Abducted: The Carlina White Story Outline

As seen in the true Lifetime movie, Abducted: The Carlina White Story, in August 1987 twenty- five year old Ann Pettway had made an unthinkable decision, to abduct a newborn and raise it as her own. After going through her third miscarriage less than a month earlier and being told by the doctor that she would never be able to carry a baby full-term, she refused to accept the truth. It was nineteen days later when she would enter the same Harlem Hospital in New York City that she had her miscarriage at and pose as a nurse to “take matters into her own hands” as she had said while giving herself a pep talk in the bathroom. Throughout that night, while posing as a nurse, she walked the halls of the hospital’s children’s ward scanning for a newborn baby to take as her own. (Lifetime & Curtis-Hall. 2012.)
On August fifth around two a.m. Ann Pettway had come across new parents, Joy White and Carl Tyson, who had just brought their newborn into the hospital with a high fever.

Soon after she became estranged from her parents as a reaction to how overwhelmed she felt by the situation. She still choses to go by Netty because she feels that is the name she gave herself, unlike her other names, Carlina and Nedra. (Kleinfield) Also, even though Pettway had abducted her from her biological parents, Netty still had love for her and offered to testify in court on Pettway’s behalf. On July 30th 2012 the trial ended. Ann Pettway pled guilty and was sentenced to twelve years in prison.
In this case I feel that Ann Pettway’s behavior can be analyzed through a few of the dispositional theories that we have learned in class. The theories that I will be focusing on in my paper are Merton’s Strain Theory by Robert Merton, General Strain Theory by Robert Agnew, and The Techniques of Neutralization by Greshem Sykes and David