Australian Association of Social Workers national president said it was unusual that the mother had been charged

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A mother charged with attempted murder on Monday morning after abandoning her newborn baby boy in a drain in western Sydney deserves compassion, not vilification, the national president of the Australian Association of Social Workers says.

Professor Karen Healy said there were fewer than 10 cases of outright abandonment in Australia each year, and this case was particularly unusual.



Cyclists heard the baby crying from the bottom of a 2.5m drain near the M7 motorway at Quakers Hill on Sunday morning. The 30-year-old mother was later charged after presenting at Blacktown police station.

She did not appear for a brief hearing at Blacktown local court on Monday. No application for bail was made and it was formally refused. The court heard she would appear at Penrith local court on Friday.

Court documents said she had admitted putting the baby in the drain.

“The accused makes full admissions to putting the baby down the drain knowing it may kill the baby,” the documents said.

Healy said it was a particularly unusual case. “Babies are generally left on church doorsteps or at hospitals – in high-traffic areas where the parents know someone will find them and take care of them,” she said.

“Typically, parents will abandon their baby because of a complete inability to take care of their child, and very often they are looking for someone else to care for their child but don’t want to be investigated.

“But this is quite a different scenario.”

She called for compassion for the mother and urged people not to react by shaming her before her full circumstances were known. Unusual cases of abandonment might involve a combination of factors such as mental illness or drug addiction, she said.

“We need a compassionate response to these women and it’s very unfortunate that the first reaction is often one of vilification,” she said.

The case has reignited the debate over baby safe havens, which already exist in parts of Europe and the US and allow an unharmed baby to be relinquished anonymously to authorities, with no questions asked and with no charges laid against the parent.

But Healy said safe havens were not a solution.

In the countries where they existed, parents often returned later to collect their child, or tried to abandon older children to the havens, she said.

Baby safe havens may also breach the UN convention on the rights of the child, she said, which holds that immediately after birth children should have the right to know their parents’ names and nationalities.

“There’s no saying this mother would have placed her baby in a safe haven even if that option were available,” Healy said.

“It does seem, however, that she had been in hospital at some point prior to the birth, and that’s where social workers within hospitals are so important because they can identify vulnerable and at-risk women and intervene.

“There must be support for outreach services in hospitals, as well as in homeless shelters and drug and alcohol centres.”

Healy said it was unusual that the mother had been charged, given other mothers in recent cases of child abandonment had not been, though abandoning a child is considered a criminal offence.

“There is clearly much we don’t know about this mother and people should reserve their judgment of her and the police until we know the full story,” she said.

Quakers Hill local area command duty officer, Inspector David Lagats, told reporters on Sunday the incident was “disturbing”.

“With the help of the bystanders en masse, we managed to lift this quite heavy concrete slab up to get the police down there to the baby,” he said.

“We thought the worst but the baby was still alive.”

The child remains is a serious but stable condition at Westmead children’s hospital.