Their Instagram is pretty active, they're still rescuing abandoned kids. I wonder if the parents ever see their abandoned kid years later, grown-up and healthy.
I follow their Instagram page and they do take a couple of the kids to visit parents, siblings and occasionally other relatives. But those cases are only when those relatives weren’t the ones calling the children witches or participating in the abuse.
I feel bad for some of the mothers. Imagine giving birth to a child with down syndrome, you love your new son, you just think he's a bit special, maybe blessed by the gods?
Unfortunately someone declares that your son is a witch. Your son is now taken from you and any attempts to help him will put your other children in danger. You do what you can but are helpless, you gave birth to this child yourself and you know he's not a witch. Why can't other people see that he's blessed by God and not a witch?
Now maybe I'm just over using my imagination but I can totally see a scenario like this happening, where the mother is loving and wants her child but the village turns against her. When your entire community of 60 plus people is against you and might even turn violent it would be very hard to support your witch child.
Sadly your imagination isn’t that far off from several of these kids actual stories. A couple of the kids who were eventually reunited with parents, siblings, and relatives that’s exactly what happened. The kid was accused for some reason or another and the family was powerless to fight back against their community or they’d be risking themselves or their other children. Some of the families still had to flee their villages even after sending the accused child away. All while not knowing if their child is alive or was killed.
It’s easy to condemn these children’s parents as all being evil and horrible. And sadly a lot of them did abandon these children without a thought. But some of these kids parents were stuck in a horrible situation with no good outcome and had to make one of the hardest decisions they’d ever have to make. Some of these visit videos are heartbreaking hearing what these families went through. I think I remember one video where the mother was clutching her son’s hand but couldn’t even look at her son because she was so ashamed that she failed to protect him (I think villagers tried to kill him with machetes). I think another an uncle was nearly in tears asking his niece if she could forgive him for not being able to get to her in time.
I think the boy in the picture Hope is one such case. I do think they eventually found Hope’s mother in another village and he occasionally goes to visit her.
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u/namtok_muu 5d ago
Their Instagram is pretty active, they're still rescuing abandoned kids. I wonder if the parents ever see their abandoned kid years later, grown-up and healthy.