A woman acquitted of killing the newborn says she's "sorry for ever"

From the day the police arrived at her family's home until the day she was acquitted of the murder, Brooke Skylar Richardson never publicly talked about what happened to the little girl she's been in. called Annabelle and was born stillborn. While strangers were treating her of "baby killer" and she was considering the possibility of a life in prison, the 20-year-old Ohio woman kept her feelings for her.

Richardson's silence came to an end on Friday, when she was in a Warren County hearing room for the hearing of her sentence. S addressing a judge and turning briefly to the rest of the room, she apologized repeatedly.

"I just wanted to say how sorry I was," she said. "I can sometimes be selfish, but I'd like to think that I've become better knowing that I've upset everyone and hurt a lot of people with what I've done." And I'm sorry forever."

That was the conclusion of what Richardson's lawyers called a "nightmare", a tabloid saga in which the former high school cheerleader was accused of killing her newborn two. days after his May 2017 ball. The ominous details of the case – including the false allegations that Richardson allegedly burned the baby's corpse before burying it in his family's backyard – made the headlines. newspapers and turned the young woman into an outcast in her small hometown.

Although the jurors acquitted Richardson on Thursday of the most serious charges, they found him guilty of flagrant abuse of a corpse, a minor crime punishable by a maximum sentence of $ 1,000. a year. Judge Donald Oda on Friday sentenced her to seven days in prison, releasing her with credit for the time spent in jail. But first, he reprimands her for showing "a grotesque contempt for life" in what he called a "story of two little girls: Skylar Richardson and Annabelle Richardson".

"I firmly believe – in fact, Miss Richardson, with all my heart – that if you made different decisions in this case, Annabelle would be here today," Oda said. "And I know it can be hard for you to hear, some people are inclined to say to themselves," Here is America; we kill babies to be born every day. "But I do not think that way."

Richardson's test began in the spring of 2017, when her last year at Carlisle High School was coming to an end and she was preparing to enter the University of Cincinnati. She had been pregnant for months, but nobody knew it. The bump barely indicated that she was wearing a cheerleader uniform on the sidelines, a bikini on school break or even when she was wearing a glittering red dress well fitted to the prom. Richardson's family told Cosmopolitan that its weight often fluctuated because of eating disorders.

The teenager herself only learned about her pregnancy on April 26, 2017, when she saw a gynecologist for the first time, Cosmo said. His relationship with his new boyfriend was progressing and his mother thought that it was time to consider starting birth control. But the doctor told Richardson that she could not: she was already pregnant. The baby was born of a relationship with another boy – a Richardson had ended in the summer of 2016.

During the eight-day trial, prosecutors told the story of a teenage girl who killed her baby because her college projects – and her image of "good girl" – were at stake, according to the report. # 39; Enquirer. The defense lawyers insisted that the child had died at birth and the scared young mother did not know what to do except to bury her.

"Upon learning that she was pregnant, Brooke broke down in tears and told her doctor that she could not have this child and that she could not talk to anyone about her pregnancy," she said. said Warren County Assistant Attorney Julie Kraft, according to the video footage of Fox 19 & # 39; of the trial. "And Brooke did not tell anyone, she did not tell her parents, her friends, and the baby's father."

The baby arrived in the middle of the night of May 7, 2017 at the house that Richardson shared with his parents and younger brother. When her family fell asleep, the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper reported, the teenager slipped alone into a bathroom and emerged with a lifeless baby.

Prosecutors said that they did not know how the newborn had been killed. But defense lawyers said the girl was pale at birth. She did not breathe. The umbilical cord was not attached to the placenta. Recounting what his daughter finally told him, Richardson's mother, Kim, told Enquirer that Skylar had cried while rocking the baby for hours, waiting for him to open his eyes, cry or move. That never happened.

Finally, Richardson's mother said that the teenager had grabbed a gardening shovel in the garage and had retired to the back of the family's vast backyard. She dug a hole between two pines and covered the little flower grave that she had worn at the prom. Yet she did not tell anyone.

His family learned that police arrived a few months later, after Skylar Richardson's gynecologist announced the baby's death to the Warren County coroner, leaving the cause of death blank.

"It's so hard to believe that I have a grandson that I've never had," his mother told Enquirer.

Richardson's lawyers criticized the prosecutors for "overloading" the young woman and said they feared they could never escape the light of the media. But Warren County Attorney David Fornshell said that even after the verdict, he still believed that Richardson had killed his child. He attended the management of the case through his office.

"We owed it to this little girl," the investigator was quoted as saying. "We had to try."

At the sentencing hearing that took place on Friday, the paternal grandmother of the child, Tracy Johnson, cried out in describing her son's grief and anguish at the loss of his son. his first grandchild. She said that she would have raised the baby herself. Last Christmas, she stayed home after family celebrations, unable to stop thinking it was the first Christmas that the little girl would have been old enough to love. She imagined that the child was opening his own gifts – "many more toys than any child could ever play."

"As we live with our grief and loss, she can now live knowing that her selfish decision was not her only choice," Johnson said about Richardson. "She had a way out."

Upon the judge's order, the child will be buried in a Richardson family plot that both families can visit. For more than two years, the remains were in the custody of the sheriff's office. As the case is over, the baby will benefit from a memorial service and a final resting place.