Life's Lessons Are Taught By The Wrong Authority
Police still seeking baby's mother
Thursday, December 07, 2006
BY BILL SWAYZE
Star-Ledger Staff
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/morris/index.ssf?/base/news-2/1165473981149130.xml&coll=1
Just days old, the infant was found Monday at 6:15 p.m. by apartment tenant Luzelena Vasquez and her 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. The baby, who may be Hispanic, weighs 8 pounds, 2 ounces and is 20 inches long, remains in good condition at St. Clare's Hospital in Denville. Ben Martin, a spokesman for St. Clare's, said the baby is in good health, but was not certain when the infant would be leaving the hospital.
Andy Williams, a spokesman for the state Division of Youth and Family Services, said that in cases of abandonment, DYFS takes custody of the child.
And while potential parents are calling police, state officials and anyone else they think can lead them to adopting the girl, Williams said there are people -- thousands of them -- already in the adoption pipeline who are licensed and deemed fit for parenthood who have a chance to wind up with the girl.
If authorities find the mother, there will be criminal and DYFS investigations into what Williams said was an "unsafe abandonment."
The baby was found in Vasquez's unlocked 2001 Ford Windstar minivan. She was wrapped in a blanket on the driver's seat. Two boxes of diapers and a bottle of formula were left in the car.
Police believe the baby had been in the unlocked vehicle for about a half-hour before she was discovered at 6:15 p.m. The temperature outside was about 30 degrees at the time.
Under New Jersey's Safe Haven Law, the mother could have left the infant at a hospital or police station without the threat of prosecution. The law was designed to avoid tragedies in which infants are abandoned only to die of exposure.
And yet... those cases formally filed and left to the Attentive Care of DYFS are abandoned in far less humane conditions, as news reports of "foul play" continue to permeate the headlines. Who is accountable and responsible for the news-stories made public by neighbors who alert far too many Authorities to the very "well-placed homes" adopted or fostered children have been found (dead or alive) in places like the locked unheated basements or suffocating closets in their Home Sweet Homes of Adoptive/Foster "families"?
With helpful resources like THAT, who needs natural predators to kill-off the Next Generation? I would like to think the criminal & DYFS investigations will include a background check into the new-mother's Family Situation, making strong note of WHAT led that new mom to such a desperate act, in the first place. Fear and Guilt leads a mom to relinquish a baby to the care of a stranger, as the era of Closed Adoption can teach us. Otherwise, had the mom in this case been a True Criminal, the body found in the unlocked car would not have been left wrapped in a blanket with diapers and formula. It would have been left for dead where it was born. A criminal mind is taught by those who simply don't care about What Happens Next.
Where, When, and by Whom will accountability and responsibility be taught???