Gotta Read It: ‘The Girl in the Window’
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
She was found as a feral child. (From the St. Petersburg Times)
It’s one of those stories, you know? The St. Petersburg Times follows the case of a girl found in squalor in a Plant City, Fla., home. Not quite seven years old, she weighed 46 pounds. A neighbor finally called the police, the paper reports:
First he saw the girl’s eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn’t looking at him so much as through him.
She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked — except for a swollen diaper.
“The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been 4 feet high,” the detective said. “The glass in the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement and bugs.”
Now the girl has been adopted by a local family. They’re working to bring the girl back from her “environmental autism.” Cue the Pulitzer, please.
Bonus: Poynter goes behind the scenes.