Mother charged with abandoning baby on church steps

A 22-year-old woman who abandoned her newborn baby on a chilly church doorstep hours after giving birth was charged today with a gross misdemeanor.

While the charge of abandonment of a dependent person in the third degree could bring up to a year in jail, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said his office will not be seeking incarceration if the woman, Sarah Christianson, is found guilty.

"I can appreciate that the decision to abandon the newborn was the product of confusion, fear and panic," Satterberg said this morning in a news release. "This misdemeanor charge will ensure that the defendant recognizes the recklessness of her actions and is also able to get the supervision, treatment and support she needs in her life."

The baby, named Mariah Verle Stevens, is being cared for by the father's family in Auburn. The father is a National Guardsman on the verge of being deployed to Iraq; he thought Christianson had an abortion, court charging documents said.

Christianson told police that she had endured three hours of labor alone in the yard outside her Federal Way apartment before delivering shortly after midnight on Sept. 28. She said she wanted to get blankets to swaddle the baby, but was locked out of the apartment she shares with her father.

Christianson said she cut the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors, threw the placenta in a trash bin at the complex and walked a third of a mile to the Steel Lake Presbyterian Church, where she left the newborn wrapped in a beach towel, according to a report provided by Federal Way police.

Christianson, who hid her pregnancy from people by wearing baggy clothing, said she knew that she couldn't afford to keep the child, court charging papers said. She told police she had researched places on the Internet where she could abandon the child without getting in trouble. She was certain that a church was one of them.

When a parishioner arrived at the church around 7:30 a.m., she heard noises coming from inside the towel and discovered the newborn, according to court charging papers. The woman called for help and held the baby until firefighters arrived.

The child was hypothermic after spending hours in the 51-degree weather but has since recovered, authorities said.

Police reviewed video surveillance, which recorded the mother outside the church. Federal Way police released details about her, as well as images, and the following day Christianson came forward.

According to charging papers, Christianson left several messages with police. In the messages, she said she thought the church "was the safest place" to leave the child and asked repeatedly for the media to stop reporting on what she did.

"I wish I could have done it in a better way, little bit safer because it was a bad situation, but I did what I did," she said in one message to police. "I didn't think an article would be printed."

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com