Durban - For six days a young Phoenix mother went about her daily routine while the body of her 4-and-a-half-month-old foetus lay in a plastic packet in a freezer at her family home.
She then put the package into a bin bag and, apparently unaware of what was inside, her father left it on the roadside for the garbage truck to collect.
Vagrants rummaging for something to eat made the horrific discovery outside the Clayfield house and began screaming, alerting neighbours who called the police.
A 20-year-old mother of one was arrested last week on charges of concealment of birth.
However, she was released on Monday after the case was withdrawn by the Verulam Magistrate’s Court.
She had given police a statement explaining her actions, telling them that she had been turned away twice from a local state hospital where she had gone for ultrasounds.
Curious bystanders gather around a black bin bag found to contain the body of a foetus, which was discovered by scavenging vagrants. Picture: Phoenix Crime Watch
Getting no joy, she turned to a stranger, a woman who claimed to be a nurse, who told her her unborn child had no heartbeat.
Devastated, she said she agreed to take tablets that would enable her to deliver the foetus, believing her child to have already died.
In a POST exclusive, the single mom, who has a 13-month-old child, denied that she had aborted the baby because she no longer wanted it. She claimed her actions were based on being denied an ultrasound and a check-up at Phoenix’s Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital.
She was allegedly turned away on two occasions.
Speaking at her parent’s home, the call centre employee said she found out she was pregnant in April, “after feeling a change in my body. I approached the company doctor who said I was about three weeks along”.
In June she went to a local clinic as she wanted to do an ultrasound and be checked by a gynaecologist, she said.
She was given a letter and referred to the hospital.
However, she said she was turned away at the hospital, which saw patients from 7am to noon.
“As a mother to a 13-month-old daughter, I know the feelings that I should be experiencing during pregnancy. I had become ill and could not feel any movements from the baby,” she said.
“I went back to the clinic a week later and asked to be referred to the hospital again, as I desperately needed to do an ultrasound.”
She said she sat for an entire day at the hospital before being told there was no one available to perform the ultrasound, or any gynaecologist to give her a check-up.
She said she was given
a card for a clinic that
does ultrasounds.
“I called the clinic.
“They informed me it
would cost R600. This was
money I did not have.”
She then came across
an advert by a woman
advertising ultrasounds
and scans.
“I contacted her and
she told me she was a
registered nurse, and she
did not charge a lot.”
She was horrified, she
said, when she was told
there was no heartbeat.
The “nurse” then
asked if she wanted to
remove the foetus.
“She said it was a simple
procedure; she would
give me tablets...”
Several hours later, at
home, she delivered the
foetus, leaving it in the
locked toilet as her parents
were unaware of her
pregnancy.
After they went to bed
she removed the foetus
and tied it up in a plastic
packet which she placed
in the freezer.
On Thursday last
week she put the plastic
packet into a bin bag.
“My father, not aware
of what had happened,
left it on the road to be
picked up by DSW.
“However, women
going through the trash
opened the bag and began
screaming,” she said.
“A neighbour who I
had confided in blurted
out to the entire neighbourhood
that it was me.
“Everyone began
screaming and threatening
me. I quickly left to a
family member’s home,
but was picked up later
by the police.”
Hospital board member
Pastor Mervyn Reddy
said they would launch a
full investigation.
Aroona Chetty, director
of Phoenix Child and
Welfare, said there had
been several cases over
the past few months of
newborn babies being
found dead.