DALLAS – A mother accused of trying to sell her infant son insists she was simply trying to put him up for adoption.
In a jailhouse interview with News 8, Brittany Hill, 26, says she never wanted to make any money off her son.
“Never in my wildest dreams would I sell a child,” she told News 8. “A child is not an animal or a dog on the street.”
She posted the classified ad online several weeks ago on the website PennySaverUSA.com. The ad said she was “in search of an [sic] great family for my son... I can no longer care for him the way he needs to be.”
“I'm working with an adoption agency so there is an adoption fee they have set up,” the ad continued. “I believe its $6,500.”
Hill said she wanted to alert potential parents that an adoption would likely cost thousands of dollars.
“This is how much you’re going to have to pay for an attorney, living, medical -- all that stuff,” she said. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, here’s your baby for free!’”
Hill said she stumbled across the website while Googling ways to put a child up for adoption. She decided to offer her child after noticing families posting ads wanting to adopt or take in foster children.
“Financially, he was going to have everything he wanted in life,” she said. “I wanted that.”
She said her job as a receptionist wasn’t paying the bills, and that she could no longer afford to care for four-month-old Eden Smith.
Hill said she put another four-month-old son up for adoption in 2009 and got $4,000 from an adoption agency -- a payment she later believed was inappropriate.
“I didn’t know anything about adoption,” she said.
Dallas police arrested Hill on Friday after receiving a report of an abandoned child at an apartment in the 9700 block of Ferris Branch Road in North Dallas. An apartment manager looking to collect rent discovered Eden in his crib. Hill said she only stepped out for a few minutes to get some fresh air.
Although police had already been alerted to Hill regarding the online ad, she only faces charges for abandoning her son in the empty apartment. Hill is being held in the Dallas County jail on a $50,000 bond. The infant is now in the custody of Child Protective Services.
“I want people to look at that and say, 'This is actually a good mother,'” Hill said. “'She probably went the wrong route… but she did want what was best for her child.'”
E-mail jbetz@wfaa.com
