I wish I knew. I've only met one mother like that, because usually when the children are abandoned, they are abandoned. We don't find the mothers. I met one mother who tried to do something. In fact, Tim was with me at the time. This young mother was 22 years old and gave birth at 11 o'clock at night. When she found out she was pregnant, she went to the man who impregnated her and he denied even knowing her. Then she was embarrassed in front of her family. She was ashamed. There's a lot of shame. The family was calling her names.
At 11 o'clock at night she gave birth and dumped the baby in a pit latrine in an outhouse. At 5 a.m. the next morning she went back to check on the baby, and the baby was alive, so she got fire and went and dumped fire in on top of the child. Her uncle heard the baby crying, and he ran and got dirt and piled dirt on top of the child to put the fire out. Then someone crawled down two or three metres and pulled the child out. The child was severely burned on her face, her hand, and her leg, and she lost her big toe. She went to the government hospital. She was there for six weeks. She lived. I don't know how, with the wounds she had.
The mother, of course, had to be there to care for her. The mother who attempted to murder the child is the caregiver in the hospital, because that's what they do. When the child was discharged, the mother was sent to the local women's prison. That day was the day that the CEO of the Egg Farmers of Canada and the chairman arrived. I said to them that I was going to pick up a baby and asked them if they would like to come. They got in the car with me. They probably would say no the next time; I'm not sure they will ever travel with me again. We actually got two babies that day and two the next day.
When we got there, I walked into the women's prison and I saw the child. The mother was there. I didn't know it was a burned baby. I immediately unwrapped her on the commandant's desk, evaluated the situation, and asked the mother to tell me her story, which she did. At the end of it I said to her—I'm sorry that I'm going on so long—that I never get to ask the mother who does this, and I asked her, “Why did you do it?” It was awkward for me to ask the question. It was an embarrassing moment, because I felt her shame. She just wept. She just wept. She didn't have an answer. She felt that she had no other solution.
So I can't answer that question.