Mom Sues NYC After Baby Put in Foster Care

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A London police officer and single mother is suing every agency involved in placing her baby in foster care during a visit to New York in April. Louise Fielden was arrested at the Chelsea Highline Hotel for leaving her son, Samuel, who was younger than six months at the time, alone for more than an hour on two occasions, reports the New York Daily News.

Fielden, 42, counters that she left her son sleeping on a cot for 30 minutes while she went to sterilize his bottles, and says she was eating in the kitchen nearby when witnesses thought they saw him alone in the hotel lobby. She says in “my culture and society in London … leaving a child for a short period of time is normal and acceptable.”

Further complicating matters, Justia reports that Fielden was caught with a bottle of codeine pills, and the arresting officer says she “twisted away from me” and “refused to place her hands behind her back, making it difficult to place the defendant in handcuffs without the assistance of two other police officers.” But Fielden claims she was unnecessarily bruised during the arrest and that her baby, who is now 15 months, is being held “hostage and kidnapped in a foreign country.” She also points out that Samuel’s foster mother, of Queens, is a member of “Single Women in Support of Homos” and threw a “porno bingo” party to raise money for the group, and that her values are antithetical to Fielden’s “conservative upbringing in the Church of England.” (A Utah judge ordered gay foster parents to give up the baby they hoped to adopt.)

By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore

(Photo: Louise Fielden)

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This article originally appeared on Newser: London Mom Sues NYC After Baby Put in Foster Care