LINCOLN, Neb. — The mother was running out of more than patience when she abandoned her 18-year-old daughter at a hospital over the weekend under Nebraska’s safe-haven law.
She was also running out of time: She knew that state lawmakers would soon meet in a special session to amend the ill-fated law so that it would apply to newborns only.
“Where am I going to get help if they change the law?” said the mother, who lives in Lincoln and asked to not be identified by name to protect her adopted child.
To the state’s surprise and embarrassment, nearly two- thirds of the 33 children legally abandoned under the safe-haven law since it took effect in mid-July have been teenagers.
But state officials may have inadvertently made things worse with their hesitant response to the problem: The number of drop-offs has almost tripled to about three a week since Gov. Dave Heineman announced on Oct. 29 that lawmakers would rewrite the law.
With legislators set to convene today, weary parents like the Lincoln mother have been racing to drop off their children while they still can.
On Thursday, authorities searched for a 17-year-old girl who fled an Omaha hospital as her mother tried to abandon her. Her 14-year-old brother was taken into state custody, health officials said.
Karen Authier, executive director of the Nebraska Children’s Home Society, said her group and others had warned senators after the law passed early this year that there could be problems, but the lawmakers did not believe it.
“It wasn’t like talking to a stone wall,” Authier said. “It was just that people who aren’t in the business of dealing with families, they aren’t aware how desperate some of these families are.”
Twenty teenagers — six 17-year-olds, two 16-year-olds, six 15-year-olds, three 14-year- olds, three 13-year-olds — have been abandoned, along with eight children who were 11 or 12. Five of the children dropped off have been from out of state.
The Lincoln mother who dropped off her 18-year-old daughter said she was repeatedly turned down when she sought help from police, state social-services authorities and the girl’s school.
The woman said her daughter had been diagnosed with a mental illness when she was 12 and had deep psychological scars from childhood abuse and from being left alone with her dead biological mother for a week.
The woman said she felt she had no choice but to leave her daughter at the hospital after a recent flurry of assault, stealing, sleeping around and cutting school.
“I thought she would get help” through the safe-haven law, the mother said.
