A “monster mother” who carried out “an evil deed” - that’s how community members described Petronella Mosterd, 36, earlier this year when her name came up on the court roll in the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court.
Two months earlier, she had been seen dumping her newborn baby girl in a drain in Macassar.
Perpetrator of attempted murder, or victim of abject poverty and circumstance?
Somewhere in-between, Mosterd sits with hundreds of other South African women - the highest number of whom come from the Western Cape - with a mark against her name.
She is a baby-dumper.
If Miracle - as the baby was subsequently named - had died from exposure to the elements, she would be up for murder.
Department of Social Development spokeswoman Melany Kuhn confirms there is a “growing phenomenon” of baby-dumping in the Western Cape.
Though neither her department nor the police would provide statistics, she says the media report only a few of the cases.
“Many more are abandoned by parents who simply leave them with neighbours, friends or family members and then disappear for years, or even permanently.”
She says recent research shows “women in disadvantaged communities - where the more public abandonment of children through dumping takes place - often have from mental-health problems, including depression, which go undetected at the clinics where they give birth”.
These mental-health conditions affect rational thinking and decision making, and require “urgent attention”, Kuhn says.
Executive head of Child Welfare Western Cape Niresh Ramklass says several risk factors may cause mothers to dump their babies.
“Underlying reasons include poverty, teenage pregnancies, HIV, mental illness, domestic violence, unplanned pregnancies, and alcohol and substance abuse.”
He says these factors are coupled with the issue that “many young mothers are unaware of the options of assistance, adoption, foster care and child support”.
For Gugulethu resident Katie Apleni, 49, just another “baby abandonment case”, registered by social services 17 years ago, changed her life.
Apleni already had three children - the youngest was three - when her neighbour sent her a message a social worker in Langa wanted to speak to her.
“They said it was urgent and I must go and see them.
“They explained a child had been left in the doorway of a building in Nyanga East.
“Somehow, they made the connection that the little baby girl - just eight months old - was my brother’s daughter.
“They thought they should contact me first, because I was the blood relative.
“Even though I had nothing, I felt I could take this child and raise her as my own daughter.”
Apleni soon heard from community members the baby had been given only mielie meal in a bottle, and sometimes was given only water for days on end.
“Later we heard from other people the child’s mother had been giving her wine. I just took that baby and put her inside my heart.
“Yes, there have been difficulties along the way, because of what happened to her at the beginning of her life.
“But I am her mother and I deal with those problems.”
Exposure of a newborn baby to the elements is often fatal, with malnourishment and suffocation the major causes of death.
Open fields, gutters, toilets and dustbins are often chosen as “hiding places” for babies who are abandoned or killed by a parent.
But for some abandoned babies their first port of call is a white “deposit box” in a wall that leads to another room.
Non-profit organisations create these facilities.
They give mothers the option to abandon their babies anonymously, knowing they will be properly cared for.
One such organisation, Baby Safe, has been in operation since 1996.
It now has eight “safes” in South Africa and one in neighbouring Swaziland.
“Just this year alone, five babies arrived at our Noordhoek safe,” says Baby Safe community counsellor Meehan Shannon.
This is their highest number for a quarterly figure to date, and some of the safes at other locations have received even more, Shannon says.
“Typically, the babies are deposited very late at night, or early in the morning when it is still dark.”
The baby safe is located just off the main road in Sun Valley.
While this makes it easily accessible to mothers who wish to use it, it also means it’s in the public eye.
Shannon says the women perhaps choose discreet hours, as there is “some shame involved”.
But she says one cannot make any assumptions about women who make this choice.
“We can look at stats and have our ideologies.
“But we can’t even pretend to understand the intensity of the situation these women are in.
“And we applaud these mothers for choosing a safe space for their babies rather than a rubbish bin or gutter.”
Guaranteeing the anonymity of the mothers also makes it difficult to assess their reasons for abandoning their babies, as there is no follow-up conversation.
Shannon says one can only look at the correlation between these women, and those who choose to have terminations of pregnancy, to gain some type of insight.
“No woman enjoys thoughtlessly tossing her baby aside as if it’s nothing.
“It would usually be a situation of unemployment, no support from a husband or boyfriend, no extended family to offer help, and basically just a sense of utter desperation.”
She says depositing an unwanted baby is viewed as a “last resort”. That is why Baby Safe also offers community-based training in Masiphumelele, Ocean View and Red Hill to give women more power over their sexual and reproductive health.
They also offer pre- and post-abortion counselling. In all their work they target women who could be “at risk of dumping their babies”.
Marion Stevens, co-ordinator of Wish (women in sexual and reproductive health and rights) Associates, highlights the context in which an expectant mother may take the painful decision to dump her baby.
She says sexual partners often deny paternity of the unborn child.
Meanwhile, expectant mothers often find out - on the same day - they are pregnant and HIV positive.
“The child might also have been conceived in circumstances that were coercive.
“So this isn’t just about joining the dots and judging the mothers. It is a jagged line.”
She says the system also fails older women, and young and adolescent girls, because sexual and reproductive education is not provided in schools.
“There should be education regarding the proper naming of parts of the body, around feelings, and boundaries – the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ stuff.
“The social-development cluster should be to provide young people with skills and understanding of their sexuality at an age-appropriate level.”
From a criminal justice perspective, it is the end result that matters.
The current position in South African law is that infanticide is not recognised as a separate crime, but as the common-law crime of murder.
Carina van der Westhuizen, author of an academic paper on the issue, says: “This also applies to a parent who abandons a baby with the intention of killing it.
“If the infant dies, the parent can be charged with murder or, if the baby does not die, with attempted murder.
“In a case where the parent negligently abandons a child, the parent can be charged with culpable homicide.” - Saturday Argus