Pols push ‘Safe Haven’ bill changes

Two Queens politicians have introduced bills to amend the state’s “Safe Haven” law, but neither pieces of proposed legislation would have protected the livery cab driver and his girlfriend for dumping a five-month-old baby at a Corona firehouse recently.
“After six months, a year, children form a bond with their parents, and we don’t want to break that bond,” said Assemblymember Jose Peralta.
Peralta’s bill would allow any guardian to drop off a child up to three-months-old at police stations, firehouses and hospitals without penalties. The bill, he said, is specifically designed to allow caretakers to figure out whether they can mentally, physically or financially take care of a child.
The state’s existing safe haven law allows parents to drop off their babies up to five days after birth at a “suitable location” so long as they notify an “appropriate person.”
“I think that five days is not enough to gauge that. If you are with a child for several months you will know (a) if you are able to buy everything a child needs and (b) deal with the child mentally in terms of can you deal with the child waking up, the child changing …” Peralta said, explaining that he hopes the bill will prevent “creative abandonment,” where babies are left in dumpsters or cabs.
On Thursday February 28, baby Daniella Perez was dropped off at a firehouse by 45-year-old livery driver Klever Sailema, who claimed that the baby’s father had run out on the taxi ride. Several days later, police discovered that the driver had concocted the story after his girlfriend, Maria Siavichay, and her brother Carlos Rodas - baby Perez’s father - asked him to dump the adorable tot.
Sailema was charged with criminal facilitation and filing a false report and his 21-year-old girlfriend faces a charge of criminal facilitation.
Both Perez and her 14-year-old mother have been taken in by the Maryland Department of Social Services. As of Monday, March 10, police were still looking for the baby’s father 27-year-old Carlos Rodas, who could face statutory rape and child abandonment charges if apprehended.
According to published reports, officials said it is still unclear whether the teen mom and her baby will be placed with the same family.
In December 2007, a newborn, named Christina Noel by staff at Elmhurst Hospital Center, was found in a dumpster by four passing teenagers, and Christina’s mother and anyone else involved in her abandonment have not yet been found.
“People are afraid. They don’t know where to go so they become desperate,” Peralta said. “If (a) they are informed about what the law is … and (b) if they know that they have a certain amount of time before they can give up the child, it gives them a sort of sense of the responsibility to take care of a child.”
State Senator Serphin Maltese introduced a matching bill to amend the state’s “safe haven” law.
In a statement, Maltese said, “As a former Assistant District Attorney and Deputy Chief of the Homicide Bureau, I know firsthand the tragedy of abandoned and ‘literally’ discarded infants who perish needlessly. I believe that rescuing abandoned babies and preventing their deaths should be our paramount interest.”
As for the response Peralta has received from colleagues in the Assembly, he said that most have been receptive to the bill. Still others speculated that if passed, the plan would promote abandonment.
“It’s a sensitive issue because you are talking about dropping off a child,” Peralta said, “At the same time, they understand this is a reality and that does happen … Everyone is just trying to avoid that a child is left harmed somewhere.”