Horrific details of how a 40-year-old Portuguese mother-of-two allegedly disposed of an unwanted baby daughter are to be heard in court, while the woman remains free and charged with homicide.
The full horror of this story is that the baby was one of twins, writes Correio da Manhã, and her remains have never been found.
Hours after her mother is believed to have packed her away in a shoebox which she later placed in a street-side rubbish bin, the woman became ‘unwell’ and went to hospital where she was found to be in labour with a second child.
Rosa, as CM describes the woman, instantly gave the second child up for adoption.
But by this time, there was enough ‘evidence’ for health workers to suspect there had been a first birth, and thus the legal case developed.
According to the prosecution, Rosa did not “clean the baby, or give her any care at all. The defendant did not tie the umbilical cord which would have caused the baby to die “within hours”, claims the paper.
“She heard the baby cry and make noises. She put it in a cardboard box which she left while she cleaned the room” in which she had given birth.
“Six hours later she picked up the box and left it in the street, with the rubbish,” adds CM.
Rosa had never told anyone about her pregnancy, the paper explains, and continues to live with her partner and two children, aged 13 and nine, albeit in precarious circumstances.
She is unemployed and living on (meagre) benefits and, according to psychiatric evaluation, a clear infanticide risk.
The case is due to come to court almost two years after Rosa is believed to have killed her child.
The baby is understood to have been “the fruit of unprotected sex with a man Rosa met at Lisbon docks one night”.
