By Leslie Gonzalez
Foundation helps expectant mothers give up their newborns safely
Timothy Jaccard, a medical technician with the Nassau Police Department, froze upon entering the toilet stall at Hempstead District Court in June, 1997. Even after 23 years on the job witnessing the worst of human suffering, he had never seen a sight so horrible.
Before Mr. Jaccard lay a newborn girl wrapped in a plastic bag. Angelica, as she was later named, was dead, abandoned.
"I thought of the baby's mother. What would make her so desperate that she had to resort to something like this?" Mr. Jaccard recalled.
Images of Baby Angelica quickly circulated through the national media. Meanwhile, those who found her, particularly Mr. Jaccard, mourned her loss. They buried the six-pound, nine-ounce girl at Hempstead's Greenfield Cemetery. Today, a stone plaque marks her short, unfortunate life.
Angelica was only the first in a steady stream of newborn abandonment cases in recent years throughout the New York-metropolitan area, including one in Freeport. After his experience with Baby Angelica, Mr. Jaccard decided he could not sit by and watch infants die without cause.
"This is insanity. This has got to stop," he said.
With other medical technicians, Mr. Jaccard created the Children of Hope Foundation, Inc., a non-profit group that provides abandoned newborns with proper burials. More importantly, the organization focuses on saving infants by assisting expectant mothers who do not wish to keep their babies, but do wish to surrender them to authorities.
Children of Hope officials recently announced a partnership between their organization and the Bellmore-based Long Island Crisis Center, a round-the-clock, suicide-prevention hotline.
The crisis center has referred expectant mothers to Children of Hope for three years. Recently, the center established a separate phone line for mothers who might need Children of Hope's services.
Fran Turtel, the crisis center's coordinator, said, "We receive calls from girls who've just found out they're pregnant to those who are about to give birth."
Children of Hope gives an abandoned infant a first name and the last name "Hope." Mr. Jaccard then obtains legal custody of the dead child through the courts. The infant remains at the medical examiner's office for an autopsy, during which a femur bone is retained for DNA testing.
Mr. Jaccard arranges a funeral for the child, which costs on average $1,100. He or she is then buried at the Island of Hope at Holy Rood Cemetery in Westbury.
Reasons for abandonment
Mothers who abandon their babies do so for many reasons, experts say. They may have fallen into postpartum depression, a psychosis caused in large part by withdrawal of pregnancy hormones from the mothers' systems.
The mothers may also be homeless, unable to care for a newborn. They may be afraid, alone, helpless.
They may even fear reprisals from their families or religious leaders for having given birth without being married.
Dr. Vincent Fontana, director of New York Foundling Hospital and an expert in child abandonment, said, "In her isolation, [the mother] feels she has no one to turn to. She's afraid to ask for help because of the stigma attached, and the child suffers."
He added, "The mother is also a victim. Often immature and afraid of something horrible, she panics."
Since 1869, Foundling Hospital has offered mothers the ability to leave newborns at the medical center "no questions asked."
Mr. Jaccard said parents of teenage and unwed mothers must not judge, ridicule or disown their own daughters. They must see them for what they are -- desperate.
Porcelain deliveries
Dr. Fontana said mothers who abandon their babies fall into two distinct categories: "benign," those who leave their babies in hope they will be found alive; and "malignant," those who abandon their babies in order to kill them.
Many infants' deaths are so-called "porcelain deliveries," in which a mother bears her child headfirst into a toilet at a public building. The infant drowns because it is unable to take a breath.
In these cases, the mother, who is often young, is in denial that she is pregnant, Mr. Jaccard said. The mother many times ignores prenatal care, resulting in a premature birth at seven or eight months.
The medics who respond to such cases attempt to revive the babies, but most often they cannot. When autopsies are performed, forensic experts find that the babies' lungs have not expanded, and the children are listed as stillborn.
Mr. Jaccard, however, questions this diagnosis, because authorities cannot determine the circumstances surrounding death. If the baby was not born into a toilet, would it have taken a breath and survived?
Prosecuting the mothers is, at best, difficult. If arrested, the mothers often claim they did not know they were pregnant. They then receive psychiatric and medical help, and the courts dismiss their cases.
Hope for the future
Viewing the Children of Hope's public-service announcement on television moves Mr. Jaccard to cry, as the camera pans across a graveyard of infants' headstones.
But there is hope.
Mr. Jaccard said thousands of caring couples wish to adopt children. If only, he said, they could connect with the many mothers on the brink of abandoning their newborns. Getting expectant mothers and couples together has become critical to Mr. Jaccard's mission.
His efforts have paid dividends. "Thank you so much for your help. I don't know what I would have done without your guidance," wrote Allison, a Valley Stream teenager who, after counseling with Mr. Jaccard, gained the courage to tell her hostile mother she was pregnant. Although Allison could have given the newborn up for adoption, she and her mother later decided to raise the child jointly.
Children of Hope, which relies solely on donations for funding, advertises its services through 6,000 posters that are placed in bus and train stations in communities with a history of child abadonments. So far this year, the foundation has received more than 2,000 calls, primarily from expectant mothers who are crying and begging for help.
Mr. Jaccard seeks to win the mothers' confidence. He then meets with them at a "neutral" place, such as the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream. Children of Hope arranges for prenatal care, including a pregnancy test if needed. Housing is provided for the mothers at hotels or, in cases in which the mother may be in danger, at safe houses.
In June this year, Governor Pataki signed the New York State Infant Abandonment Protection Act into law. The measures allows a mother to surrender an infant within five days of birth to another individual who is willing to accept responsibility for the child. In such cases, the mother avoids prosecution for child abandonment.
Mr. Jaccard defends mothers who choose to leave their babies safely. "I honor a mother who wants to save her own child's life. She wants that child to have a chance, and we are here to help," he said.
The Long Island Crisis Center hotline is 516-679-1111.
Children of Hope's emergency number for immediate infant pick up is 1-877-796-4673. Donations may be sent to Children of Hope at 1490 Franklin Avenue, Mineola, New York, 11501. The foundation's office number is 516-781-3511.
