A magistrate acknowledged the progress made by a young woman who, not to let her mother know she had given birth, hid her newborn baby in a shoebox in 2007.

Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani heard how a desperate Karen Grech, 22, of Cospicua had put her son, Haydon, in the box on April 1, 2007.

Ms Grech pleaded guilty to the charge of abandoning the child. However, after the magistrate heard of the challenging circumstances the young woman was facing at the time, she placed her under probation for two years.

Dr Padovani said Ms Grech was dearly taken care of by social workers and had progressed so quickly that within a short time she was trusted to take her baby back.

She also took into consideration her age, the fact she had a clean police record and her genuine cooperation in her own rehabilitation before handing down judgment and closing this tumultuous chapter in Ms Grech’s life.

The magistrate, however, had one demand. She ordered that every six months a report by the probation officer be presented to her so she could personally keep tabs on the woman’s progress.

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ms Grech had said “people always accused me of throwing the baby away but it was never the case. I had just wanted to hide him from my mother – it never crossed my mind to throw him away”.

Ms Grech had been hiding her pregnancy for months, scared to reveal it. She ended up giving birth alone in her bed. Shortly before that, her grandmother, who was like a mother to her, had passed away from a stroke and she had not told her former boyfriend about the pregnancy either.

In the two months leading to her grandma’s death, Ms Grech had lost track of her due date and was still going to work until, on March 30, 2007, she started experiencing severe cramps and her waters broke. She gave birth after a 90-minute labour, trying hard not to shout out in pain.

Her plan was to take the baby to the nuns’ orphanage in Żabbar but she saw far too many people in the street and decided to hide the child and the first thing she could find that would provide a safe haven was the box.

In a bid to evade her mother’s attention, she took the box to the roof, where she placed it inside a big plastic bag and made sure the lid was slightly open for the baby to breathe.

Exhausted, she went to rest but her mother, who had taken her own mother’s loss very badly and was not thinking straight, went upstairs to sweep and clear up. The box ended up in the street and teenagers discovered the child after they heard him cry.

Ms Grech thanks the Lord every day the teenagers discovered her son in the shoebox before it was too late. “The Lord took the person closest to my heart, my grandmother, and gave me the most beautiful person in return”, she said.