That was decided by the Amsterdam court on Thursday. The sentence is the same as the demand that the public prosecutor issued two weeks ago. Because of her mentally retarded, the woman is less accountable.
Todisoa R., originally an illegal refugee from Madagascar, made mixed statements during the police interrogations. She claimed that she threw the baby in the container because she thought the baby was no longer alive. She later retracted this confession, stating that she had been raped. The father then allegedly took the child with her while she slept shortly after delivery and then informed her that the baby had died. The prosecutor dismissed this as unbelievable.
Crying from garbage container
The infant was noticed by a local resident in the early morning of Sunday, October 26, 2014 when a cry sounded from a garbage container in the Amsterdam district of Slotermeer. The baby girl was rescued with the help of the fire brigade. She was packed in a buttoned plastic shopping bag and was wearing a T-shirt that read Hello, nice to meet you!
According to the prosecutor, it was a miracle that the girl survived: she was 3 meters deep, under heavy garbage bags. There was “no doubt acts aimed at the death of the baby,” the officer said.
Remarkably, the baby had had a heel prick, which indicated that she had been in the hands of a caregiver. The police concluded on the basis of the diaper, the premature pacifier and the heel patch that the baby had been born in a hospital. A tour of healthcare workers, however, turned up nothing. To the frustration of the detectives, some invoked their medical professional secrecy.
The mother’s DNA that was found on the baby was also a dead end. The same applied to the kinship test, based on the DNA of relatives.
Breakthrough
The breakthrough came seven years later, ironically thanks to a criminal offense committed by Todisoa R. in Germany, where she had since moved. As a result, her fingerprint ended up in the international database. A routine check revealed a match with the fingerprint found in 2014 on the shopping bag the baby was left in. DNA testing determined that it was indeed the baby’s mother.
Todisoa R. was arrested in Germany in April last year, and was extradited to the Netherlands a month later. During a preparatory session she said via a video link from the prison in Ter Peel: ‘I am not the one who did this. I have several children and they mean everything to me. They are my family. I don’t have the courage to hurt them.’ She did acknowledge that she was the mother of the baby found in 2014. She would have named her baby Nomena.
The girl is now 7 years old. She was adopted and is doing well, according to the Public Prosecution Service. Todisoa R. has six more children from different fathers. Her eldest child of twelve lives in Madagascar. Three other children aged six, four and two are staying with R.’s friend in an asylum seekers’ center in Katwijk. Her youngest child is one year old.
baby corpses
It is more common for infants to be abandoned. Figures from the Netherlands Institute for the Documentation of Anonymous Distance (NIDAA) show that since 2006 a total of nineteen newborn children have been found alive. In the same period, 46 baby bodies were found. ‘The actual number of baby corpses will be higher than can be determined on the basis of public sources’, says chairman Kerstin van Tiggelen. ‘You can assume that people who want to make a baby’s corpse disappear will also be successful. When a child is abandoned, it is generally found.’
It is an offense to leave a child behind, unless this happens in one of the ten foundling chambers in the Netherlands. A parent can then anonymously leave the child in a room, after which an employee immediately takes over the care.
However, this anonymous option has never been used, says Kitty Nusteling, director of Protected Wieg, the organization that runs the foundling chambers. Since the opening of the first chamber in 2014, a total of 74 women have registered with the foundation, 46 of whom ultimately decided against giving up their child for adoption. They now take care of their own child, under supervision. “All these women gave up their anonymity. A number of mothers chose to deposit personal data in a special register with the civil-law notary, which only the child has access to at a later age.’
According to Nusteling, the women who knock on the door of Protected Cradle have the common denominator that they give up their child out of fear. ‘They are afraid that something will happen to the baby or themselves as a result of violence, afraid of judgment from the environment or of interference.’