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[Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>]

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     usa.nightmare --From Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet
     
                DENMARK: U.S. OFFICIALS OVER-REACTED OVER BABY
                                       
     
     
     May 17, 1997
     Web posted at: 1:33 p.m. EDT (1733 GMT) restaurant
     
     COPENHAGEN, Denmark (Reuter) -- Denmark's foreign minister said
     Saturday that a Danish mother had been foolish to leave her baby
     daughter outside a New York restaurant, but U.S. authorities who
     jailed her for two days had over-reacted.
     
     Danish newspapers ran front-page pictures of actress Annette
     Sorensen and 14-month-old daughter Liv after a New York City judge
     Friday dropped criminal charges against the mother.
     
     "USA Nightmare over - Free," Ekstrabladet's headline read."We Won,"
     crowed rival tabloid B.T. reunion
     
     Sorensen was jailed for two days last weekend and her baby put into
     foster care for four days. She had left Liv parked in a stroller
     outside a restaurant while she and the child's American father were
     having a drink and watching her through the window.
     
     "It was rash of the mother to leave her child in an American city.
     It is not clever but is perhaps excusable because she was not really
     aware of the danger," Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen told
     B.T.
     
     "But the American authorities over-reacted because this was not a
     case of a mother who could be accused of neglecting her child, it's
     completely out of proportion," he added.
     
     Ekstrabladet quoted Sorensen, 30, as saying that she bore no
     animosity over the affair. denmark
     
     "I'm not quite myself again yet, but I am not bitter toward the
     United States (although) I honestly can't say if I will ever come
     back again," she told the paper, holding Liv in her arms, at a
     champagne celebration in New York's Danish Seamen's Church.
     
     Under terms of the deal reached before Judge Michael Gross by her
     attorney, the Manhattan District Attorney and the Danish Consulate,
     the criminal charges of endangering the welfare of a child were
     dismissed and the case will be closed for good in six months.
     
     "It is our belief that this was a clash of cultures and a lack of
     understanding," her attorney Todd Barnet said.
     
     The mother's lawyers said that she did not think twice about leaving
     the child outside the restaurant because it was common practice in
     Copenhagen.
     
     Sorensen still must appear in Family Court Wednesday but B.T. quoted
     a lawyer for the Danish Consulate in New York, Peter
     Hessellund-Jensen, as saying that he foresaw no problems.
     
     "I am convinced that the hearing is only a formality," he said.
     
     Sorensen's attorney says she has a plane ticket to leave the United
     States May 27. She had been in the country less than 48 hours when
     her daughter was taken from her.
     
     Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.  rule
     
  Related stories:
  
     * Charges against Danish mother effectively dropped - May 16, 1997
     * Women charged with leaving baby outside while dining in restaurant
       - May 13, 1997
     * New York returns baby to Danish mother - May 13, 1997
       
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