TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A 21 year old woman has been arrested on charges of murdering her newborn baby boy in Taiwan’s Miaoli County.
The 21 year old woman, surnamed Liu (劉), drowned her child on Dec. 21, only days after giving birth on Dec. 15.
Upon arriving at home from the hospital with the newborn, Liu found that there were no family members home and decided to immediately dispose of the child.
According to reports, Liu carried the child to a neighborhood temple less than 50 meters from her home and then drowned the child in the temple’s public sink.
She then placed the corpse in a plastic shopping bag and discarded the body in the brush behind a transformer box across the street.
The young woman initially told her family that the child had been given to child services to be put up for adoption.
Alarms were raised with authorities because the child was never brought to the household registry offices, and health administration officials were concerned that the family had failed to complete necessary vaccination procedures for the child.
On Friday, Feb. 22, health officials and social workers came to the home to inquire about the child. The woman at first claimed that she had never delivered the child, but had gone to an obstetrics clinic and “cut out the tumor.”
The city officials contacted law enforcement following their meeting with Liu. On Saturday, Feb. 23, police confronted Liu on the matter. She first told them the child had been adopted, before changing her story to say the boy had died suddenly for an unknown reason.
Eventually, she broke down into tears, and revealed what had she had done to the police, pointing officers in the direction of the temple and the abandoned body.
According to reports, the young woman initially wanted to have an abortion but felt pressure from her family to go through with the birth.
A religious ritual to put the child's spirit to rest, was held by temple staff and family members at the site where the body was abandoned, as reported by Apple Daily.
The woman was arrested on charges of murder by the police officers and was taken into custody on Saturday evening.
Liberty Times reports that this is the woman’s second child. She had a son three years ago with another man who was sentenced to prison for robbery charges shortly after the child was born. Her son is being raised by his paternal family.
