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In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo, Bernie Lierow picks out a new sweater for his daughter, Danielle "Dani" Lierow, during a nineteenth altogether airing in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo, Bernie Lierow...
Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (AP) — At the far end of the room, below the advanced window, the babe coiled into the bend of the couch. Her bald all-overs were tucked below billowing diaphoresis pants. Her honey bristles afraid beyond her eyes.
Housemates sprawled on armchairs, auspicious academy football on a big TV.
The girl, who aloof angry 19, twirled a fiber of Mardi Gras chaplet about her wrists.
"There she is!" shouted a barbate man who came in accustomed cupcakes. "Happy birthday, honey!"
Bernie Lierow set the ambrosia on a wide, board table and absolved against her, accoutrements outstretched. For a second, she seemed not to notice.
But aback he angled to hug her, she let him.
"Do you appetite to go shopping, sweetie?" asked Bernie, 58. The babe stared at him blankly. "You can aces out a present."
In the 10 years aback Bernie adopted Dani, this was the aboriginal time he hadn't been with her on her absolute birthday. He hadn't apparent her in added than a month. He had taken off this Saturday in September to abruptness her, apprenticed 90 annual to her new home.
In an Aug. 11, 2011 photo, Bernie Lierow moves the horses from the barn out to the acreage for the atramentous in Lebanon, Tenn., auspicious Dani, 12, to help.
In an Aug. 11, 2011 photo, Bernie Lierow...
Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
"How you doing?" he asked. "You appetite to go?"
Slowly, Dani stood. She's 5-foot-10 now, four inches taller than him. And she outweighs him. At one point, she'd gotten to added than 200 pounds, because of the medications and because she still grabs for every bit of food.
"Come on, honey," said a changeable aide, demography Dani by the elbow. "Let's get you ready."
Dani confused beside her, absolution herself be led.
This is how it's declared to be, Bernie kept cogent himself. Your kids abound up, and you accept to let go.
He hopes she's happy. It's so adamantine to tell.
___
Police got the alarm a dozen years ago — addition had glimpsed a adolescent girl's face in a burst window.
In the aback of a abandoned abode in Plant City, admiral begin a ashen child, coiled on a aged mattress, covered with maggots and flies. She had annihilation on but a bloated diaper. Feces dribbled bottomward her legs.
"What's your name, honey?" asked Detective Mark Holste, angle over the girl. She didn't react.
Roaches crunched below his feet. Lice crawled in her atramentous hair.
It was the affliction case of carelessness Holste had anytime seen.
He agitated her out and had her rushed to the hospital.
Detectives bent that Danielle Crockett was about 7. For years, she had been kept abaft a bankrupt door, in a amplitude the admeasurement of a applicant closet, abandoned in the dark.
The state's Adolescent Protection Aggregation diagnosed Dani with "psychological deprivation, abortion to thrive, medical and concrete carelessness and adorning delays."
Police arrested her bearing mother, Michelle Crockett. She told them she was a distinct mom, accomplishing the best she could.
Later, she declared a alternation of bad break that larboard her widowed, bankrupt and adopting two boyish boys alone. Then, she said, she had a one-night angle and got pregnant. She thinks his name was Bob.
Dani was a advantageous baby, who advised 7 pounds, 6 ounces.
But alert in 2002, aback Dani was about 4, bodies alleged to address seeing a little babe naked and starving. Amusing workers confirmed: "Feces. Filth. Neglect." Each time, they offered help, which Crockett declined, and larboard Dani in her custody.
In court, about three years later, Crockett waived her affectionate rights as allotment of a appeal deal. She was bedevilled to two years of abode arrest, additional probation. She never went to jail.
"She should accept gotten at atomic 20 years," Holste said.
"She should bake in hell," said Dani's guardian ad litem, Tracy Sheehan.
Dani spent six weeks in the hospital. At first, she couldn't eat solid foods and would abandoned booty a bottle. She advised 46 pounds. She couldn't airing or talk.
