Eva Flores, 18, of East Boston, was arraigned today on charges she threw her infant son out a Saratoga Street window on Sept. 20, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports:
Assistant District Attorney Leora Joseph, chief of Suffolk DA Daniel F. Conley’s Child Protection Unit, told East Boston District Court Judge Roberto Ronquillo, Jr., that Flores' baby boy was suffering from abrasions and hypothermia when he was first hospitalized at Massachusetts General Hospital. Additional tests soon showed that he was also suffering from skull fractures, bleeding in the brain, and seizure disorder.
Flores gave statements to Boston Police and social workers indicating that she had thrown the baby from the window after giving birth. Evidence at the scene - including a portion of the umbilical cord found inside the drain of her bathtub - corroborated those statements.
The baby was found face down in a fenced-off alleyway between 443 and 445 Saratoga St. A neighbor heard his cries, jumped the fence, and called for help upon finding the baby lying face down.
Flores was charged with reckless endangerment of a child and assault and battery on a child under 14 with injuries. Bail was set at $1,500.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Reckless endangerment I understand...
By Michael Kerpan
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 3:21pm
... but where does assault and battery come in?
According to some media reports I've read,
By roadman
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 4:25pm
the child was apparently thrown out a window, which is how they ended up in the alley.
Answer is in updated post above
By adamg
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 4:46pm
Basically, what Roadman said.
Out the window...
By John-W
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 4:52pm
...and she lived on the second floor.
This is just horridly tragic, but at the very least boston.com did not enable comments on this story, which only would make me want to wipe out humanity (at least those who parade their hatred and ignorance on the comments board of boston.com.
So throwing a baby out a
By NotWhitey
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 8:01pm
So throwing a baby out a window is tragic, but the real problem is internet comment sites?
So you're unfamiliar with the
By pierce
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 8:04pm
So you're unfamiliar with the word "least"?
If this is the case....
By Michael Kerpan
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 4:54pm
I'm surprised she was not charged with attempted murder.
Assault and Battery
By Crystal
Sun, 10/17/2010 - 5:22pm
The assault and battery come from the fact that she dropped her baby out the window causing him injury. She's lucky she didn't kill him.
The Logical Result
By anon-a-rama
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 4:56pm
of policies that prevent women from getting access to birth control or abortion.
She had recently moved from El Salvador, where abortion is so horribly illegal that even women who have life threatening complications are expected to die rather than "kill the baby" which is dead anyway.
Oh, birth control is illegal there too. This young woman had every reason to go into denial mode - she had no options, and likely didn't know of the safe haven law, either.
Logical?
By Miss M
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 5:58pm
I'm pro-choice, pro-birth control, and pro- easy access to both, but throwing a newborn out a window isn't the logical result of anything. Using the policies of her home country to explain this woman's actions seems tenuous at best.
I agree
By anon
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 6:18pm
I'm not pro abortion or whatever you want to call it- but nothing makes me sicker than petty little ideologues taking a horrendous human tragedy and imparting their sordid myopic little political fantasies upon it- that have nothing to do with how actual real people live.
What sort of person reads a story like this and thinks "Gee- must be because of the rigid abortion laws in their home country!" What fun that person must be at the cocktail party huh? Geeesh.
What sort of person reads a
By NotWhitey
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 8:04pm
Massachusetts is full of them.
I've thought about this
By Will LaTulippe
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 2:39am
We should make a pamphlet for immigrants and hand it to them when they come to live in Boston.
Seriously, I know I'm usually Mr. Cynic around here, but it's not easy to live in a new place and learn all the social norms. Maybe we can come up with a list of basics and make their transition easier.
No, I'm not excusing the lady for throwing the baby out the window. But I imagine that being a chick is a difficult endeavor, and a good point is posed here.
Eva Flores
By anon
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 6:36pm
Let me guess... Eva Flores threw her baby boy out the window because she has a moral objection to abortion and felt the need to carry the baby to term. Of the two options, abortion would have been preferable. That baby will probably be brain damaged for his entire life
Where she came from
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 10:32pm
ElSalvador has instituted extreme Catholic doctrine as law, and this means that women have no access to birth control and are denied health care even in emergency situations, including the removal of a dead fetus, embryo, molar pregnancy, etc. If a woman has a tubal pregnancy, well, too bad. It can't be removed, even if it means death in extreme pain (even though it will never grow into a baby). If she is thought pregnant and doesn't have a baby, she can be jailed. If a woman is known to be pregnant and has a miscarriage, she can be tried and imprisoned for abortion even though miscarriage is common and natural.
