Mother denies leaving baby in Amsterdam dumpster
The 31-year-old woman suspected of attempted infanticide denies that she left her newborn baby in an underground container in Amsterdam-Slotermeer in October 2014. The woman was arrested in Germany in April and appeared in court in public for the first time on Tuesday during an introductory hearing in the court in Amsterdam.
The child was found at 4:15 a.m. on Sunday, 26 October 2014 after a passerby heard crying sounds coming from an underground dumpster in Fritz Conijnstraat. The police managed to free the girl from the container alive with the help of the fire brigade.
"I am not the one who did this. I have several children and they mean everything to me. They are my family. I do not have the heart to harm them," said suspect Todisoa R. via video link from prison Ter Peel. She admitted that she was the mother. She also said that she named her child Nomena at the time.
It appears from the varying statements that the woman made to the police that she suspects that the father may have put the baby in the dumpster. She told the police that she was taken by the father to a cellar or shed, where she was told that her child had died and was buried. However, the personal details of the possible father are so sketchy that the man has not yet been found to be questioned as a witness. The woman only knows that she spoke French to him and called him Kaba. The court decided that he may be heard as a witness as soon as more information about his identity is known.
The prosecutor said after the hearing that the police had investigated the role of the father, but that there are no indications that he left the child in a plastic bag in the garbage. The judiciary does not consider this statement by the woman plausible. On the instructions of R., the police investigated the house where the suspect saw Kaba walk in twice, but the residents do not know him.
The 31-year-old woman has six children, the judge read from the file. The eldest daughter lives in Madagascar. Then she has three more children who are staying in the asylum seekers' center in Katwijk with her boyfriend. Her newborn youngest daughter is staying with her in the penitentiary. That was also the reason the suspect could not come to the court in Amsterdam. "The hardest thing for me is that I'm not with the children," said the woman.
The girl who was found in the dumpster in 2014 is now 6 years old. She was adopted and according to the Public Prosecution Service she is doing well.
The hearing will be substantively handled on 5 November.
Reporting by ANP