A woman has been charged with concealing the birth of a deceased child after the body of an infant boy was found in a stormwater drain in Perth’s north earlier this week.
WA Police Acting Inspector Jessica Securo said the 31-year-old woman would appear in Perth Magistrates Court on September 12.
The woman came attention to police through community information on Wednesday, two days after workmen found the infant’s body in a storm water drain on La Salle Road in Alexander Heights.
Police confirmed the baby was a newborn boy, who had been in the drain for “several days”.
“This of course is highly distressing for the entire community, detectives and, as you can imagine, the family of the infant,” Securo said.
“The family and [other] community members have provided us with so much information and we’re thankful for that.
Securo said police were continuing to investigate.
“The baby was not killed violently however the circumstances around the death of the child are ongoing,” she said.
“The investigation is progressing, and I can’t answer at this stage if charges will be upgraded or not.”
Securo could not confirm whether the woman was local to the Alexander Heights area.
She said the community’s help had been invaluable in finding the mother.
“The community helped us get to this mother as quickly as we could and get her the help that she needed,” Securo said.
Jessica Securo addresses the media.Credit: 9 News Perth
“The mother is cooperating with police, and our priority is to give her that physical and mental health support.”
She also praised the workmen who found the baby for moving quickly following the discovery.
“It is a highly distressing and confronting thing for anyone to come across and we’re just thankful that the tradesmen alerted police as soon as they did,” Securo said.
Under WA’s Criminal Code, a person could be jailed for up to two years under the offence.
The charge reads:
“Any person who, when a woman is delivered of a child endeavours, by any secret disposition of the dead body of the child, to conceal its birth, whether the child died before, at, or after its birth, is guilty of a crime, and is liable to imprisonment for two years.”
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