Suspension for mother who abandoned baby

The Antwerp criminal court has suspended a 39-year-old Polish woman from Antwerp for abandoning her baby.

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On March 5, 2019, a cleaning lady heard howling from a bag in the hall of an apartment building on the Grote Koraalberg in Antwerp. In the bag was a box containing a newborn baby, wrapped in towels. The boy, who was in good health, was given the provisional name ‘Arthur’.

A week later, the police were able to identify a Polish woman using camera images, among other things. She confessed that she was the mother. The woman had become unwittingly pregnant and was facing private problems. She had not informed anyone of the pregnancy.

Do it differently

In the night of 4 to 5 March 2019, the defendant gave birth all by herself in a room in the former Zuiderhuis on the Melkmarkt, where she cleaned. She had cleaned up afterwards and started wandering through town with the baby. She decided to leave the child in an apartment building because she thought he would soon be found there.

The attorney thought that the woman could have approached it differently than just putting her child in a hall of a building. “She had been aware of her pregnancy since November 2018, so she had plenty of time to ask for help from the appropriate authorities. However, she did not and left her child in a destitute condition, ”it sounded during the handling of the case in September.

800 euro fine

The attorney had demanded eight months in prison and a fine of 800 euros. The defense had argued for a suspension. “My client was in a panic and didn’t know what to do anymore. She didn’t know who to turn to either. She had never heard of an initiative like the foundling slide, ”said master Wendy Bosschaerts at the time.

The court decided to give the woman a suspension, just as the council chamber had already done last year. The public prosecutor’s office had then appealed against that decision and the indictment chamber had still referred her to court for leaving a minor child.

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