Under these circumstances, she may have hidden an unwanted pregnancy or denied it until it was undeniable. This does not excuse what she did - but it may explain why she got so extreme.
The fact that she apparently
By anon
Tue, 10/12/2010 - 10:46pm
The fact that she apparently left that religious-psycho hellhole might be a point in her favor.
Clarification?
By Nonymouse
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 10:59am
Is the no access to birth control (other than abortion) a very recent restriction - as in, less than two years old? I ask because I helped write a grant for a women's health organization in El Salvador in 2008, and most of the funds were allocated toward Depro Prevera shots for women in the poorer sections of San Salvador. One of our supporting facts was that there is a high rate of tubal ligation in women under 30, and that many later come to regret the choice, so the DP program provided a non-surgical, non-permanent reproductive choice. So as of 2008, there were at least 2 legal methods of birth control available in the country, and if I remember correctly, the main bar to other forms of BC was cost, not legality.
After seeing these posts, I poked around for more information, and I can't find anything that says birth control (as in, methods other than abortion) is illegal. I know that they have tightened abortion laws even more in the past couple of years, and found lots of information about that, but none of the articles or policy briefs said anything about pre-conception birth control. Am I missing something?
Where she came from
By GRMA213
Thu, 10/14/2010 - 9:40pm
I'd like to see a credible source citation for the claim that the Catholic Church in El Salvador denies women emergency healthcare in the event of maternal complications of pregnancy. I don't believe you.
Abortion is illegal, even to save the life of the mother....
By Michael Kerpan
Thu, 10/14/2010 - 11:44pm
...in El Salvador. According to wikipedia, the Catholic Church demanded that the government eliminate even the limited exceptions under which abortions had previously been allowed. And the government complied.
Here, let me google that for you
By Kaz
Thu, 10/14/2010 - 11:46pm
I searched for "el salvador abortion health mother". It was the first google result. You are seriously lazy.
eva flores-bottom line
By bostnkid
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 10:12am
i dont care where she came from. i dont care what the abortion laws are where she comes from. i dont care that she fled her country to give birth without her family discovering her condition.
SHE THREW A BABY OUT A WINDOW!!!!!
no excuses. i hear she wants the baby now and has named her angel. throw her in jail for 50 years and let someone who wants a child adopt the poor little girl.
Yeah, execute her!
By Kaz
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 10:27am
Because nobody has ever done anything crazy while in a panic and regretted it later...especially not anybody with the kinds of hormone levels coursing through their body that comes with being 18 AND pregnant/in labor in their own bathroom without any help.
How dare she? Right?
ive never killed anyone in a panic
By bostnkid
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 11:01am
she is 18 and she has to understand as a human being that she is potentially killing a baby.hormone levels? that makes it ok? did i say they should execute her? does that mean anyone in her condition should be excused for any type of behavior they display?
what if the baby had landed on a cyclist?
No one expects the bostnkid Inquisition!
By Kaz
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 11:08am
Hormone levels and post-partum depression make it more "okay" (actually, they simply make it less worse than homicide) in many civilized countries, like Canada and Great Britain.
"Execute her" was hyperbole. You are the one wanting to throw the book at her. You tell me what level of punishment is suitable for the crime of going out of your mind while delivering a baby in your bathroom in secrecy thousands of miles from home.
While she might not be "excused", I do believe she is more excusable than someone who breaks into a house and tosses a newborn out the window for fun.
If the baby had landed on a cyclist, someone might have mistaken it for a pink hat and offered them a Red Sox Nation member card.
Mysterious hormonal excuses
By Dan Farnkoff
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 3:34pm
Sounds like you're trying to set up some kind of a gender-based, legal double standard. Could someone refuse to let a pregnant woman, or a woman who somewhat recently gave birth, work at a high responsibility job out of concern for potentially irrational behavior that might proceed from fluctuating hormone levels? The vast majority of women give birth without deciding to try to kill their baby, hormones notwithstanding. These types of justifications are frankly pretty sexist as they imply that women are not to be held accountable for their actions, owing to some irrationality based in biology, and unique to women. Would elevated testosterone ever be cited as a justification for a murder committed by a male, besides on some Law and Order episode? It's almost as if the horrific facts of the crime are cited as evidence of a lack of culpability on the part of perpetrator, which is nuts. Like saying "No father in his right mind would kill his own kid, ergo, this perpetrator is by definition insane and not legally culpable. It's monstrous and inconceivable, which makes it even more deserving of punishment, not less- IMO.
