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Hospital sued in kidnap of baby Sinai negligent, parents
charge
September 20, 1990|By Alisa Samuels | Alisa Samuels, EveningSun Staff
For Linda and Douglas Norris, their firstborn's first birthday was a sad reminder.
"The more we tried to put it behind us, the more we were reminded," said Linda
Norris, a legal secretary. "Today, it's his first birthday and we're still reminded,"
said the 31-year-old mother.
On Sept. 21, 1989, 2-day-old Avery James Norris, who was delivered by Caesarean
section, was kidnapped from Sinai Hospital about 10:30 a.m. by a woman dressed
as a nurse. It was nearly two months before the child was returned to his parents
unharmed.
Yesterday, the couple, with their bouncing, crawling 35-pound toddler present,
announced they had filed a $38 million civil lawsuit in Baltimore Circuit Court
against the hospital, alleging negligence for failing to provide adequate security to
protect their child.
The hospital, however, denies any wrongdoing.
The couple are seeking $10 million in compensatory damages for them and their
son because of the mental anguish they were subjected to. They are also seeking
$20 million in punitive damages for them and their son and $8 million for other
damages.
An attorney for the Norrises, Stuart R. Blatt, said the case is probably the first child
abduction case to go to trial. Others usually settle out of court, he said.
Blatt said Sinai wouldn't "come up with an amount of money that was reasonable."
He said he expects the case to go to trial within a year.
But Douglas Norris said, "It's not for the money. It's for the principle of the matter."
He said, "Hospitals need to spend whatever money it will take to provide security,"
and that he's not suggesting locking hospital room doors, but "you have to wake
up to the '90s."
"We're sending a message to other hospitals, if you allow this to happen, then you
have to pay for it in every way," he said. The couple said they don't want this to
happen to someone else.
According to Vicki Hunter, the hospital's spokeswoman, the charges are
unfounded. "We believe we acted appropriately . . . and that we ha appropriate
security in place at the time of the abduction of the infant," Hunter said.

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Furthermore, she said, the abduction involved a "third party." She was referring to
Karleane Wilkinson, 26, who was found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to
prison. She was mother to three children.
Avery, who weighed 8 pounds, 12 1/2 ounces at birth, was recovered Nov. 15 when
police arrested Wilkinson at her Woodmoor home, after receiving a tip from a
suspicious county health department clerk. Wilkinson tried to obtain a birth
certificate for a child she claimed had been born at home.
Hunter said that when the baby was recovered, the hospital performed a series of
blood tests to verify that the child was biologically theirs. Meanwhile, Linda Norris
said the ordeal has changed their lives. It pushed them in front of the media.
They have appeared on the Oprah Winfrey and Jane Wallace television talk shows,
discussing missing children.
"Our lives were shattered," she said. And "Everywhere we go, we get stopped."
People recognize them from television and ask how their son is. "When we go to a
mall or to a Carvel store, people stop us," she said. Nonetheless, they are thrilled
to have Avery back. They say he loves to eat. "He doesn't discriminate against any
foods," the father said. The Norrises said they planned to celebrate Avery's first
birthday quietly at home with family and friends.
When he was missing, "I hoped and prayed that I would see him on his first
birthday," said Linda Norris. "You never know what's going to happen.
"I just thank God." Linda Norris, who is 4 months pregnant, said she doesn't plan
to return to Sinai.
In Kidnappers, Maternal Instinct Goes Haywire
July 07, 1991|By Thomas Frank,Scripps Howard News Service.
The woman who opened the door to police seemed like the last person who would
disguise herself as a nurse and kidnap a 2-day-old boy from his mother`s hospital
room.
Karleane Wilkinson kept her single-family house in suburban Baltimore
immaculate. The kitchen sink not only had no dishes, it sparkled. The dining room
table was set perfectly with place mats and utensils. Cradling a baby in her arms,
she willingly showed police the upstairs, where a nursery was filled with toys, a
dresser, a crib and cards her three teenage children had drawn for the baby. In the
teenagers` rooms, you could have bounced a quarter off the beds.

