John Jefferson
Inset: Christin Donat (Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The mobile home where Christin Donat lived with her 2-month-old son (WEVV/YouTube).
A 26-year-old mother in Indiana is facing neglect charges for nearly letting her infant child starve to death, with cops comparing the baby’s malnourished and emaciated condition to “that of a Holocaust survivor,” according to police officials.
Christin Donat, of Evansville, was thrown behind bars last week by the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office following an investigation by Indiana’s Department of Child Services. Local sheriff Noah Robinson told reporters at a press conference that Donat’s 2-month-old son was taken away from Donat by a friend of hers and rushed to the hospital while Donat rested at home following a work shift at Dollar General. The baby was suffering from severe malnutrition, dehydration and starvation and weighed just 6 pounds, 6 ounces — two ounces less than what he weighed at birth, according to CBS affiliate WEVV.
“One of the terms used to describe this child’s condition was almost as that of a Holocaust survivor,” Robinson said, describing the infant as having symptoms similar to emaciated temporal wasting, including “a sunken-in face, where literally all the fat has been used in the body, trying to keep it alive, resulting in the skin hanging from the bone.”
The boy went on to make a full recovery, gaining 3 pounds “in a matter of days” after his hospitalization, according to Robinson, which was an obvious sign to DCS investigators that he had been neglected, the sheriff said.
Initially, Donat claimed she was feeding her son an ounce of formula around six times a day but was spitting up much of it daily as well. She told police she was overwhelmed with work and other things going on in her personal life. But “testing and observation” by hospital workers found that Donat’s story was not true.
“Her statements to the police and the sheriff’s office afterwards provided a somewhat contradictory description of her level of care and it really left us to no other conclusion than she was being deliberately indifferent to the needs of the child, constituting neglect,” Robinson explained. “The hospital’s own testing could not replicate this child’s inability to digest food, and once the child was being fed properly, the child quickly gained three pounds in a matter of days, so we know that the child was fully capable of digesting the food.”
Robinson told reporters that if it weren’t for Donat’s pal bringing him in, the child would not have survived. He described them as a concerned friend.
Donat, who was booked and charged on Nov. 22, allegedly admitted that she should have done things differently and knew her child would have died had they not gotten him help, according to WEVV. Robinson said a DCS case manager was called to the hospital by doctors, and an investigation for child neglect was launched soon after.
Donat is being held at the Vanderburgh County Jail on a $25,000 bond.
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