Abandoned baby cases in suburbs show need for safe havens

The newborn girl illegally abandoned more than two weeks ago in the parking lot of a Schaumburg church was fortunately found healthy before anything bad happened. The newborn boy illegally abandoned Friday in Streamwood was tragically strangled and dumped in a trash can before anything good could become a possibility.

“Examples of what didn't need to be,” says an emotional Dawn Geras, the woman who championed the Illinois “Safe Haven” law that allows newborns to be surrendered anonymously and legally to authorities at hospitals, firehouses and police stations with no questions asked.

Alternating between tears and outrage, Geras, president of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation, endured an emotional roller coaster of a weekend.

“I get so heartbroken. I can't help but take it personally, that it was my fault. What if I had told one more person?” Geras says. “But angry, too.”

Last week, Geras used the Schaumburg case to promote the “Safe Haven” law and was on her way to an adoption group's annual reception Friday night when she learned of the dead baby in Streamwood.

“Every time I hear that, it is worse than the time before, because the law is out there,” Geras said that night, her voice cracking before it faded away. “There's been coverage about the Schaumburg baby and the safe option that's there, but …”

By Monday, she was working the phones, challenging suburban legislators to do more to get out the word in their communities, and making sure schools are following state law by including “Safe Haven” information in health classes.

Streamwood police released a sketch and are searching for the baby's killer. Schaumburg police are looking for the mom in their case, not simply because she broke the law by abandoning her child in an unsafe and unapproved location but to make sure she wasn't forced to give up her baby or wasn't the victim of foul play.

Had either of the babies left in Schaumburg or Streamwood been surrendered according to the law, the mothers would have been free to go and the infants would have been placed immediately with permanent parents who had been approved for adoption by one of the traditional agencies.

“It's thrilling,” Geras, a mother of six and grandmother of 13, says of the adoptive parents' reactions. “They get a phone call saying, ‘Go to the hospital and pick her up. She's yours.'”

Those families have formed a social network and recently celebrated with a group picnic at the DuPage County home of one family.

Instead of being adopted quickly, the baby girl left at the Schaumburg church immediately became a ward of the state, requiring the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to begin a legal process in which the courts will decide parental rights and that girl's fate.

“She is in the care of DCFS, is currently in a foster home and doing well,” says Jimmie Whitelow, a spokesman with DCFS.

As the Streamwood homicide proves, not all abandoned infants are so fortunate. In the 10 years since the law went into effect, 64 babies have been abandoned illegally. The Streamwood infant was the 31st found dead, Geras says.

Of the 70 babies surrendered under the “Safe Haven” law, five of the anonymous mothers worked out parental plans with authorities and decided to keep their babies, six opted for a more traditional adoption, and the rest allowed their babies to be adopted by families throughout the state, Geras says. The law includes voluntary forms, which moms have filled out or even mailed in later, that can make the adoptive parents aware of medical histories and health issues that might help them care for the babies.

The majority of “Safe Haven” babies were in Cook County, but mothers in Lake, DuPage, Kane, McHenry and 11 other counties also have successfully used the law, Geras says. It's an easy law to follow.

“You need to hand over your baby to staff. There's no ding and ditch, no ringing a doorbell and running,” Geras says.

In the Schaumburg case, the bag with the baby was brought inside Sunday and left on a table at Gospel Presbyterian Church, but parishioners almost left before discovering the human life inside.

In August, Gov. Pat Quinn approved the “Safe Haven” addition of university police stations and Illinois State Police district headquarters to the approved facilities of local police stations, firehouses and hospitals.

While most suburban public schools follow the law by including the information in health classes, the suburbs' recent cases show “there's still work to be done,” says Diane Jannetto, 63, who lives in Des Plaines and volunteers as treasurer of the nonprofit Save Abandoned Babies Foundation.

A volunteer and retired business manager for St. Paul Lutheran Church & School in Mount Prospect, Jannetto recruited suburban teenagers to help pass out “Safe Haven” information cards with Life Savers on them. Looking at the statistics compiled by the charity, Jannetto says the most likely mother to surrender a baby (legally or illegally) is white and between the ages of 18 and 24.

Until the baby showed up illegally in Schaumburg, Illinois had gone 429 days without an illegal abandonment, Geras says. Twelve days later, the Streamwood baby was found dead. Legal drop-offs are anonymous, so they don't draw media attention.

“I can't call the media and say, ‘Hallelujah, a baby has been turned in!'” says Geras, who notes that a couple of weeks before the baby abandoned at the church in Schaumburg grabbed our attention, a baby in a nearby suburb had successfully been dropped off at a proper station without fanfare.

“People need to understand, the law does work,” Geras says, urging people thinking of abandoning a baby to turn in the child anonymously and legally at designated spots sporting the “Safe Haven” signs. “They can know they have taken loving, responsible actions under the law.”