Powerful biology
By Kaz
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 3:59pm
We are nothing if not biological creatures, Dan. Sorry, but while men and women are equal in a lot of ways, when it comes to childbirth...we clearly are not. There are a LOT of neurologically active compounds going through a woman's brain during childbirth. Not only that but there's always the potential for something to malfunction and NOT have some of those same signals produced correctly. A woman who gets all of the adrenaline but none of the endorphins could easily make some bad decisions amid the pain and stress.
To isolate the discussion of hormones involved in this particular situation and then extrapolate as to whether she should be allowed to be an air traffic controller or something in the hour after she gives birth (or were you trying to extrapolate my comments even further and say that she's unfit 2 weeks later or something?) is just a strawman. We're talking about a woman already stressed out about her condition, clearly not ready for her new role as mother, and giving birth in her bathroom acting out of fear, stress, and pain in the moments after childbirth.
Acting as if biology and science have no relevance to the situation and should not be considered as mitigating circumstances, therefore we should torch her for being an abnormal monstrosity is the truly inconceivable notion here.
Thanks, Kaz
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 4:38pm
We'll make a feminist of you yet!
Its only mysterious if you choose to be willfully ignorant about the biology, pathology, and epidemiology involved in these horrendous situations.
Meanwhile, if men could have babies, then maybe Dan would spend more time worrying about what he wanted to do with his own uterus and less time trying to make the case that the government should strictly control everybody else's.
Nothing if not biological creatures?
By Milwaukee Mike
Thu, 10/14/2010 - 11:59am
Gee, where have I heard THAT before? Oh, I remember--right-wing critics of women in the military, women in govenment, etc.
By arguing that a woman's biology leaves her prone to making irrational, even horiffic decisions, you are effectively setting back feminism by decades. If somebody said that Hillary would make a bad president because she might push the button while PMS-ing, I imagine that you'd be a bit offended. I also imagine you might have a problem with somebody saying that women can't make good soldiers because they are biologically hard-wired to "mother." Both of those are pretty ignorant opinions, don't you think? You can't have it both ways. You can't decry biological determinism one minute in order to open society's doors and than use it as a crutch to excuse somebody who attempted to murder an infant the next. Maybe I've got you wrong--maybe you're in favor of biological determinism across the board. If that's the case, I'm sorry for calling you inconsistent in your opinions.
Personally, I think women are no less rational than men, and given that fact, no less responsible for their own actions just beacuse of their gender. To think otherwise is an insult to an entire gender, all on the basis of defending one person's criminal act.
Abuse of a little knowledge goes a long way
By Kaz
Thu, 10/14/2010 - 1:45pm
Right-wing critics of women in military, government, or whatever situation you want to say they can't survive in because of their biology abuse the very facts that I am stating likely played a huge role in this woman's actions.
The ramped-up hormones associated with childbirth are an acute (read as: small time scale) condition. We're talking about biology that happens and then breaks down over a matter of hours or a day or so at most. This would lead to the kind of fast response that this woman exhibited (i.e. tossing the baby out of the window in panic). However, the arguments that you cite are not supported by this, unless we're talking about a woman trying to hunt a giraffe (per Newt Gingrich's specific example of the argument that you're citing)...while having a baby at the same time....every time she tries to hunt a giraffe. It's nonsense and not a part of my comments at all. It's an abuse of a little bit of knowledge to make an absurd argument but then point at "science" and say, "see, it's based in fact!". It's either ignorant naivety to say something like "women can't be hunters/soldiers/president because of their 'biology'", or it's a maleficent lie.
You are attempting to take the very real and very short-term biological milieu that occurs during and immediately after childbirth and extend it to encompass all womanhood at all times and effecting all decisions they make in order to create a false choice of being either for or against biologically determinism. If you want a fair equivalency for Hillary and the bomb, instead ask if I think Hillary should be making the decision to nuke someone two hours after giving birth. (Psst, the answer is no, it can wait.)
Another fair equivalency would be to ask whether you think anyone at any time could reasonably and truthfully use a "temporary insanity" defense or whether they're full of crap. Imagine a man who is accidentally given a 10-fold overdose of steroids and in the temporary and ensuing rage fit, he kills someone. Is he allowed any leniency? During and immediately after childbirth, a woman's hormone levels could easily be 10-fold higher than normal. Yet, she's expected, in an already panicked state, to act more rationally? Because women, particularly first time (and especially young, first-time) mothers, should just be able to deal with childbirth all by themselves in an East Boston bathroom by default?
