The family had lived in the rundown rental house for almost three years when someone first saw a child's face in the window.
A little girl, pale, with dark eyes, lifted a dirty blanket above the broken glass and peered out, one neighbor remembered.
I used to work with children ages 1-7 and loved it because they are full of innocence and observe and absorb everything around them. Watching all their little minds being blown when I would do canned magic tricks was magical. Reading this story and imagining a child who never had a chance to interact and absorb and properly develop breaks my heart.
Obviously the kid is irrevocably damaged, but the brain is resilient and dynamic. It sounds like with good care and engagement she can at least have some happiness. Good thing there's people like her adoptive parents out there.
From wikipedia: In the Language deprivation experiment young infants were raised without human interaction in an attempt to determine if there was a natural language that they might demonstrate once their voices matured. It is claimed he was seeking to discover what language would have been imparted unto Adam and Eve by God. In his Chronicles Salimbene wrote that Frederick bade "foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no ways to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." As for what goes through your mind if you are one of the officers?... good question. The response to her saying "I'm doing your best" was Your best sucks, My guess is that he wanted to say MUCH more and held his tongue. Anyone that is willing to put in the time and effort to adopt an older child that has been so severely abused is a saint. Pure and simple.