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Wed, Aug
18/04
Dickens goes to West Africa
It seems some
charming Texan lady adopted
seven children, and dutifully began cashing her cheques for
US$512 per month per child. She then took the seven to Nigeria,
where a relative of her fiancé apparently lives, enrolled them
in school, and then returned to Houston, or possibly to
Shreveport for cancer treatment, depending on whom you believe.
In any case, by April she was working in Iraq, and her adopted
children were unsuccessfully fighting off malaria in a Nigerian
orphanage.
The best part
is a detail you'll find here:
on July 28th, according to the Sun-Times' helpful
timeline, "Nigerian
social service workers are tipped to the children living in
squalor in a home. They are placed in an orphanage."
Nigerian
social service workers?
Nigeria
recently placed 151st on the UN's Human Development Index —
not the worst, but only 26 spots from it, and certainly far
below the level at which one would expect to find "social
service workers" (except perhaps as some sort of chilling
euphemism) on the lookout for neglected children. Some of these
CPS systems in the US (most notably Florida's, at least until
now) seem to treat children much as Canada Post treats mail.
When Nigeria's showing them up, you know something's very
rotten.
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