North Carolina Social Worker Charged With Abortion-Rape Case Coverup

North Carolina Social Worker Charged With Abortion-Rape Case Coverup

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 27, 2005

Wilmington, NC (LifeNews.com) -- A social worker who helped a teenager get an abortion is being charged with interfering with an investigation. Local officials were wanting to obtain DNA evidence from the unborn child to charge a man they say statutorily raped the girl.

Susan L. Taylor, 57, was arrested last week at the headquarters of the New Hanover County Department of Social Services.

Sheriff's Lt. William Hoehlein told the Associated Press that Taylor's actions were an obstruction of justice. "What she did was in direct conflict with our ongoing investigation," Hoehlein said.

According to local authorities, the girl was 14 at the time she became pregnant -- not old enough to consent for sex under North Carolina law.

According to an AP report, Taylor and her attorney decline to comment and she has been released on a $400 bail awaiting a November 17 court date.

The arrest warrant said Taylor provided "information to a juvenile victim and family which aided in an abortion procedure, in which evidence was destroyed, which interfered with a statutory rape investigation."

Hoehlein said local authorities did not try to persuade Taylor not to have the abortion.