Smacked back to reality

"...when you hurt, someone comes."

It seems a simple enough statement and one that shouldn't ever be questioned in a child's reasoning. But in 2005, a child neglect case was blown wide open to reveal a child gone feral. A child who didn't bother crying, was emaciated, still in nappies at the age of 5, didn't speak, couldn't walk....

All while in her mother's care.

I have just spent the past half hour reading this from end to end, riveted, sickened, reduced to tears and a lump in my throat. How the hell does this happen? I cannot fathom how anyone of sound mind would consider it acceptable to raise their apparently beloved child this way.

And the thing that guts me the most is that if there is one uncovered, there are more. The world just doesn't know about them.