Family loses custody of baby born in toilet

BOSTON – The family of a woman who gave birth in an airport bathroom, then left the baby for dead in a toilet bowl wrapped in toilet paper, has lost custody of the child.

Boston Juvenile Court Judge Paul D. Lewis on Tuesday found Kelly Angell, 20, of South Portland, Maine, unfit to parent her baby.

He denied custody to Angell’s parents, Mark and Lee Angell, also of South Portland.

The Department of Social Services will retain custody of the baby, DSS spokeswoman Carol Yelverton said.

A care and protection trial has been set to start on Jan. 18 to determine if the baby’s father can have custody.

Angell was given a 17-month suspended sentence and ordered to continue counseling on Sept. 27. That sentence came when a judge found her guilty of child abandonment and allowing injury to a child under 14.

Prosecutors had asked that she be sentenced to 18 months in prison on the abandonment charge and five years’ probation for the other charge.

Authorities said Angell gave birth in a Logan Airport bathroom on the evening of May 26 just before trying to board a plane headed to London.

She was going to see the infant’s father, Graeme Clifton, a 21-year-old computer science student at East Anglia University in Norwich, England.

A cleaning woman found the baby and doctors who happened to be in the terminal at the time provided emergency medical care.

Angell told authorities she thought the baby was dead after she gave birth.

But witnesses said they heard it crying while Angell was still in the bathroom.

The baby, Benjamin Robert Angell-Clifton, spent five days in a Boston hospital.

At the time, he was treated for hypothermia and pneumonia.