Woman jailed for leaving toddler in pram outside restaurant speaks out

The woman decided to leave Liv and her baby stroller outside the restaurant as she and Wardlaw were inside while keeping an eye on her from the window. Photo / Getty Images

A Danish woman jailed by New York police 20 years ago for leaving her baby in a stroller outside a restaurant while she was dining inside is speaking out.

Anette Sorensen was a 30-year-old aspiring actress who returned to New York City in May 1997 from Copenhagen.

She met up with Exavier Wardlaw, the biological father of her then-14-month-old daughter, Liv, according to the Daily Mail.

A Danish woman jailed by New York police 20 years ago for leaving her baby in a stroller outside a restaurant is speaking out. Photo / AP

According to the New York Post, the couple decided to grab a drink at Dallas BBQ in Manhattan's East Village.

Sorensen decided to leave Liv and her baby stroller outside the restaurant as she and Wardlaw were inside while keeping an eye on her from the window.

She says she was doing what any normal parents would have done in her native Denmark, where babies in strollers are left on sidewalks while their mothers and fathers shop and dine indoors.

"I had lived in New York [during school], so, of course, I knew that I didn't see prams all over the city," said Sorensen in an interview published Saturday.

"But… I had been living in Copenhagen, I had given birth to my daughter in Copenhagen, I was raised myself in Denmark… That's just how you do it in Denmark."

Diners and servers at the restaurant noticed the baby was outside and asked the couple to bring her in, but Sorensen and Wardlaw declined.

While witnesses at the time told the press that the baby was crying, Sorensen insists that Liv was comfortably asleep in her stroller.

Nonetheless, someone called 911 and the police showed up.

"The first time she woke up was when the officer took her out of the pram," Sorensen told the Post.

Sorensen said that the two police officers who initially arrived were going to allow her to leave with Liv.

But then a third officer arrived and things changed.

"I said, 'I'm leaving now,' and he said, 'No, you're not: You're arrested'," she said.

"It was unreal... I did not break any kind of law. I never, ever thought this could happen."

The NYPD booked Sorensen and Wardlaw for child endangerment and disorderly conduct.

She was placed in jail for 36 hours, while her daughter was put in foster care by the city's welfare services.

"I didn't know where my child was," said Sorensen.

"I don't think there's any greater punishment than to have your child taken away from you."

Four days after she was arrested, Sorensen was finally reunited with Liv.

She remained in New York for a few more weeks because of summonses to civil and criminal court.

Charges against Sorensen were eventually dropped after she agreed to leave the United States.

Anette Sorensen with her daughter Liv, now 21.

The case made front-page news and generated headlines in the local press, which Sorensen says treated her unfairly.

While the local media in America treated her as a negligent parent, the Danish press rose to her defence.

"For every Dane it was a nightmare because we are used to living like that," said Sorensen.

In 2012, Sorensen wrote a book about her experiences. She now wants to translate it into English, and she has launched a Kickstarter fund toward that end.

The book, titled A Worm in the Apple, recounts the "traumatising" experience.

"It's about what happened before, what happened as it happened, and what happened after," she said.

The book is a chronicle of "all the feelings, all of the thoughts that were going on at that time.

"I always had a big longing for an apology. I probably never will get this apology [so] I want to give this [book] back.'

"It's a way of getting back what I never got,' said Sorensen. "I would like [it] if I could just say what I think."

A year after the ordeal, she sued the city for US$20million. She was awarded US$66,400 by a civil jury, which found only that she should not have been strip-searched and that the city commonly failed to advise arrested foreigners of their right to notify their consulates.

Sorensen now says she wants to show the American public that the Danish system of parenting is healthier.

"People live in fear [in the US]. Children are not allowed to play in the playground alone," said Sorensen.

"That's why it's important for me now to get [my book] into English, to show it's possible to live another way."

Sorensen now lives in Hamburg, Germany with her husband, Mike, and their two teenage children.

Liv, the baby in the stroller, is a 21-year-old woman living in Copenhagen, where she is studying design.