(Via Neatorama - although it is anything but)
Three years ago...police found a girl lying in her roach-infested room... [she was] pale and skeletal, [and] communicated only through grunts. She was almost 7 years old.When I read the blurb, I saw St. Petersburg and assumed this was yet another case of the neglected children of post-Soviet institutions.
The authorities had discovered the rarest of creatures: a feral child, deprived of her humanity by a lack of nurturing.
It's east of Tampa. As in Florida.
This family let a little girl spend 7 years on her own in a room full of filth and not much else.
I defy you to read the account of her discovery and not want to scream at something.
Remembering what it took to save a child who was in one of those post-Soviet institutions, there is no telling what kind of misery awaits this child's new family. Their hearts are good, but you wonder if they are strong enough.
Ye gods.
2 comments:
That story was linked on Fark the other day. I'm not ashamed to say that it made me cry.
The adoptive parents are saints and the progress the little girl has made is nothing short of amazing.
The biological "mother" should be in prison, in gen pop and should pay for what she's done in the most unpleasant of ways.
I'm with you.
Yes the mom isn't the brightest of bulbs - but if you're human at all - you know not to treat an animal that way, much less your own daughter.
There's a bit in the book Homocide where a group of adults living together are wallowing in the same kind of conditions. The author pretty much captures it when he describes the detectives reaction: a level of contempt that is beyond anger - directed at people who have abdicated their own humanity. Contempt for people didn't even try - who were content to simply exist.
That pretty much covers this little girl's mom.
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