This woman had everything going against her making the right decision. She is young, a first-time mother, was alone in a bathroom, and had just given birth. If she wasn't in an altered mental state, she'd deserve an award. However, this is not to condone the act (and those countries mentioned earlier still have a crime called infanticide which carries a reduced penalty compared to murder) and not to say that everyone would act the same in her situation. The need here is to recognize the entire situation and not paint this as a black & white picture. But in a situation of fear and panic, heightened by hormones no less, every choice starts to look like a 50/50 evaluation. Fight or flight become equally good options which makes it easier to understand why she made the choice she did, albeit the wrong one. The punishment should fit the crime and the crime is not the same as someone who would have injured the baby out of fun or evil.
"You are attempting to take
By Milwaukee Mike
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 1:28pm
"You are attempting to take the very real and very short-term biological milieu that occurs during and immediately after childbirth and extend it to encompass all womanhood at all times and effecting all decisions they make in order to create a false choice of being either for or against biologically determinism."
I don't think that women walk around in a constant state of hormonal impairment--that's just ridiculous. Still, where's the cut-off in cases like this? This woman had just given birth--what if it was 48 hours later, or a week? In cases of infanticide well after childbirth, port-partum depression is still trotted-out as an defense. At what point does your "short-term biological milieu" expire? Does it depend upon the individual and her personal chemistry? I think that your approach here oversimplifies a complex issue into a false dichotmoy between "she's impaired by her hormones" and "she's totally fine." It seems to me like there would be many states of being between those two poles, and by your logic, many levels of personal responsibility.
Another fair equivalency would be to ask whether you think anyone at any time could reasonably and truthfully use a "temporary insanity" defense or whether they're full of crap. Imagine a man who is accidentally given a 10-fold overdose of steroids and in the temporary and ensuing rage fit, he kills someone. Is he allowed any leniency?
I fully believe in temporary insanity as a legal defense, but that's not the point your posts have been stressing. Men and women, both, can go insane in the legal sense (failure to understand the criminality of his/her actions), but you are positing a defense to a crime that is available (realistically at, least--I'd love to see a guy argue in a sexual assault case that his raging hormones made him do it) to only one gender. In the case that started this thread, if it can be argued that the mother was so distressed at the time that she was unable to understand the criminality of her actions, and was therefore temporarily insane, then that should be a mitigating factor. Any determination of her guilt should be based upon her state of mind at the time the crime was comitted. If her biochemistry at the time contributed to her state of mind and made her unable to understand the criminality of her actions, okay, that should be taken into account, but only as a contributing factor to traditional state of mind arguments. The impulse to treat a woman's body chemistry as a mitigating factor independent of sanity/insanity creates a dangerous precedent. Thinking of other classes of people covered to one degree or another by diminished capacity, like minors and the developmentally disabled, I'm troubled by any approach that might put women as a group into a category that needs special legal protection. "He's fifteen--to what extent does he understand the criminality of his actions?" is one thing, but "she's a woman--to what extent were her hormones out-of-whack at the time of the crime?" is another. It makes women and their judgments suspect solely on the basis of their gender. Also, don't forget diminished capacity is more then a defense. Minors, the insane, and the developmentally disabled aren't allowed to form contracts because they lack the ability to understand the terms of an agreement (or so the law says). I'd be hesitant to make women in an excited biochemical state (however that would be defined for legal purposes) into another such category: "Your honor, this contract is void beacuse she was suffering post-partum depression at the time it was signed--she just wasn't in control of her faculties."
As to your hypo about ODing on steroids, that's different: the man in your hypo chose to take the steroids. It's like the old 1L question about getting drunk before you murder somebody so that you can claim you were impaired at the time--if you're the one who got yourself impaired in the first place, good luck. I can't see a jury buying that one.
In this case, one also wonders
By Dan Farnkoff
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 4:02pm
whether the act was in fact premeditated. Neighbors had remarked that Flores had appeared pregnant, but then started wearing baggy clothes in an apparent attempt to hide her pregnancy. If she knew she was pregnant but told nobody, it's possible she had something like this "solution" in mind for a while. Otherwise, one must wonder what exactly her plan was. However, the fact that she wouldn't avail herself of the safe haven, and that she seemed to believe that the baby's birth and death could somehow go undetected, suggests to me someone who has a diminished mental capacity to begin with. That in itself I would tend to view as something of a mitigating factor.
Mike, about Kaz's steroid argument, I think he was suggesting that the overdose was completely involuntary, like someone slipped the guy a steroid pill or something. My problem with Kaz' analogy is that it is too rare- a proper analogy would have about half the male population undergoing a similar steroid o.d. at one time or another in their lives, with only a very small fraction of the affected individuals engaging in violent behavior while under the influence of the drug. I don't know if an experience as common as pregnancy and childbirth (although admittedly an experience that is peculiar to one gender) can be a mitigating factor, unless it can be shown that this individual's psyche was uniquely susceptible to the influence of hormones, or she had some sort of preexisting chemical imbalance. The overwhelming majority of women who have just given birth, despite the pain, anxiety, and surge in hormones, do not act like she did.
