INSTRUCTIONS for SOCIOLOGICAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PERSPECTIVE ON SELF
Read the excerpt of Danielle Crockett story.
Activity: Article Review (Excerpt)
SOURCE: (https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/girl-in-the-window/neglect-feral-child-ten-years-later/)
Story by LANE DEGREGORY
Photos by LARA CERRI
Times Staff
MURFREESBORO, Tenn.
Dani was a feral child, the first encountered by those who came to her rescue. She was
malnourished and filthy, and couldn’t say a word.
For the first seven years of her life, Danielle Crockett never saw the sun, felt the wind or tasted
solid food. She was kept in a small space, cloistered in darkness, left in a dirty diaper, fed only
with a bottle.
POLICE GOT THE CALL A DOZEN YEARS AGO — someone had glimpsed a young girl’s
face in a broken window.
In the back of a run-down house in Plant City, officers found a skeletal child, curled on a moldy
mattress, covered with maggots and flies. She had nothing on but a swollen diaper. Feces
dribbled down her legs.
“What’s your name, honey?” asked Detective Mark Holste, bending over the girl. She didn’t
react.
Roaches crunched under his feet. Lice crawled in her black hair.
It was the worst case of neglect Holste had ever seen.
He carried her out and had her rushed to the hospital. 1
Detectives determined that Danielle Crockett was almost 7. For years, she had been kept behind
a closed door, in a space the size of a walk-in closet, alone in the dark.
The state’s Child Protection Team diagnosed Dani with “psychological deprivation, failure to
thrive, medical and physical neglect and developmental delays.”
Police arrested her birth mother, Michelle Crockett. She told them she was a single mom, doing
the best she could.
Later, she described a series of bad breaks that left her widowed, destitute and raising two
teenage boys alone. Then, she said, she had a one-night stand and got pregnant. She thinks his
name was Bob.
Dani was a healthy baby, who weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces.
But twice in 2002, when Dani was around 4, people called to report seeing a little girl naked and
starving. Social workers confirmed: “Feces. Filth. Neglect.” Each time, they offered help, which
Crockett declined, and left Dani in her custody.
In court, about three years later, Crockett waived her parental rights as part of a plea deal. She
was sentenced to two years of house arrest, plus probation. She never went to jail.
“She should have gotten at least 20 years,” Holste said.
She should burn in hell,” said Dani’s guardian, Tracy Sheehan.
Dani spent six weeks in the hospital. At first, she couldn’t eat solid foods and would only take a
bottle. She weighed 46 pounds. She couldn’t walk or talk.
At the hospital, after Dani was rescued, police took photographs to illustrate bug bites and how
frail she was.
“We did genetic tests, neurological scans. There was nothing wrong with her. But she wasn’t
stimulated at all,” said Kathleen Armstrong of the University of South Florida. “I’d been a
school psychologist for 20 years, but I’d never seen a child like Dani.”
Armstrong said Dani suffered from “environmental autism.” The neurological pathways in her
brain hadn’t developed because she was so malnourished, because she had lived in silence and
darkness, never been talked to or held. “How could a caregiver, much less a mother, just lock her
child away like that?” asked Armstrong.
Foster care workers called Dani a feral child — the first they had encountered. She had never
been to a doctor or school. Never felt sunshine on her skin. She had spent all those years in
solitary confinement.
In 1970, in California, a girl that scientists called Genie had been found strapped to a potty chair
at age 13. Doctors examined her, as others had the Wolf Boy, who, in 1800, had wandered naked
out of the woods near Paris when he was about 12 years old. Neither ever learned to
communicate or take care of themselves.
2
Those early years are critical. “During the first five years of life, 80 percent of brain development
occurs,” Armstrong said.
With Dani, no one had any expectations, but there was hope: Maybe she had been found early
enough.
The detective who discovered her just wanted her to live. The psychologist thought she would
end up in a nursing home. The guardian wished she would be able to connect. The foster care
worker prayed that she would be loved. The speech therapist longed to hear “yes” or “no.”
It was hard to imagine that Dani would be adopted.
By the time she was almost 9, she was still in diapers. She couldn’t speak or sleep through the
night. She had terrible tantrums. Then she would shut down and fold into herself. To self-soothe,
she sucked her fists and twirled Mardi Gras beads.
She wasn’t interested in peek-a-boo or bubbles. She wouldn’t even play with baby toys. She
never cried. Or laughed.
