Women are victims but they are also perpetrators of evil.
Like the Kentucky woman womb raider – not tomb raider as in the movie which starred Angelina Jolie. A woman identified as 33 year old Kathy Michelle Coy was arrested and accused of kidnapping and murdering a young pregnant woman and stealing her baby.
I had just seen a Lifetime Made for TV movie about this heinous crime. A woman posed as a nurse to steal a young pregnant woman’s baby.
It has happened in real life: 271 cases in the U.S. have been reported since 1983, out of about 4 million babies born every year. Half of abduction cases happen in health care facilities where a woman masqueraded as a hospital employee.
Why does a woman do this, especially if she supposedly already had children? I was asked by HLN host Jane Velez Mitchell on her TV show ISSUES which aired April 15,
Some womb raiders are already mothers, but have a pathological need to have babies to bear children and to feel fulfilled, as they are empty inside. This can be cultural, as women who are fertile and mothers are valued, given status and attention. Others are infertile or have had miscarriages, and envy pregnant women or must have the baby to keep a man.
In any case, womb raider/child snatchers are criminals and con artists. They may also have personality disorders and have a psychotic delusion of having three baby, but I doubt they can be defended on the basis of temporary insanity (requiring a failure to know the difference between right and wrong) as they plan for a long time, befriending the pregnant woman, pretending to be a nurse, or in this case, lying that she was pregnant too and that she worked for a program providing diapers and clothes for newborns, changing her hair color, and ditching the woman’s body in the woods.
In this case, the coroner would not release the details about how the baby was extracted at this time. But I know the horror that in other cases the baby snatcher uses scissors, knives or even box cutters to cut the pregnant woman’s stomach, performing a crude Caesarean.
Thus, the act has been called “newborn kidnapping by Caesarean section.”
Thankfully in this case the infant survived (some die). The little boy will need professional support when he finds out the circumstances of his birth, and mourns his mother’s death and suffers anger towards the womb raider.
Grave sympathy to the father, who will always morn how his son was born.
The neighbors also deserve sympathy. They are victims too, as one neighbor expressed how she believed the womb raider when she said she was pregnant, thought “nothing seemed out of place” when she bought baby items from her yard sale, and had no idea she would do such a thing. It’s that old mystery that the perpetrator of evil “seemed so normal” to others. The neighbors were all duped and undoubtedly will suffer too from questioning their judgment.
Many in this tragedy need healing.
One last word about Facebook and its dangers. Having just seen the made for TV movie The Craigslist killer, who met his prey on the internet, here’s another horrific use of social media: the womb raider met and befriended her prey, the pregnant woman, and her husband, on Facebook.