Breast-feeding mom steamed after pressured to move

BY MATTHEW LYSIAK
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

Thursday, October 25th 2007, 4:00 AM

The mother of a seven-week-old infant is steamed after workers at Floyd Bennett Field swooped down when she began breast-feeding, the woman said.

A female manager and a male security guard pressed Jessica Richards, 31, to stop breast-feeding her infant son, Liam, in public and move to a filthy bathroom - before she was pressured to move into an isolated corner, Richards said.

"I was humiliated," she said of last Thursday's incident at the Aviator Sports and Recreation Center. "They made me feel like I was some pervert putting on a show."

Richards' ordeal began last week when the Bay Ridge resident took Liam and his brother, Eamon, 3, to the Flatbush Ave. recreation center to play in a children's gymnasium.

When Liam became hungry, Richards sat down within view of a surveillance camera and began breast-feeding the baby - only to be stopped by the female manager and a male security guard.

"Just a little into the feeding, a woman manager came over and said, 'You are offending our security guard,' and suggested I move into the bathroom," Richards said.

When Richards refused to move to the bathroom, which she described as filthy, the guard moved her chair into an isolated corner outside of a surveillance camera's view.

"I felt like they were trying to put me in the naughty chair in the corner," said Richards, a stay-at-home mom.

An attendant at Aviator Sports and Recreation Center reimbursed Richards for the $4 admission fee after she left the gymnasium in a huff, with Liam still unfed.

A New York law passed in 1994 allows women to breast-feed in public places.

Lucy Koteen, a member of La Leche League, a breast-feeding advocacy group, said Floyd Bennett Field owes Richards an apology - but stopped short of calling for a boycott.

"If someone has an issue with the way she feeds her child, it is their issue, not hers," said Koteen, who was among more than a dozen furious parents to weigh in on the incident on parenting message boards.

"Asking her to go into the bathroom is unacceptable. Do they eat their lunch in the bathroom? They need to be educated on the law."

Aviator spokeswoman Christine Nicholas said that employees were being courteous by telling Richards she was on camera.

"The management only suggested she might want to find a less public place because the camera was picking it up and they were trying to help her," said Nicholas. "Aviator is concerned about the well-being of breast-feeding mothers."