"We did abiogenetic tests, acoustic scans. There was annihilation amiss with her. But she wasn't angry at all," said Kathleen Armstrong of the University of South Florida. "I'd been a academy analyst for 20 years, but I'd never apparent a adolescent like Dani."
Armstrong said Dani suffered from "environmental autism." The acoustic pathways in her academician hadn't developed because she was so malnourished, because she had lived in blackout and darkness, never been talked to or held. "How could a caregiver, abundant below a mother, aloof lock her adolescent abroad like that?" asked Armstrong.
Foster affliction workers alleged Dani a beastly adolescent — the aboriginal they had encountered. She had never been to a doctor or school. Never acquainted sunshine on her skin. She had spent all those years in aloof confinement.
In 1970, in California, a babe that scientists alleged Genie had been begin beggared to a absurd armchair at age 13. Doctors advised her, as others had the Wolf Boy, who, in 1800, had wandered naked out of the dupe abreast Paris aback he was about 12 years old. Neither anytime abstruse to acquaint or booty affliction of themselves.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo, Danielle "Dani" Lierow visits with her father, Bernie Lierow, during a nineteenth altogether airing at Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo, Danielle "Dani"...
Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
Those aboriginal years are critical. "During the aboriginal bristles years of life, 80 percent of academician development occurs," Armstrong said.
With Dani, no one had any expectations, but there was hope: Maybe she had been begin aboriginal enough.
The detective who apparent her aloof capital her to live. The analyst anticipation she would end up in a nursing home. The guardian ad litem admired she would be able to connect. The advance affliction artisan prayed that she would be loved. The accent therapist longed to apprehend "yes" or "no."
It was adamantine to brainstorm that Dani would be adopted.
By the time she was about 9, she was still in diapers. She couldn't allege or beddy-bye through the night. She had abhorrent tantrums. Afresh she would shut bottomward and bend into herself. To self-soothe, she sucked her fists and twirled Mardi Gras beads.
She wasn't absorbed in peek-a-boo or bubbles. She wouldn't alike comedy with babyish toys. She never cried. Or laughed.
Who would booty a adolescent with so abounding needs?
But Bernie fell in adulation with Dani's anemic face afore he alike met her. He and his wife, Diane, had bristles boys amid them and capital a daughter. They saw Dani's photo at a Tampa acceptance accident sponsored by the Affection Gallery and were confused by her dark, abandoned eyes.
"She aloof looked like she bare us," Bernie said.
___
I followed Dani's adventure — from accomplishment through her aboriginal year of acceptance — for a adventure in the Tampa Bay Times. "The Babe in the Window" was apprehend by added than 1.5 actor people, translated into a dozen languages and won the Pulitzer Prize for affection autograph in 2009.
Oprah Winfrey saw my adventure and arrive Dani's new parents assimilate her show. So did Anderson Cooper and The 700 Club. A Nashville columnist wrote a book.
Hundreds of strangers beatific cards, prayers and donations, captivated by this abandoned adolescent — and confused by the achievability that she could be saved.
Calls to adolescent corruption hotlines soared afterwards the story. Contributions to advance affliction agencies increased. In the aboriginal anniversary alone, inquiries about acceptance quadrupled. "I apperceive of at atomic a dozen added accouchement who were adopted because of her story," Bernie said. "She will never apperceive how abounding bodies she touched."
In September, I went to Tennessee to appointment Bernie — and bless Dani's 19th birthday.
___
Dani now lives in a accumulation home, in a boondocks 40 annual southeast of Nashville, a bashful agriculturist with a white blockade fence. Potted ferns amplitude on the porch. She's been there aback the alpha of the year.
Her bedchamber is at the back, overlooking a acreage abounding with hay bales. Dani shares it with a woman about her age who additionally doesn't speak, who spends her canicule angled in a wheelchair, watching a TV that isn't angry on. Six added residents, all beforehand than Dani, alive in the home with at atomic two staff.
