Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 11

Asbury Park PressSunday, March 25, 1990 All Expert calls infant killers 'desperate' Tinton Falls teen to appear in court tomorrow on murder charge Weigh to Live remembered someone a lot of other weight control programs forgot. Our guess is no. The National Institute of Health panel recently published the warning that being lust 20 The Weigh to Live System makes other diet programs pale by comparison. Is your current diet plan medically-proven with over 20 years of documented hospital testing? Did your own physician recommend your program because of its unquestionable credibility? Does your plan include specially-trained staff physicians that actually monitor your progress week by week? And does yours treat the unique needs of diabetics, hypertensives and others with special conditions? overweight is a medical risk. Please think carefully, the choice is yours.

You can trust your safety and long-term health to a weight management program that comes straight from a hospital. Or one that comes straight from a magazine. By JEANNE JACKSON Press Coastal Monmouth Bureau MOTHERS WHO kill their newborn children often keep their pregnancies hidden from family and friends and take the child's life because they cannot face the reality of having the baby, experts say. Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychologist at University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, who has studied infanticide cases, said women who kill their babies because they are unwanted are typically young women in their teens or 20s who are living with their parents.

These women may deny their pregnancy even to themselves until they give birth "The crucial moment is when the baby presents itself, then they have to act one way or the other," Resnick said. Police on Thursday charged an 18-year-old Red Bank Catholic high school cheerleader with the murder of her newborn baby after secretly giving birth to the child. Suzanne Price, 18, Riveredge Road, Tinton Falls, was charged with stabbing her newborn son with a pair of scissors Monday evening after keeping her pregnancy a secret from family and friends, according to Alton D. Kenney, first assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor. Miss Price was in fair condition at Riverview Medical Center yesterday.

She is free in $100,000 bail after being charged with murder. She is scheduled to appear in state Superior Court in Freehold tomorrow to receive a copy of the charges. Miss Price was described by school officials as a good student. Neighbors of the Price family describe them as a tightly knit, religious family. The parents of Miss Price apparently did not know about her pregnancy until after the baby was born, according to Kenney.

The father of the baby lives out of the area and has been notified of the death, he said. If convicted of murder, Miss Price faces a maximum penalty of 35 years to life imprisonment. Her lawyer, Michael J. Pappa, Hazlet Township, is out of town on vacation until tomorrow, according to a secretary. Sister Mary McAuley, the principal of Red Bank Catholic, could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Students at the school said they were told not to discuss the incident with reporters. Miss Price has not been convicted of any crime and psychologists did not discuss her specific case. However, they did offer a general profile of infant murders. Homicides of unwanted babies typically occur when babies are newborn and may be either premeditated or impulsive, Resnick said. Such homicides do not occur as much among older infants, because they are less likely to happen once a mother is attached to her child, Resnick said.

"Most women in the unwanted child category are not mentally ill but have, for some reason, a strong desire to get rid of the infant," Resnick said. The stress of giving birth, especially if the woman gives birth by herself, may worsen the woman's emotional state, he said. Last year, there were 1 5 murders of children 1 year old or younger in New other people are going to say, people close to them," Bahn said. Joseph M. Donadieu, a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese in Trenton, said most Catholic high schools have family life classes in which teen-agers are taught that abstinence is the best way for them to avoid becoming pregnant and in which the church's opposition to birth control and abortion is discussed.

"Teen-agers are taught in school that premarital sex would tend to devalue the relationship that a young man and a woman would have," Donadieu "Would general sexuality be discussed? Yes." "The first message for our children," said the Rev. John Russo, director of the diocese's Office of Family Life in West Long Branch, "is always, always whatever your problem come to us. We'll help you. We'll stand by you. "The last thing we would do (in the case of a pregnant student) is throw them out," he said.

Ilene Saporta, director of development and public relations for Planned Parenthood, Red Bank, said teen-age women tend to deny their pregnancy even to themselves. "A lot of teen-agers deny that fact from the very beginning," she said. Kathy Gunkel, director of clinical research for planned parenthood, said teen-agers are risk takers. "They don't think they're going to die, they don't think anything bad is going to happen to them," Ms. Gunkel said.

"You have this almost omnipotent view of yourself in society and that's what happens with teen-agers in regard to pregnancy and all other things. They don't think through the consequences of a pregnancy before they do something." Jersey. Infant murders made up 3.5 percent of the 408 murders commited in 1989, according to New Jersey State Police. In 1988, there were six infant murders, or 1.7 percent of the total of 350 murders, police said. Last May, a 14-year-old Ocean Township girl concealed her pregnancy from her parents and then abandoned the baby in a nearby trash bin.

However, a neighbor found the child and no charges were filed against the girl. In 1977, a 20-year-old Oceanport woman was given two years probation after pleading guilty to charges of child cruelty and neglect in connection with the stabbing death of her newborn daughter, whose pregnancy she had concealed from family and friends. The charges were reduced from an earlier charge of murder after the woman pleaded guilty. Charles Bahn, a forensic psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said a young woman who murders her newborn child is someone who is in extreme emotional distress who "really doesn't know what the alternatives are and just blindly, desperately tries to solve her problems." "They usually try to conceal the pregnancy for as long as possible and they're really overwhelmed when the birth of the child occurs," Bahn said. "They're really trying to erase it from consciousness of existence." Bahn said he believes the values of the immediate family rather than the church could, play a role in a young woman's concealment of her pregnancy.

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