commentary by Patrick H. Moore
One of the things I find most remarkable is the way a great many parents with handicapped children nevertheless manage to bestow the same degree of love and care on those children as they would had they been blessed with “normal” children. I say this because, recognizing myself for the selfish person I am, I suspect I’d have a very tough time caring for a handicapped child properly.
On the other hand, here on All Things Crime Blog, we’ve covered several cases where the parents of handicapped children have grievously abused them. I suspect there is a third group of parents who do a reasonably good job of caring for their handicapped child but, at a certain point, withdraw just enough so that they may not recognize signs of trouble when they occur.
A particularly tragic case that may (or may not) fit into this last category comes to us from Kearns, Utah, where Alicia Marie Englert, who reportedly suffered from undefined birth defects that appears to have affected her in adult life, faces murder charges for hiding her pregnancy from her parents and secreting her newborn in a neighbor’s trash can. Fortunately, the baby was rescued and taken to the hospital where she appears to be recovering, although the child is not yet completely out of the woods.
Brady McCombs of the AP writes:
A Utah woman accused of dumping her newborn in the trash in an attempt to hide her pregnancy from her parents has been charged with attempted murder, Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill said Friday.
Alicia Marie Englert, 23, deliberately tried to kill the baby by depriving her of food and medical care before leaving her in the bottom of her neighbor’s trash underneath other bags of trash, Gill said.
The reported details of what transpired in the “36 hours leading up to the baby being found by a neighbor in the Salt Lake City suburb of Kearns” are as follows:
According to Attorney Gill, Ms. Englert gave birth in a basement bathroom inside the family home at around midnight on Aug. 24. She is then believed to have wrapped the baby in a towel whereupon she left it on the floor of the bathroom.
It’s unclear what Ms. Englert’s state of mind was over the next day-and-a-half. What is known is that she went to work the following day without feeding the child. When she got home that evening, the child was still wrapped up in the towel. She once again left it there and apparently passed a more-or-less normal evening, though without knowing more about her mental state, it’s impossible to know what thoughts may have been going through her mind.
In any event, the following morning, Ms. Englert deposited the baby under several trash bags in her neighbor’s trash can.
After Ms. Englert had left the infant there, it emitted a sound that was described by a neighbor as resembling the purring of a cat. The neighbor investigated and after moving several trash bags out of the way, “she spotted the baby.” When the lady discovered she couldn’t extricate the child from the trash, she ran next door to the Englert’s house for help.
Ms. Englert’s father, Robert Englert, responded, and together they managed to remove the infant from the trash can.
Emergency responders arrived at the scene and placed the baby on a life-flight helicopter. She was flown to a hospital, examined and put on a ventilator. County Attorney Gill stated that the baby was dirty, smelly and had a blood-borne infection, and that, “If the baby had not been discovered and not received medical condition, it certainly would have died.”
This is one tough child. After being in critical condition when she arrived at the hospital on Aug 26th, she has improved steadily and is now in “fair condition”.
“It’s certainly a testament to how resilient these babies can be,” Gill said. “It’s quite remarkable that the baby is doing well and is improving steadily.”
The Utah Child and Family Services Agency has taken custody of the child. Ms. Englert is being held in Salt Lake County Jail on $500,000 bail.
The investigators have stated that they don’t believe other family members knew about the baby being in the house, which means that they were not aware that Ms. Englert was pregnant. (When I first started hearing about cases of this sort, I didn’t believe that a pregnant women could hide her condition from those around her, but I’ve been corrected by women who know better.)
In an earlier Fox News article, the AP reported — based on a probable cause statement — that Ms. Englert told the police she hid her pregnancy from her parents and hoped her newborn would die, thus solving her problems.
In what appears to be an attempt to heap aspersions on Ms. Englert, much has been made of a photo that was given to a Salt Lake TV station that purportedly shows the defendant holding a beer and standing with another woman in a nightclub, as if this will somehow reveal the essence of her character. This seems a bit preposterous to me; Ms. Englert was of age and there is nothing unusual about drinking a beer in a nightclub.
Ms. Englert’s father Robert said on Friday that his daughter “has a learning disability and has only recently begun to understand what she has done.”
“I know she didn’t realize, obviously didn’t realize, what she was doing.”
(This seems to me to be am attempt to minimize to some degree; Ms. Englert was obviously aware that she was trying to end her child’s life. She may well, however, have been essentially unaware of the moral issues at play here.)
In a more measured statement, Alicia Englert’s cousin, Vania Schmidt, stated that the extended family has been devastated and is quoted as saying:
“She knew she could reach out to any one of us, we would have taken her in, gotten her to a doctor, gotten her help.”
Ms. Schmidt further stated that “Alicia Englert was partially raised by her aunt. As a child, she took an unusually long time to begin talking, Schmidt recalled, and while playing with other children, she would sometimes bite or scratch for no apparent reason.
“I could see innocence, I could see confusion, not knowing where she fit in.”
Schmidt also said that she hasn’t talked to her cousin often in recent years.
The family is planning a weekend fundraiser to aid in the care of the baby and a candlelight vigil.
Sounding much like a typical prosecutor, County Attorney Sim said they had no evidence of Ms. Englert suffering from any disability and that it was not a factor in his decision to charge her with with attempted murder. Sim did say that if Ms. Englert suffers from any condition, “that issue will be dealt with as the case moves through the courts.”
* * * * *
What tangled webs we mortals weave. A mere glance at Ms. Englert suggests that she is handicapped, to an unknown degree. I have no sense of what an appropriate disposition in this case would be, but I hope she is treated fairly.
I am concerned that the baby may also suffer from birth defects and sincerely hope she wasn’t damaged further by the lack of food and care during the first few days of her life.