This is quite serious the saddest, most heart-wrenching story - at least the beginning of it - that I've ever read. What makes it saddest is that it's not a "story" as in "story book." It's a story as in "news story." It really happened, is happening. This little girl is real, her conditions are real, her story is real.
http://tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece
This article, in a perfect world, would have won a Pulitzer and been reprinted and broadcast all over the place. It hasn't - I actually came to it through News of the Weird.
I don't know how to get in touch with the people that adopted this poor kid, and I'm sure there's already some kind of charitable fund set up. I'll try to follow up here when I've learned more...but for now, I'd like everyone who reads this - ESPECIALLY those of you who are fortunate enough to be reasonably solvent and secure - to consider finding a way to send the good people who took this child in some money to help them care for her. From what I can tell, the child - Danielle, or 'Dani' - is slowly making her way out of the fog of environmentally-induced autism that her natural mother inflicted on her through the most disgusting display of neglect I've ever heard of. I'm sure that any help her new parents can get will be appreciated. Please, even if it's only five bucks, find a way to send these people something to help. They deserve it.
(Apologies to those of you tho got a severely truncated version of this article; I ran into some technical issues while writing it.)
When you're sitting around your trees with your families, exchanging gifts and backing in the raucous joy of happy kids enjoying the holiday...spare a thought, and a little cash if you can, for Dani. She's a product of our society, and if our society has even a slight smidgen of decency it will do its part to help her overcome the burden that was thrust upon her through apathy and ignorance.
Thank you, and have a great holiday.
