamental problem with the law that seeks to discourage baby dumping: How to get through to mothers in distress?

In the Los Angeles area, health and child welfare officials have found that there is no typical profile for women who abandon their children.

They cut across lines of race, geography and socioeconomics.

As a result, local awareness campaigns have cast a wide net, using bus placards, bumper stickers and billboards to spread slogans such as “No shame, no blame, no names.”

Los Angeles County sponsors a website, www.babysafela.org, which spells out the law’s guarantee: Mothers may leave an unwanted child at any fire station or hospital within 72 hours of birth with no consequences.

But some experts doubt those messages are reaching mothers who are considering abandoning their newborns. Cheryl Meyer, a professor of psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, said billboards and educational campaigns simply cannot reach women and girls in deep denial about their pregnancy.

“The girl, she’s looking up at the sign, and says, ‘I hope someone who gets pregnant listens to these signs,’ ” said Meyer, who has conducted interviews with 40 women incarcerated for killing their babies. “If you’re in the middle of concealing and denying your pregnancy, you’re not reading the sign, because you don’t think it applies to you.”

Michelle Oberman, author of “Mothers Who Kill Their Children,” agrees. She said education campaigns should focus on the people who are close to potential mothers in distress, increasing the likelihood that they will report or intervene in an illegal abandonment.

“The best thing to do is light a candle to the community that surrounds them,” said Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University. “Let us all feel responsible.”

The local campaigns were designed to target both mothers in crisis and the people close to them, said Victor Abalos, spokesman for First 5 L.A., a nonprofit that uses tobacco tax revenue to pay for children’s services.

In 2003, Abalos’ group gave the county $500,000 to raise awareness about the law, and a county task force discussed the best way to spend it. They also considered the idea of dumpster stickers. But they chose instead to focus on campaigns aimed at the general public.

Abalos, who is a member of the task force, said there are some signs the strategy is working.

He said First 5 L.A. recently convened diverse focus groups of 60 Angelenos and found that about 80% of them had heard of the safe surrender law.

But it is unclear whether the law has helped reduce baby dumping in L.A. since it took effect in January 2001.

In 2004, eight babies were abandoned in the county -- more than in either of the two years before the law took effect.

The county has spent the $500,000 in tobacco tax money and is looking for further sources of funding to advertise the law, said Deena Margolis, an analyst in the county’s chief administrative office.

Now the county is trying to spread the word through employees who deal regularly with women and children. The county is also trying to expand discussion of the law in public schools, Margolis said.

The city of Los Angeles has also launched a $60,000 marketing campaign this year, advertising the law on trash trucks and buses.

Zine’s sticker idea would have cost the city 10 times as much, and it wouldn’t have been as easy as it sounds, according to a March study prepared by the city sanitation bureau.

Some bins, the report noted, are painted every six months, especially those owned by restaurants. Others are locked away in sheds. Still others are quickly covered in grime and dirt. And who would make sure that private waste haulers were applying the stickers at all?

So the city followed the county’s lead with a “broader, more multifaceted public information campaign.” But are women getting the message?

“This has been the challenge of marketing this law since we began,” Margolis said. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”

*

Times staff writer Hector Becerra contributed to this report.