Wednesday, September 01, 1999
Death of infant begs for answers
Butler Co. woman awaits hearing
BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Carin Madden
|
Before she was found dead in the back of a garbage truck, Baby Madden grew inside her mother's womb unnoticed — and that alone shows something was very wrong in her young mother's life, experts said.
“Anybody who's pregnant shouldn't have to hide it,” said Elena Wolf, program nurse for the Teen Pregnancy Care Center at University Hospital. “She must've felt she had no support anywhere in her life. She was probably very afraid of retribution or punishment — or afraid because she didn't know where to go for help.”
Carin Marie Madden, 20, was arrested Saturday after her full-term, healthy baby girl was found dead in a garbage truck whose load was traced to her Wayne Township home. She was ordered held in the Butler County Jail without bond at least until a hearing Thursday.
She's charged with murder, and the case raises nagging questions:
• How and why did Ms. Madden conceal the pregnancy — and a prior pregnancy that delivered a baby she gave up for adoption when she was 15?
• Who fathered Ms. Madden's babies?
• Baby Madden may have lived for several days after she was born inside the home Ms. Madden shared with her parents, but didn't anyone hear the infant cry?
• If she killed the baby, what may have driven Ms. Madden to do so, then dispose of the body?
Experts say infanticide often is a desperate, impulsive act rather than a cold, calculated killing.
“They don't think, "I'm taking a living, breathing life.' They just think, "I have to get rid of it. ... I don't want to look at it. I can't deal with it,'” said Dr. Linda Dunlap, chair of the psychology department at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. “Oftentimes people feel from the depths of their hearts that they don't have any other choice.”
The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports say the number of reported infant homicides dropped from 272 in 1993 to 219 in 1997.
But those numbers probably don't accurately reflect the true number of infant killings, Dr. Dunlap said.
“I'm not sure it's really dropped. I hope it has,” she said. “I think the publicity of infanticide has done one of two things. Either it has raised it in people's consciousness so they get help and they don't resort to that — or maybe they're hiding it better because they see how these cases are being prosecuted.”
Many infanticides go undiscovered — a likely outcome for Baby Madden's death if not for an observant garbage-truck operator, officials have said.
In other cases, bodies are found but the parents are not. Thursday, authorities in northeastern Ohio found a baby girl in a landfill — and as of Tuesday, the Stark County Sheriff's Office was still searching for the infant's mother.
While the justice system often used to grant leniency to young mothers who killed their infants, publicity about shocking cases in recent years seems to be changing that. The Houston Chronicle reported in 1997 that “states seem to be prosecuting neo-
naticide suspects more vigorously, but the degree of prosecution and sentencing is uneven nationwide.”
Some women have pleaded to less er crimes and were granted probation. But Rebecca Hopfer, who gave birth at 17 in a Dayton, Ohio, suburb, refused to deal — and lost. She is serving a 15-years-to-life prison sentence.
Ms. Hopfer concealed her pregnancy, gave birth at home and put the baby in the trash. Ms. Hopfer contended the infant was stillborn, but she was convicted in 1995 of murder and gross abuse of a corpse.
Authorities are not saying whether Ms. Madden has denied killing her baby; a lawyer was being appointed to represent her.
Regardless of Ms. Madden's guilt or innocence, Dr. Dunlap said: “We should be asking why is it that a young person in our community could be pregnant, go unnoticed and feel she had no other recourse. Where did she fall through the cracks?”
The Butler County Children Services Board, in a news release Tuesday, said it tried to help Ms. Madden after her first pregnancy by providing parenting education and other services. Ms. Madden and her mother, however, signed papers releasing the baby for adoption, the agency said.
Ms. Madden's father, Gary, told reporters Monday that the agency took the baby away. He did not return a telephone call seeking more comment Tuesday.
Dr. Dunlap said people repeat behaviors when they have not learned from their mistakes — and that's what apparently happened in Ms. Madden's case.
“It sounds like there was a pattern that started when she was 15. ... She needed to have someone who was suspicious (about the pregnancy) keep on her and say, "Here's what the process is going to be unless you deal with this,'” Dr. Dunlap said. “Now she knows. She's not in denial anymore.”
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