Among the increasing number of children whose whereabouts are not identified, it is confirmed that many of them were left in the baby box.
However, the judgment of the investigative agency and the court was divided as to whether it was left in the baby box or abandoned depending on the process of leaving it in the baby box.
Reporter Woo Jong-hoon found out.
[Reporter]
A woman in her 30s who left her baby born in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province last year at a baby box in Gwanak-gu, Seoul.
B, a woman in her 30s who gave birth to a daughter in Gwangju in 2015, also left her child at a baby box in Gunpo, Gyeonggi Province.
Fortunately, it was confirmed that both children were handed over to an orphanage and are growing up without any problems.
However, in the case of two mothers who seemed similar at first glance, the police came to the opposite conclusion.
First, the police closed the investigation on Mr. A with no charges.
She paid attention to the part where she left her child after consulting with the baby box management staff and recognizing her difficult circumstances.
On the other hand, Mr. B said that she left without consulting and not confirming that her baby was being handed over, and that she was not in a situation where she could give up raising her child, so she was charged with abandonment and neglect of children under the Child Welfare Act.
The perspective of the judiciary is not very different from that of the investigative agency.
The mother who was put on trial for abandoning her two children in a baby box in 2018 and the year before last.
The court consulted with the person in charge and confirmed the verdict of not guilty, saying that as long as the child was left in a place where an employee to protect the child resides, it should be seen as entrusted rather than abandoned.
However, in the case of leaving the child alone in the baby box, he was found guilty.
Even if they left a note with birth information, it did not affect the judgment that the child was abandoned.
[Jeong Hoon-tae / Attorney: (Baby Box) is not a legitimate childcare institution anyway, and the baby was left to another institution even though it was a child born by itself.]먹튀검증 Recently, as the police investigation surrounding unreported infants and toddlers has expanded, the operation of Baby Box has increased
. The institution is receiving a series of anxious inquiries from parents who had previously left their children behind.
Concerns are also raised that if parents who searched for the baby box as a last resort are punished one after another, their children may be in greater danger in the shadows.
[Yang Seung-won / Secretary General of Jusarang Community Church: (Government) Counseling itself is conditional on birth registration, so mothers can’t get counseling anywhere. It is our position that we should save lives first and see.]
Currently, 74% of the 97 unreported births that the police in the metropolitan area, including Seoul, are looking into, have been confirmed as children who have been handed over to the baby box.
The police are looking at whether there are extenuating reasons for the parent’s decision and whether life was respected in the process of entrusting it.