Elaboration
By Kaz
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 4:39pm
The overwhelming majority of women who have just given birth also don't give birth alone in a bathroom without a support network nor medical attention. I bet you would find the case to be that most, if not all, discarded newborns are from mothers that fit the same profile of young, alone, and in a state of panic (easily heightened by their hormonal state at the time). I never said it was her hormones alone that made her choose poorly, only that they were a serious mitigating factor to her state of mind at the time she tossed the child out a window. This is especially in light of the fact that this discussion came up surrounding her desire to name and raise the child now (you know, after she's of a more sound mind again).
Goethe described this scene...
By Michael Kerpan
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 5:02pm
... in Faust. Things didn't go well for his fictional Gretchen (who was sentenced to death).
Partly my point
By Kaz
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 5:36pm
One hopes we've become more learned than to believe Mephistopheles had some hand in all of this.
I wouldn't bet on it
By Michael Kerpan
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 8:30pm
Alas.
Holy lack of reading comprehension, Batman!
By eeka
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 4:18pm
My reading of Kaz's comments was that women are experiencing a crazy hormonal rush during active labor and lasting for a few hours after giving birth. Which seems accurate.
And no, I don't think women in active labor or who have given birth within the last, say, 24 hours should be making major life decisions, working high security jobs, operating dangerous machinery, etc. This is only a few-day window. I also don't think people who are seriously ill or have undergone major surgery should be doing these things.
Bostnkid...
By Meagan
Fri, 10/15/2010 - 4:31pm
Thank you!!! My god, what is wrong with you people??? Who cares about her religion or where she comes from- do you REALLY think that's a valid excuse?? she lives in the united states now where there are a million options when it comes to pregnancy! Drop the baby off at a hospital, police station, fire station...figure it out. You had how long to research what the US has to offer in your case? How selfish can somebody be!?!? Throwing a helpless human being out of a window that you carried around for 9 months, that shared your every move, every thought and every breath is just not something a normal person would do. I mean, this baby is HALF of you! There are people out there that can't even have children and then there's this b!tch Eva Flores who should probably go eat sh!t and die for doing something so sickening. If this woman isn't put in jail I hope to god she is thrown into an insane asylum because she is indisputably crazy!
Baby tossed out window was child of rape
By Kaz
Mon, 11/08/2010 - 5:36pm
Today, her defense attorney introduced the fact that the mother was raped by an acquaintance.
So, you can add the baby being a constant reminder of her rape to the list of destabilizing facts in this young mother's life when she panicked and tossed the kid out of the bathroom window.
toss all rape babies out windows?
By bostnkid
Tue, 11/09/2010 - 7:55am
i knew you would be here this morning Kaz! my best friends mom was raped. my best friend would be someone else if his mother had thrown him out a window. two wrongs make a right?
A "right"?
By Kaz
Tue, 11/09/2010 - 9:10am
Who said that she was right to throw him out a window?
Also, your best friend's existence argues for giving the teen her baby to raise now, not keeping it from her. Remember? It didn't die from the fall. So, I don't know why you bring your best friend up as if it's some sort of trump card you were waiting to play when I updated the discussion on the latest news.
Ask your best friend's mom what kind of personal hell and turmoil she went through, and how much therapy she's gotten, in deciding to conceive her rapist's child. I'm guessing she ran the gamut just like any other mother would have...especially if she had the same stigma of Catholic AND Jingoistic guilt that this woman had running through her mind at even thinking about abortion as an option. It was enough to drive her from her home country all the way to an East Boston bathroom.
But, nah, you're probably right. She was totally and completely sane and rational when she had just delivered the kid and tied his umbilical cord with a bread bag twistie. She should totally fry for this.
i dont know about frying her
By bostnkid
Tue, 11/09/2010 - 9:25am
but maybe we could throw her in prison for 20 years?
you're right ive been waiting all this time to throw down my "my friends mom was raped and she didnt throw my friend out the window into a filthy alley" trump card. my best friend's mom could have had an abortion, she could have given the baby up for adoption or she could raise the baby. im glad she raised him.im sure it wasnt easy but she didnt take the easiest/horrific way out.
catholic guilt? blah blah blah. is there such a thing as jewish guilt? muslim guilt? please.