Seven silent witnesses to child abuse

Leaving baby a gesture of love
Regina Brett, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Oct. 20, 2006, Metro pg. B1.

The TV news summed up the story in two words:BABY ABANDONED.

What kind of mother would leave her newborn at a hospital?

One who loves it.

That mother did the right thing, but you might not have known it watching the news.

The mother used Ohio's safe haven law and legally surrendered her newborn to Wooster Community Hospital. The 6 o'clock news made it seem shameful. The reporter interviewed a local mom who couldn't understand how a mother could do such a thing.

What kind of mother abandons a baby to a hospital?

One who deserves our support, not our shame. She gave that baby a chance.

It's sad that little one won't know its biological parents. But there's something much worse. We saw that unfold last week in a Summit County courtroom.

Teannia Coday should never have taken her twins home.

The troubled 17-year-old gave birth to premature twin girls at Akron General Hospital on May 31, 2005. Natalie, all 3.7 pounds of her, was then treated at Akron Children's Hospital.

After that, Natalie went home to hell. The only mercy was that it lasted only five months.

Natalie was strangled, beaten and starved. When she died Oct. 29, she weighed 8 pounds.

You know how babies have dimples and endless folds of fat? At 5 months old, Natalie had no fat on her. Just skin stuck to bones. Broken bones.

Teannia and/or her boyfriend, David Hatcher, beat Natalie to death. Natalie had friction burns around her neck. Lacerations on her liver, lungs and diaphragm. The sac around her little heart was torn.

Torn.

She had 14 broken ribs and a broken collarbone. Some bones were healing - they had been broken that long.

Akron police and the Summit County Children Services Board had been contacted often about the twins. When someone called to say that Teannia shook the baby, CSB took the twins to the hospital. Doctors found Natalie had an old collarbone fracture.

CSB knew Teannia from an earlier pregnancy, when she was suicidal and punched herself into a miscarriage.

On Sept. 25 last year, Akron police took the twins. CSB placed them with Teannia's mother. Then Teannia moved in with her.

After Natalie died, Detective Crystal Bowen-Carter interviewed relatives and friends. They told her they saw Teannia throw one baby on the couch. Saw her muffle the twins' cries. Saw her spank them. Saw bruises on the babies. Heard her call them bitches.

How many adults knew Natalie was being abused?

"Seven," the detective told me. "Nobody said anything."

That's not including professionals who should have seen signs of abuse. Natalie had been to see doctors several times.

Last week, Summit County Common Pleas Judge Jane Bond asked whether anyone in the courtroom would speak on Natalie's behalf. No one did.

So the judge did. She gave Teannia 22 years in prison. David got 13.

The other baby, Kanessa, is in foster care. She had eight broken ribs and marks around her neck.

So what kind of mother leaves her newborn at a hospital?

The kind little Natalie would have dreamed of, had her short life not been one long nightmare.