this morning, the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced.
the Pulitzer Prize has long been regarded as the highest national honor in newspaper journalism, literary achievements and musical composition.
looking through the list of winners, one caught my eye.
the winner of the feature writing category - Lane DeGregory of the St. Petersburg Times.
the story can be found here...
http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece
what happened was a 7 yr old girl was found living in a home with faeces of cats, dogs and humans smeared all over the wall.
wrapped up in diapers which were past saturated in a room with a four foot high mountain of use diapers.
the floor, freezer and basically everywhere else was filled with roaches, it was impossible to walk a step without crushing a few.
the girl was saved and placed in a foster home.
some kind soul adopted her and since then, she improved a lot.
because 85% of the human brain develops in the first five years of a human,
she was considered to be severely mentally retarded.
though she wasn't autistic or psychotic, she can hardly make sounds, not to mention speaking.
its so tough to think about the possibility of such people living in third world countries, let alone in the country with the most spending power (aka the USA).
quite disturbed by it.
but nonetheless, i'm glad at least this one got saved.
tags: news