There is no love more precious than parents for their children, but the sad reality is that some parents are abusive and don’t have their child’s best interests at heart.
Diane and Bernie Lierow‘s 25-acre farm is a living, reproducing tribute to their character and kindness, hidden deep in the verdant Tennessee countryside. In the front field bleats a herd of pretty, prizewinning Boer goats. The farm is also home to three miniature ponies, 70 chickens, a litter of Great Pyrenees puppies, and 11 dogs of various shapes and sizes, all of which were found abandoned or injured.
Diane and Bernie simply cannot walk on by and leave a stray animal to fend for itself. Their kindness is that the couple decided to do a deed that people would never anticipate.
Because aside from the goats, dogs, puppies, and horses – and from their own five sons between them – the Lierows have also adopted Danielle, a child who had been so severely neglected by her mother that she was deemed to be feral.
After their five boys had grown up, Bernie and Diane chose to have another daughter, this time through adoption.
At an adoption event in Florida, where they were living at the time, Diane spotted Dani’s photograph.
It was different from the others because the children up for adoption weren’t dressed to the nines. The young child in this blurry, black-and-white photograph had a messy appearance, and she wasn’t smiling.
Diane, however, sensed a connection. But multiple people come to Diane, with a member of staff who could tell her more about the girl, who also warned her, saying, “something is wrong with her.” But the couple persisted. Diane and Bernie were undeterred. Their determination to adopt Danielle was never altered, despite that, they knew her situation.
Danielle‘s existence represented the worst case of child neglect. She spent her early childhood as a feral child, confined within the walls of a tiny, ramshackle room in a rental home in Florida. She endured starvation and neglect for the first 7 years of her life. She was only found after a neighbor saw the trapped girl looking out of a broken window. Detectives entered the house and found her in a small room, the size of a closet, surrounded by dirt, rodents, and legs covered in her own excrement.
Danielle was curled up in a moldy mattress, covered in lice, maggots, and flies, a result of the filthy conditions she had been living in.
But Diane still persisted because she had the impression that the kid was destined to be her adopted daughter just from seeing one picture of her. The couple couldn’t shake the connection they felt towards the girl, and even caseworkers continued to encourage them to explore other options.
According to Mark Holste, the Plant City police investigator who discovered her, said, “I’ve been in law enforcement for 27 years now, and this is by far, bar none, the worst case of child neglect I’ve ever come across in my career,” he said the smell inside the home made him sick. Danielle was referred to as a “true feral child.”
Lierows still decided to adopt Danielle after the kid was placed for adoption, which garnered them national attention. As Danielle was sent to a group home after she was found, and her parents lost all parental rights due to extreme neglect.
Diane and Bernie claim that they were aware that raising her would be difficult but were prepared to take on the challenge and the danger to offer the abandoned daughter a chance at a better life. Prior to the adoption, Diane and Bernie visited Danielle at her school several times. As Diane said, Danielle has “already gone way beyond any of the expectations that any of the specialists had for her at the time that she was found,” since the Lierows adopted her. Danielle’s progress has been enormous.
Today, Dani is a pretty, long-limbed young woman who is now a teenager, proving that “she’s arrived at the place where she was meant to be,” as Diane said. Danielle has improved, she makes such progress in speech, although she still struggles she occasionally says “Hey Dad” to Bernie and has even told her parents, “I love you.” Because most of the time, she does most of her speaking nonverbally.
The Lierows would never think it of themselves, but they are remarkable. Adopting a child as damaged as Dani has inevitably had an enormous impact on their lives, both practically and emotionally.
Watch the video below for more details:
Sources: Taphaps, DailyMail, Theepochtimes