Women Who Kidnap Babies Are Trying To Save Their Relationships

Stealing another womans baby, whether from a hospital or a stroller on the street, is one of the most unimaginable crimes around. How can one woman cause so much suffering to another?

Far from being crazy, the women who steal babies often do it because they are trying to keep a romantic or marital relationship alive, experts say. These women think that only a baby will stop their man from leaving them. Cathy Nahirny, a senior analyst at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, admitted that the explanation sounded bizarre. But its the truth.

In a case that recently dominated the headlines, a kidnapper, Ann Pettway, abducted a 19-day-old infant from a hospital in 1987. The girl, born Carlina White, was reunited with her biological family earlier this month, and Pettway told authorities after she was arrested that she wanted a baby but had several miscarriages. A cousin of Pettways said, though, that the woman may have kidnapped Carlina in an effort to hold on to her boyfriend.

Nahirny, speaking in general about such cases, said that the abductor often finds that the relationship, previously on the rocks, gets better when she tells her companion that shes pregnant. But then she has to produce a baby. Shes afraid to tell him shes had a miscarriage, Nahirny said. She has it in her head that hell leave.