Group giving ‘safe haven’ signs after baby’s rescue
A Marlboro-based group is supplying all fire stations and hospitals near the Lower Mills section of Dorchester with bright yellow signs identifying them as “baby safe havens” one week after a newborn was found alive there in a trash can.
“Because I’m a young woman and sympathize with other young women who are struggling, I want them to have access to information to make the right decision in a case like this,” said Mackenzie Lee Clement, 19, of Woburn, a spokeswoman for Baby Safe Haven New England. “If I was in a crisis, I would want someone to do the same for me.”
The signs urge desperate mothers to leave their newborn at a hospital emergency room or a staffed fire, police or emergency medical services station. If there is no answer at the station, the signs say, they should go to the nearest hospital emergency room.
“No questions asked!!!” the signs emphasize. “But information may be given.”
On Friday, Clement will present 20 signs to the Boston Fire Department, two to the Milton Fire Department and one sign each to Carney Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Milton.
Boston and Milton fire departments will have two of their youngest firefighters be their representatives because Baby Safe Haven New England has been a youth-led awareness campaign since 2005, a strategy that director Mike Morrissey of Marlboro says has given Massachusetts more than 95% fewer newborn abandonments since Massachusetts’ Baby Safe Haven Law was passed in 2004.
The law says that “voluntary abandonment” of a baby 7 days old or younger to a hospital, police department or manned fire station doesn’t in itself count as abuse or neglect, and it doesn’t automatically waive parental rights.
Prior to the law’s passage, Massachusetts averaged just over three newborn abandonments per year, Morrissey said. Last week’s Dorchester abandonment was the first in seven years.
Marie Merisier, 33, is charged with attempted murder and reckless endangerment in connection with the incident. She was held on $100,000 cash bail after appearing in the Dorchester Division of the Boston Municipal Court on Monday.
Merisier was working in a 73-year-old man’s home in Dorchester on Friday when she went into the bathroom for an extended period of time, prosecutors said. She came out, and the man heard the newborn crying inside her leather bag, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. After she declined an ambulance and left, the DA said, the man called 911.
A Good Samaritan was walking by Pat’s Pizza — about 200 feet from the man’s apartment — when she heard cries coming from a trash can. She flagged EMS for help, and the baby is now in good condition in a foster home.