Once again the news has been covering a recent trend of crimes regarding an obsession with what lies within; another woman has been found dead after having her baby cut out of her womb. This scenerio has been happening all too frequently over the last decade or so…women being killed for the babies that they carry inside of their wombs. It leaves a terrible legacy of emotional difficulties for family and friends not to mention the child; if it miraculously survives the amateur delivery.
In many of the cases, the women who do the killing have had an obsession with having a baby or being pregnant; often they have tricked those closest to them into believing they are pregnant and about to deliver. Then, after they have stolen an infant, they try to pass it off as their own birth child.
This goes beyond a normal desire to have a child…going through infertility and feeling the normal range of emotions that a woman would have about not being able to give birth. It is hard for most of us to understand how someone could become so obsessed with a desire to have a baby; that they could MURDER, a pregnant woman, to meet their own needs.
How does a person transform from a normal, temporary depression or sadness due to miscarriage or infertility, to becoming a person who murders? Do they lose their ability to know right from wrong? Maybe through the court system’s expert witnesses (mental health experts) we will get more information about this condition. This past week the life of another young woman, about to become a mother, was tragically stolen.
An 18 year old woman was found dead with her belly cut open, her womb having been invaded; her child missing. The young woman’s name was Kia Johnson. She was allegedly found in the apartment of another woman by the Andrea Curry Demus. Ms. Demus has been charged, as of sunday, with several charges including kidnapping, unlawful restraint (Ms. Kia Johnson was bound by the hands and feet with duct tape), and murder.
Ms. Andrea Curry Demus allegedly tried to say that she had given birth to the baby, who still had it’s umbilical cord attached, when she showed up to a hospital with the baby. When tests were performed, it revealed that she was not the baby’s birth mother.
This is not the first time that Ms. Demus has allegedly taken someone else’s infant. In 1990, she was found with a 3 week old infant that she had removed from a hospital, after the child’s mother left for home overnight. The day before that, she had stabbed another woman because she allegedly planned to steal her infant. Ms. Curry was incarcerated after pleading guilty in 1991 and was paroled in 1998. We have not heard too much about what happened in her life between 1998 and now, 2008. Did she get any psychological help during this time? I don’t know, maybe this tragedy could have been prevented. If these current allegations are true about her, Ms. Curry is not alone in her quest; to have a child by whatever means possible.
Quite often in these cases of alleged womb raiders, you’ll notice it is reported that the convicted women have suffered either extreme infertility, miscarriages or a mental condition that has left them with an obsession to have a child. The extent to which they will go, to have a child, is often missed by those closest to them. They need medical and psychological treatment to protect others from violence; but many times, before family or friends even suspect that professional help is needed; it is too late…a crime has been committed, and lives have been destroyed.
I am sad for the victim, Ms. Kia Johnson, and her friends and family. They have all suffered a terrible tragedy and will need alot of support. Pregnancy is such a special time in a woman’s life…unfortunately, it is also when she is most vulnerable. It is sad to think that along with typical worries about what to eat, what to avoid, getting check ups…a woman must also be constantly concerned about her physical safety from predators, wherever she goes!
Write where you are 
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