Mother Who Left Baby Outside NYC Restaurant Calls Arrest 'Unjust'

EAST VILLAGE, NY — A mother who left her 14-month-old baby outside an East Village restaurant in 1997 called her subsequent arrest "unjust" in a new interview with the New York Post.

Anette Sørensen, of Denmark, was visiting New York in 1997 with her young daughter when she left the baby outside in a stroller while she went into an East Village restaurant.

Sørensen was arrested and strip-searched, and the incident spurred intense media scrutiny and a vigorous debate about parenting styles. New Yorkers expressed shock that Sørensen would leave a baby unattended, while Danish parents were astounded at her arrest and said the practice was common in Danish cities like Copenhagen.

Sørensen is working to promote her 2012 novel based on the experience, and is raising funds to have the book translated into English. She told the New York Post in a new interview this month that her arrest and separation from her daughter, which happened nearly 20 years ago, was "traumatizing." She wants her book to be translated into English to "to show it’s possible to live another way."

Sørensen was arrested in May 1997, when she was visiting New York City with her young daughter. Sørensen met the baby's father, an American, at Dallas BBQ, 132 Second Ave., leaving her daughter Liv on the sidewalk in a stroller. Concerned passersby called the police, and Sørensen and the baby's father, Exavier Wardlaw, were charged with endangering the welfare of a child. Both spent the night in jail while 14-month-old Liv was placed in foster care. After four days of separation, the baby was reunited with her mother.

The charges were later dropped, but not until after Sørensen's arrest had dominated headlines in New York City and spurred intense attention from Denmark and around the world. Sørensen was later awarded $66,000 in a wrongful arrest lawsuit.

The novel, and her effort to translate it into English, are "a way of getting back what I never got" Sørensen told the Post.

"I always had a big longing for an apology," she says in a Kickstarter fundraising video for her novel. "I probably never will get this apology."

Image credit: Diane Bondareff, File / AP Photo. Image caption: In this Dec. 7, 1999, file photo, attorney Michael Carey, left, and his client Anette Sorensen leave New York's U.S. District court after the second day of trial of her $20 million lawsuit against the city. The jury awarded her $66,000, rejecting many of her claims but agreeing that she should not have been strip-searched, among other findings. The Danish mother, whose 1997 arrest for leaving her baby outside a New York eatery sparked an international debate about parenting, says she still feels she was unfairly vilified.