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``It looked like a Montgomery Ward showroom,`` Baltimore detective VernonHolley
recalled. ``I didn`t even believe people lived in the house. ``
Wilkinson is living in a different house now, the Women`s House of Corrections in
Jessup, Md., where she is serving a 30-year sentence for kidnapping Avery Norris.
At her trial, Wilkinson conceded that the baby at her house was not hers, but she
claimed to have had a baby at home recently who at some point, she said, had been
switched with Avery Norris. Wilkinson`s daughters and neighbors testified they
had seen her pregnancy develop. Her daughters even said that when they came
home from school on Sept. 21, 1989, the day the kidnapping occurred, they saw
signs of a home delivery-blood on some sheets, on their mother`s leg and on the
baby`s face.
But Wilkinson apparently had faked a pregnancy and home birth, and a jury
convicted her of kidnapping. Experts suggest that what probably happened is that
Wilkinson, like most kidnappers of newborns, was driven by an urge to have a
baby. The dozen or so infant kidnappings that occur in hospitals each year in the
United States are amazingly similar in method and motive.
In Little Rock, Ark., in 1988, a woman dressed as a nurse entered Annette Thomas-
Jones` room and told her a doctor was coming to examine her. The woman, a
mother of five, pulled the privacy curtain around Thomas-Jones` bed and said she
was taking her son to the nursery. Instead, she took him home to her boyfriend,
who had beenexpecting her to give him a baby. ``It`s probably the worst illustration
of sexism,`` said John Rabun, of the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children. ``For this lady to feel worth, value, self-esteem, she`s got to produce a
baby. It`s not a matter of being a mother because a number of these women are
already mothers. It`s a matter of becoming a mother.
``Many times she has miscarried, or for some reason can`t have a child of her own.
She probably has a relationship with an adult male, and she feels like she has to
produce a baby.``
On Sept. 21, 1989, Karleane Wilkinson donned a nurse`s white blouse, draped a
stethoscope around her neck and walked into a first-floor maternity room at
Baltimore`s Sinai Hospital.
Linda Norris sat in the sun-drenched room relaxing with Avery, her 2-day- old son,
in her arms, waiting to be discharged. She was not surprised when a nurse
announced that a doctor was coming in to examine her.
Wilkinson helped Norris into bed, drew the privacy curtain and told Norris she was
taking Avery to the nursery. But she drove home with the baby her children and
neighbors had been expecting her to have.

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Norris and her husband, Douglas, a printer, faced intense police questioning. What
did the woman look like? Is there anyone who would do this to you? A former lover
seeking revenge? Have you or your husband had an affair?
Police checked hundreds of leads from people who called in, but they eliminated
each. They asked the Bureau of Vital Records to let them know if anyone applied
for a birth certificate for a baby born at home. Eventually, they got one about a
Jamaican-born woman who wanted a birth certificate for her newborn son so she
could return to her native country.
That call led police to the home of Wilkinson, 32 and unemployed, with a history of
faking documents, passing bad checks and using aliases.
Everyone in the neighborhood believed that the baby, whom Wilkinson called
Taivon, was hers. Wilkinson even had the baby ``dedicated,`` although she kept the
child virtually hidden in blankets throughout the church ceremony.
When the police first saw her in her home on Nov. 15, 1989, they had a tough time
believing she could be the kidnapper. Of the 500 or so mothers whom Det. Holley
had visited during the investigation, Wilkinson was one of the friendliest.
She explained that the boy was born at home and gave Holley the name of her
obstetrician.
Back at the police station, Wilkinson`s story unraveled with a phone call to the
obstetrician. He last had seen Wilkinson in April 1989, when she had a checkup
because she thought she was pregnant and produced a urine specimen confirming
this. The doctor recommended additional tests but never saw her again.