The sixteen-year-old mother of a baby abandoned at a South Carolina fire department has to visit a cemetery, mortuary and a maternity ward, get her GED and a long list of other requirements. The baby's father, a twenty-one-year-old who graduated from high school, has a shorter list - but he'll have to make the rounds with his girlfriend.
The couple, who have an eleven-month-old baby and a two-year-old toddler at home, apparently left their newborn at a firehouse because they knew they couldn't care for the six-hour-old baby. Firehouses meet safe haven criteria under South Carolina law, but the couple failed to give the baby to an actual person at the firehouse - which means they've been facing felony charges for leaving the child on the doorstep in the cold weather.
The mother is being charged as a juvenile - she turned seventeen just days after the incident - and the father as an adult. She reportedly hasn't gone past the ninth grade in high school, and part of the suggestions from Seventh Circuit Solicitor Trey Gowdy as part of her juvenile arbitration is a requirement that the girl return to school to get a diploma or at least pass the GED exam.
Gowdy says the couple did at least make an attempt to abandon the baby properly, which takes them out of the realm of parents who shake their babies to death or simply abandon the baby in garbage can. But he wants them to see what could have happened if the baby hadn't been found on that doorstep: hence the visits to the mortuary and cemetery. His list also includes parenting classes (phewww), reproductive counseling (considering she would have been what, fourteen when she first got pregnant, and he was nineteen - three kids ago?), and meetings with the representative who pushed for the South Carolina safe haven law and an adoption law specialist.
Here's hoping the judge in the case takes Gowdy up on the suggestions - there's an obvious lack of common sense between these two, but at the very least, they tried to do the right thing. What they need now isn't a ten-year sentence behind bars, but some smartening up and some birth control.
Source: WYFF
Image: Safe Haven Maternity
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