Don’t expect jail for the mother who abandoned her child to die in a Sydney drain

It is just appalling to see the same old charade being played out yet again, particularly when we have had to endure the ramped-up level of sanctimony for White Ribbon Day too.

If a man had dropped a baby two and a half meters down a storm water drain and left it to die, it would have been a crime of national importance. It would have been the lead story of every news outlet. White Ribbon ambassadors would have been shoving each other out of the way (in an inclusive and caring manner, of course) to get their heads on TV to condemn the monster.

This, we would have been repeatedly lectured, is why we are spending millions of dollars on the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children.

There would be no interest in why he did it. Can you imagine the outrage at even posing the question? His mental problems? His financial difficulties? His emotional insecurities? How would a new baby interfere with his social life?

What part of “left in a drain to die” don’t you understand?

That the child survived is somewhat miraculous. The child was squeezed into a small hole between concrete slabs and then dropped two and a half meters.

There was no blow to the head on the metal rungs on the side of the shaft during the fall, or on landing on the concrete below, to cause death. No broken neck. There were no cuts that would have caused the child to bleed to death. Similarly, there were no internal injuries of major organs leading to internal hemorrhaging and death.

So the child was left to starve and dehydrate until he died. Or drown if there was a heavy rain.

For five days, before he was found by passers-by, the little boy lay alone, waiting to die. In those five days the mother did not alert police, or any other authority, or make any attempt to recover the child.

At the time of writing, the mother has been charged with attempted murder and remanded in custody. The news coverage has been minimal to say the least.

Does anybody seriously expect this woman to serve any time in jail?

She’s in custody until her second hearing December 12, but they won’t keep her for long. The feminist campaign to ensure that responsibility and this mother do not meet has already begun. It takes several distinct threads. The first is that we have the “woman in an uncaring society” angle. Yet another candle-in-the-wind. On www.news.com.au, we are told:

The Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) is calling for vulnerable parents to receive more support to avoid further cases such as the abandoned baby boy found in Sydney yesterday morning.

Yes, the billions of dollars being spent by the Australian state and federal governments on women’s issues is clearly not enough.

Consider what this woman had to avoid to be in her current predicament. First and foremost, given that she is 30 years of age, she has avoided the maturity to be responsible for herself. She has also managed to avoid free contraception, free pregnancy termination, free social work services, and a plethora of government handouts to assist single mothers.

She also could have just left the child in the hospital.

In the same news.com.au story, we also find the second angle of mental health issues.

Lisa Knott, spokeswoman for Post and Antenatal Depression Association (PANDA), said 1 in 7 Australian woman suffered some form of postnatal depression.

So how do we know if this depression was to blame?

It was a common misconception that postnatal depression was attributed to hormonal changes, she said. The reality was though there could be a variety of causes from a traumatic birth, to previous history of mental illness.

Knott went on to clarify:

“The signs are different for everyone,” she said.

In other words, we know she had depression because she abandoned a baby in a drain, leaving it to die, and now she’s in danger of being held to account.

The other bizarre contradictions being spruiked by the mainstream media, complete with serious faces, is on how often this happens.

In The Age, we are told:

Department of Family and Community Services western Sydney district director Lisa Charet said such incidents were rare.

So rare, in fact, that:

Helen Polley, a senator in the opposition Labor Party, said the near-tragedy could have been avoided if emergency hatches were rolled out at Australian hospitals, police and fire stations where babies could be safely abandoned.

Of course, the Australian White Ribbon Campaign is not interested in this issue because clearly a mother dropping a baby two and a half meters down a concrete drain and leaving it to die is not a question of domestic violence. Perhaps they too might believe this peculiar line being spun by the ABC:

Paediatrician Andrew McDonald said the baby was “very lucky that it was left where it was”.

“It was left in a natural incubator,” he said.

“Not too hot and not too cold, and protected from weather and from predators.”

That the child can go from “abandoned to die” to “very lucky” is an extraordinary piece of newspeak propaganda aimed directly at ensuring the woman does not face jail time for her crime.

Polley also called on Sunday for the repeal of laws that make child abandonment a criminal offense, which she said encouraged the problem to be hidden.

So what now will happen to the child? The mother is not out of the picture here by any means, according to SBS:

The baby is now in the care of the NSW Family and Community Services (FACS) Minister. It will be up to the state agency to assess how – or if – the mother and baby can be reunited.

And the father? Apparently the mother hid the pregnancy from him. But you’ll be relieved to know that efforts are being made to find him. Not that he will get custody of the child, or even any kind of access. But someone is going to have to pay child support to whomever raises the child.

We wouldn’t want a man avoiding his responsibilities, would we?