No jail time in Federal Way child abandonment case

A woman who left her baby at church in Federal Way has been charged with abandonment, but King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg is not asking that she be sent to jail.

Instead, Satterberg says 22-year-old Sarah Christianson should be placed on community supervision and undergo treatment.

Christianson was charged Friday with third-degree child abandonment, punishable by up to a year in jail. Investigators say she gave birth outdoors in the middle of the night on Sept. 28, then walked nearly three blocks through a crime-ridden neighborhood and left the baby girl at the doorstep of Steel Lake Presbyterian Church.

Satterberg says Christianson evidently panicked. She turned herself in the next day.

Her ex-boyfriend, Clark Stevens, says his parents will care for the child while he is deployed to Iraq.

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