Woman nursed someone else's baby, faces charge

STIGLER, Okla. -- A woman was charged with breast-feeding someone else's baby at a daycare center without the parents' knowledge.

Prosecutors charged Shannon Denney, 32, with outraging public decency and public morals, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $500 fine.

Denney, whose own child attended the daycare center, apparently decided to help out one day in late November or early December by breast-feeding a 3-month-old girl, authorities said.

"The baby was crying and they were feeding it a bottle and that didn't stop it," prosecutor Ron Boyer said.

The mother found out months later when a rumor circulated around the town of 2,500, he said.

"It got back to the mother," Boyer said. "The mother confronted the woman and asked her about it and she admitted that it happened."

After the alleged incident, Denney bought the daycare center, but she has since closed it. She did not immediately return a call Tuesday.

The state Department of Human Services, which licenses daycare centers, has no policy on breast-feeding someone else's child.

"It's a commonsense sort of thing," department spokesman George Johnson said. "It's something that today you don't even think about."

Viruses can be transmitted through breast milk.