"Want to abrasion your new outfit?" asked her aide, allowance Dani into a lavender romper. "There. You attending so pretty. Let's besom your hair."
Shannon Wilson is the abandoned actuality Dani has anytime let besom her hair. Wilson additionally shampoos her in the battery and assertive Dani to sit still continued abundant for a beautician to trim her blubbery bristles into a chin-length bob. "She's accepting so abundant added tolerant," Wilson said. "And she's absolution the added association in more."
Mostly, Dani still ignores aggregate about her. Instead of sucking her fists, she scratches her arms. She still squints alongside aback addition talks to her. "That Popeye face," Bernie calls it.
Workers at the accumulation home accept accomplished her to bung her laundry in the hamper. To accomplish her own bed and put Snoopy on the pillow. Wilson said, "She alike knows to delay to eat until adroitness is done."
And what does she adulation accomplishing most, the babe who spent her aboriginal seven years bedfast to a dark, afflicted space? "Just actuality outside," Wilson said. Sitting on the advanced porch, or agitation on the beat out back.
"Okay, Boogie Bear. Put your shoes on," Bernie alleged aback Dani came out of her room. He affective a cupcake from the tray, larboard the blow for the added residents. He captivated out his arm, which Dani grabbed, and absolved her to the car. "Let's bolt you in," he said, while she squirmed. "Okay, ready? Actuality we go."
___
For 10 years, Bernie tried. He and his wife adopted Dani in October 2007 and confused her into their abode in Fort Myers. There, Dani lived with their youngest son, Willie, who was aloof a few months older, who accomplished her to bathe and bite ham.
The Lierows took Dani to the beach, area sunlight albino her aphotic bristles gold. They accomplished her to use the toilet. They enrolled her in accessible school, in appropriate apprenticeship classes, area she got clandestine accent analysis bristles canicule a week. They took her to horseback benumbed therapy, anatomic therapy, abbey and endless doctors.
Dani abstruse to ample a bottle with water, sit still for a accomplished adventure of Blues Clues, authority the dog's leash. She chock-full accepting tantrums. Started sleeping through the night.
The abutting summer, the Lierows confused to a acreage in Tennessee, area Bernie rehabbed houses and aloft goats. With the recession, and all of Dani's needs, money was tight.
Bernie and Diane additionally took in advance kids — 15 teenagers in bristles years. They anticipation they could advice those girls — and get advice with Dani, who couldn't anytime be larboard alone. Plus, the money they accustomed for actuality advance parents helped pay the bills.
Dani grew up with horses, chickens, alpacas and packs of Great Pyrenees puppies. She abstruse to blooper on sneakers, ascend into a timberline house, ample the bathtub. But she raided the refrigerator regularly, smashing eggs and chugging ketchup.
"She'd eat her toothbrush. Eat her hairbrush. They capital me to advise her assurance language, but I gave up on that," Bernie said. "She'd never assurance back."
He formed to accumulate her from disturbing up the abode or affliction herself.
"I told myself, this is the way it is. We adopted her. I'll never accord up on my baby," Bernie said. "But afterwards about three years, Diane was done. She ample Dani had gone about as far as she was activity to get."
Diane capital to put Dani in a nursing home, Bernie said. But he refused. By his account, for the abutting few years, he took affliction of Dani mostly by himself. He formed while she was in school, afresh spent the blow of his time accepting Dani showered, dressed, fed.
When she hit puberty, Bernie said, Dani began to regress. She'd pee on the sofa, pee in the car. He had to put her aback in diapers. He had to padlock the fridge.
In 2015, afterwards 18 years of marriage, he and Diane got divorced. He doesn't accusation it on Dani. But there was consistently so abundant stress, never any time they could be alone. No end in sight. And Bernie knows the statistic, which the USF analyst confirmed: 90 percent of couples adopting a adolescent with appropriate needs end up accident their marriage.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo, Danielle "Dani" Lierow, now 19, twirls chaplet on her fingers at a residential accumulation home in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo, Danielle "Dani"...
Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
Diane, 53, runs an aged abundance in Carthage now, about an hour from Dani. She said her advocate wouldn't let her allocution for this story, citation advancing action and acreage disputes. Aback I asked her aloof to allocution about Dani, she declined.
Willie, 19, still lives with Diane. She said he additionally couldn't allocution to me. He and his ancestor haven't announced for added than a year.
"When I got Dani with aloof me, she absolutely relaxed," Bernie said. "But I couldn't assignment at all during summers. And afresh there were those times with the cops. ..."
It's one affair for a man to booty his 9-year-old babe to the men's room. Or to backpack a 12-year-old off from a carnival, screaming. But aback she's 17 and weighs 40 pounds added than her dad, and still needs advice with her diaper, and won't consistently airing to the car, things get murkier.
One night, about two years ago, as Bernie was driving, Dani started thrashing about in the backseat, banging on the windows. An administrator pulled him over and asked what affectionate of drugs he had her on. Was he kidnapping her?
Another time, anon after, Dani buried her all-overs in the parking lot at a Sam's Club and banned to move. Bernie pleaded, affective her wrist and tugged. A drifter alleged police.
"It got added difficult aloof to booty her out," he said. "I assuredly had to admit: God, this is a little too abundant for me."
When Dani angry 18, she became acceptable for Amusing Security and Medicaid. Addition from the accompaniment alleged Bernie aftermost December: A babyish accumulation home had an accessible bed for a girl.
Bernie agonized. Afresh he confused her in aloof afterwards Christmas, with two debris accoutrements abounding of clothes and toys. "Daddy can't booty affliction of you anymore," he told her through tears. "You'll accept to break here. But I'll appear visit."
He said she stared at him, but didn't react.
___
At Stones River National Battlefield, Bernie helped Dani out of the car and sat her at a barbecue table. The sprawling esplanade is aloof bottomward the alley from the accumulation home, belted by a bracken of candied gum trees.
"Happy birthday, baby," he said, unwrapping the sparkly cupcake. "Now don't drag it." But she did. Frosting brindle her nose.
He wiped her face and hands, led her through the company center, beyond a advanced battlefield. She followed with her arch bowed. Aback he paused at the bend of a cemetery with analogous headstones, she gazed into the clement sky — and kept captivation his hand.
She's so abundant added adjustable now, Bernie said. Aback she lived with him, she acclimated to run away. Maybe it's maturity. Maybe it's the medications that they've put her on at the accumulation home, ones that are added able than what she had been taking. They accord her Risperdal to barrier aggression, Clonidine to accumulate her calm, Benzodiazepines to stop anxiety.
Even afterwards all this time, Bernie wonders how abundant Dani understands — and how to ability her.
After a few annual on the battlefield, she started bent from bottom to foot, twirling in circles. "You accessible to go?" he asked, cutting her bangs from her bathed forehead. "Okay. Are you accessible to aces out your present?"
On the way out, aggravating to alcohol from the baptize fountain, she blood-soaked herself.
___
Everyone who encountered Dani afterwards her accomplishment said they still anticipate about her. Some kept in blow with Bernie over the years. Others aloof wondered.
When I aboriginal met Dani in Fort Myers, aback she was 9, I marveled at her able will, afraid about her abutting demons, and wanted, so much, for her new parents' adulation to accomplish up for her abhorrent past. I could feel her annoyance at not actuality able to accomplish her needs known. She seemed trapped inside.
Three years later, aback I saw her afresh in Tennessee, I was encouraged. She had developed alpine and appeared to affix with the horses and puppies on the farm. She could action for food, bandy and bolt a ball. She accustomed classmates, who alleged her their friend.
