'Burger King Baby' Finds Mom Who Abandoned Her

Katheryn Deprill says she feels 'pure joy'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 26, 2014 9:01 AM CDT
'Burger King Baby' Finds Mom Who Abandoned Her
This March 2, 2014 photo provided by Katheryn Deprill that she posted on Facebook, shows her holding a sign that says she is seeking her birth mother.   (AP Photo/Courtesy of Katheryn Deprill)

On Sept. 15, 1986, a worker and a customer at a Burger King in Allentown, Pa., heard an infant crying in the women's room. They found the baby, later named Katheryn Deprill, just hours old, wrapped in a maroon shirt and lying on top of a plastic bag. Deprill's mother was never found, and the infant was adopted and raised happily. But Deprill always wondered about her birth mother, and on March 2 she launched a public search via Facebook for her, which netted almost 33,000 shares. Little did she know that about six months ago, her birth mother had launched her own search. When she heard Deprill was looking for her, she got in touch with a lawyer—and the two women met at his office Monday, the Morning Call reports.

"It was pure shock to see it was actually her standing there," says Deprill, now 28. "The first thing I got was my hug that I wanted." Then, she got answers. Her birth mother (who remains publicly unidentified) explained that she was raped and impregnated while on a family vacation in a foreign country at 16. She hid the pregnancy from her family and gave birth in secret, in her bedroom, at 17. She then brought Deprill to Burger King because she knew someone at the crowded restaurant would find her. "She did not want to throw me away," Deprill tells WFMZ. "She was a kid in high school," explains the birth mom's lawyer. "Back then, you couldn't just go to a hospital and drop the baby off, no questions asked." Deprill has said she's not interested in pressing charges—she described her feelings after meeting her birth mom as "pure joy" and said she forgives her "110%, absolutely," the AP reports—and the two plan on continuing their relationship. (More abandoned baby stories.)

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