GUILTY Nigeria - 7 Texas kids, 8-16, found in orphanage, adoptive mom charged, 2003

:furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040818_16.html



Child Protective Services, which received emergency custody of the children Monday, is investigating accusations that the children's adoptive mother abandoned them in Nigeria in October and later went to work in Iraq as a private contractor.

Three of the children were hospitalized with malaria and later released, said CPS spokeswoman Estella Olguin. They all were thin and covered with mosquito bites and scars, officials said.

The three boys and four girls, ranging from 8 to 16, were discovered in late July by a visiting Texas missionary, who notified House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Sen. John Cornyn, both of Texas, said Stuart Roy, a spokesman for DeLay.

The lawmakers contacted CPS and the U.S. State Department, along with the ambassador in Nigeria, and the children were given papers allowing re-entry into the United States.

Now, they are living in two Houston foster homes.

"It's horrible, horrible," Olguin said. "I haven't seen anything like it. Seven children fending for themselves in a foreign country where they have no family members."

As a mother, this story really offends me. Does the woman not have a heart? I would just die knowing that my child was living in a wooden shack with no food, money or comfort. I hope they don't decide to give the kids back to her. That would really be a crime.

Yakwoman

Aug. 18, 2004, 6:41AM

Kids feared they wouldn't make it home
Woman's version of how they landed in Nigeria in doubt
By MELANIE MARKLEY and DALE LEZON
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

The seven Houston children reportedly abandoned in Nigeria by their adoptive mother had been telling people their story, but no one believed them until a visiting missionary found them and helped bring them home.

Now officials with Child Protective Services say it is the mother's story that is under question.

The woman told CPS officials in March that she had left the children with her mother in Houston while she underwent cancer treatment in Shreveport, La.

In truth, she had taken the children last October to Nigeria, where a relative of her fiance lived, and enrolled them in school, said Estella Olguin, Harris County CPS spokeswoman. About a month later, she returned to Houston. This April she went to Iraq as a civilian food-service worker.

Her children ended up in an orphanage after their tuition money stopped and the relative apparently deserted them at a home.

"Those are just some of the things we now know that she hasn't been honest to us about," Olguin said. "So it's hard for us to know what she is being honest about. Did she really send them to Nigeria so they could go to school? Did she send them there with the intention of never coming back? We just don't know." --->>

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2743190

photo of four of the children:

http://content.clearchannel.com/Photos/international/Africa/african_orphans_ChrisHondro.jpg

So sad for these innocent children.

Mother to face more charges?
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/081904_APlocal_adoptivemother.html

Another story from my howntown of Houston, Texas
http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11683

Disgusted, Lanie

What!! This is nuts............People never fail to astound me with their utter selfishness...........Those poor babies :furious:

The seven adopted children found abandoned in Africa will remain in state custody for now. That was the finding Thursday afternoon of a family law court judge In Harris County.

The seven siblings are in two Houston foster homes officially in the custody of Children's Protective Services.

The attorney for the adoptive mother, Mercury Liggins, said his client won't fight the court's latest decision. She had been hospitalized for emotional distress and is now taking three different medications. -
http://www.fox11az.com/news/other/stories/KMSB-20040826-khoubp-kids.b6d4c919.html

Photo of all 7 kids at that link

From December 2006:

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-t...left-in-Nigeria-tells-of-hardship-1546869.php

Today, Mercury Liggins sits in a prison cell in Gatesville, serving a 25-year sentence for the theft of $443,000 she received in adoption subsidies earmarked for the children's care. She declined to grant the Houston Chronicle an interview.

But Brandy Liggins, 19, came forward last week to talk about the strange odyssey and fill in the gaps of the children's story.

When 8-year-old Brandy Bonner met her adoptive mother, she thought she had found a ticket out of foster care for her and her three siblings... But once the adoption papers were signed, their new mother's temperament changed and she disappeared a lot, leaving the children in the hands of relatives... "She always found a (Vacation) Bible School that stayed open real late, like 9 o'clock," Brandy Liggins said. "We would never see home until nighttime."

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