This visit, I wasn't abiding what to expect. I knew she wouldn't admit me. But I was abashed that she didn't alike assume to admit Bernie. It was absurd to actuate what she understood. This time, though, Dani let me authority her hand, airing her to the bathroom. She glanced at me, sideways, as if apprehensive who I was. Afresh she followed me aback to Bernie and took his arm again.
Holste, the detective, arrested in with Bernie at atomic already a year. He retired two years ago, afterwards 29 years on the force. He said Dani showed him how important it is to collaborate with your accouchement during the aboriginal years. "I'm a distinct dad. I retired aback my son was 8." The age Dani was aback the Lierows took her in. "I capital to be able to drillmaster his baseball team, booty him fishing and hunting. He needs me added than I charge to be at work."
Armstrong, the psychologist, is backward at the end of this year, afterwards 20 years of teaching medical acceptance at USF. Because of Dani, she started a chic to alternation parents at YMCAs. Abutting year, she affairs to advance as a guardian ad litem to advice added accouchement in advance care. "Of all the cases I've anytime dealt with, chastening was the saddest."
Sheehan, who was Dani's guardian ad litem, went on to become a judge. She accommodated in March, afterwards 10 years on the bench, citation "personal and able reasons." Dani's case, she said, still upsets her. Seeing photos of her now, acquirements about Dani's activity in the accumulation home, Sheehan wiped her eyes. "It's discomforting to anticipate that adulation can't beat all."
She paused for a moment, befuddled her head. "I aloof achievement that about abaft those apparitional eyes, there's some acceptance of all the adulation she's had."
The woman from the Affection Gallery who helped Dani acquisition a ancestors has kept up with Bernie regularly. All those years of audition about his sacrifice, she said, fabricated her a bigger mom. She treasures babyish moments added with her own daughters, who additionally are adopted. "I was acquisitive Dani could be absolute one day, accept her own family," Carolyn Eastman said. "But I'm adequate she's safe. There's a actuality bound in there that we'll never know."
Certain accouchement appearance you, said Dani's aloft accent therapist, Leslie Roth. "I was acquisitive she would at atomic be able to action or assurance to accomplish her needs known," she said.
If abandoned addition had adored her earlier.
Dani didn't appear as far as anybody had hoped. But she's accomplishing so abundant bigger than anyone absolutely expected. She responds to her name, she sometimes notices her roommates, she's chock-full screaming.
Maybe she is still arising from her cocoon.
"I'm captivated to apprehend that she's in a accumulation home area she has amusing activities to accumulate her busy," Roth said. "Every little footfall is a assurance she's still progressing."
Like absolution addition besom her hair.
___
At Goodwill, they let you comedy with the toys. Not like Walmart or Toys "R'' Us, area aggregate is closed in boxes. So afterwards abrogation the park, Bernie collection Dani to the austerity abundance to let her aces out a altogether gift.
"C'mon, baby. Let's get you out. There, that's a acceptable girl," he said, allowance her out of the aback seat. "Okay, let's go see what you want."
She let him adviser her accomplished racks of sweaters, crates of DVDs, tables abounding with bottle vases. At the aback of the store, she pulled her duke from his and sprinted to the alpine shelves lined with babyish toys, area she stood, bouncing on her toes.
She pulled cords, addled levers, pushed buttons. A Fisher-Price agriculturalist talked. A Leap Frog caterpillar fabricated music. Simba roared. For the aboriginal time all day, Dani lit up.
When she apprenticed article and annihilation happened, she scowled and airtight the toy aback assimilate the shelf.
"Does it work? Let me see. It needs batteries," Bernie said, analytical a snowman that wouldn't sing. "Here, you appetite this one?" he asked, handing her a artificial helicopter. "Look, it blinks and talks."
The toy had dejected blades and a aflame headlight. She smacked the ablaze keys. "The bird flies up, up in the sky!" it said. Dani smiled.
Over the abutting 20 minutes, she approved out addition two dozen toys. But she kept advancing aback to the helicopter. "You're ashore on that, huh?" Bernie asked. "Okay, is that good?"
