No one knew that Danielle the feral child was living in this rundown home. As far as the neighbors knew, a woman was living in this rundown rental with her boyfriend and two adult sons. Nobody had ever noticed a child or even saw the slightest trace of a little one playing around the yard or coming in and out.
That was until one day, a neighbor saw the eerie figure of a frail little girl with dark eyes and ghost-like skin through a broken glass window in the home.
But like a vapor in the wind, she wisped away…not to be seen again.
With her skeletal-like figure and gaunt face, she appeared to be about 5-years-old.
Though that face never reappeared, the sighting was enough to raise suspicion for the Plant City police. Shortly before noon on a July summer day, a cop car pulled into the driveway of the downtrodden property.
Though two officers went in the house, only one was able to stomach his way through. The other stumbled back out to vomit, nauseated by the putrid smell and detestable sight.
They came back outside to find a detective for the Florida Department of Children and Families in her car sobbing.
“Unbelievable,” she told them. “The worst I’ve ever seen.”
One of the officers on the scene, Mark Holste, said, “I’ve been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad. There’s just no way to describe it. Urine and feces—dog, cat and human excrement—smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and rotting.”
There were roaches galore and the stench was absolutely unbearable, but the most horrific part of the scene was what they found huddled in the corner in a rotting diaper behind a soiled mattress: a young girl. “The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been four feet high,” said the detective. “The glass in the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement and bugs.”
It was Danielle the feral child.
She couldn’t speak and reacted like a skittish wild animal when she encountered the detectives. In 18 years on the field, Holste had never seen a thing like it.
Specialists diagnosed her with environmental autism and said she would never be able to progress or interact like a normal human per the horrific type of neglect she was exposed to.
The nearly 8-year-old was taken to a group home where she was put up for adoption, but she was constantly passed over because of her condition—that is until Bernie and Diane laid eyes on her grainy, black-and-white picture pinned on a bulletin board.
They already had five boys, but something in them always wanted a girl—particularly this girl.
Her dark eyes immediately drew their interest, though the orphanage warned the parents there was “something wrong with her.”
“You don’t want her,” they urged, when the couple inquired about her.
But that’s not how Danielle’s story ended…
The miraculous chain of events that would unfold over the next several years is proof that God’s goodness transcends even the darkest of evils. Where her birth mother failed, her Heavenly Father loved, protected and redeemed in the most astounding way.
Watch the incredible update on Danielle’s journey here:
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