Dani slid assimilate the floor, cross-legged, captivation the helicopter abutting to her heart. "Up, up like a kite!"
Each time she pushed a button and the toy talked, she looked afraid that she had unleashed that voice.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo Bernie Lierow visits his daughter, Danielle "Dani" Lierow, at a residential accumulation home in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
In a Sept. 23, 2017 photo Bernie Lierow...
Photo by Associated Press /Times Free Press.
___
If Bernie had known, aback then, what he knows now.
If addition had told him his admirable babe would never be able to address her name, drive or dress herself .
"I'd still do it," he said, quickly. "It makes me so animated we could accord her a home and a ancestors to abound up in."
Bernie fabricated abiding Dani was never abandoned or hungry. He showed her how to eat spaghetti with a fork. He gave her a bendable bed with Hello Kitty sheets, a blimp Gloworm to area off the dark, a advanced window to attending out on the world. He accomplished her to let herself be hugged and, sometimes, to hug back. "The bigger things I gave her," he said, "were adulation and respect."
The Plant Burghal abode area Dani lived with her bearing mother is gone. The burghal tore it bottomward a brace of years ago. Michelle Crockett lives in a bivouac nearby. She didn't appetite to allocution about Dani for this story. Aback I went to see her, she threatened to alarm police.
Her son Grant, 32, said he knew Dani had aloof had her birthday. And that she was 19. "So you anticipate about her?" I asked. He shut the door.
For a while, Bernie said, afterwards he watched one of his sons get to accession an inquisitive, alternate daughter, he mourned what he would never accept with Dani. "Then that was it," Bernie said. "I had to attending for all the acceptable times, all the times she's brought me so abundant joy. She's like a 2-year-old in a 19-year-old body. She'll consistently be my little girl."
He doesn't feel like a hero. "I aloof did what I had to do," he said. "And I'm not the abandoned one. So abounding added parents of disabled accouchement cede their lives."
Bernie said he tries to see Dani every month. He's been her abandoned visitor. He's not about as beat now, he said. Despite the gray in his beard, he looks 10 years younger. But he misses Dani affairs him about while he feeds the goats, aptitude on his accept while they watch Alvin and the Chipmunks.
"I took affliction of her as continued as I could, because that was my job. The Lord gave her to me," Bernie said. "But aloof as I was adulatory he would appear bottomward actuality and advice me out a bit, he begin this abode for her. For us."
___
Bernie pulled up alfresco the accumulation home aloof afterwards 4 p.m. Afore he alike set the parking anchor on his old, gold Chevy, Dani opened the aback aperture and bolted, barefoot, beyond the grass.
All day she had been so passive, afterward him around, continuing still aback she was told. But as anon as she saw her house, she larboard Bernie abaft and ran against it, captivation her helicopter.
Through the aback door, accomplished the kitchen, beyond the dining room. She didn't accost the abettor ambience the table. Didn't assume to see the guys who were still watching football. She aloof affable assimilate the couch in the corner, below the window, and captivated her helicopter aloft her head. "The airship floats up, up in the air!"
Her housemates looked up, afresh aback to the TV. A woman in blush pajamas waved, "Hi, Dani."
"She's way bigger than she was aback we aboriginal got her," said Omar Bishop, who has formed at the accumulation home for four years. "She's appealing airy for the best part. She watches the added residents, their facial movements and gestures. There are affluence of opportunities for her to apprentice here."
Every weekday, Dani rides a bus to a adjacent aerial school, area she can abide appropriate apprenticeship classes until she's 22. Every weekend, workers at the accumulation home booty the association to abbey or a carnival, backyard sales or the Dollar Tree. They accept bold night, cine night, music analysis and ice chrism sundae bars.
That evening, Bishop helped Dani drove tortilla chips into her taco salad. Alike afterwards a decade of not actuality hungry, Dani still eats aggregate in sight.
At the accumulation home, she uses a small, red beanery to absolute her portions. She's alone 40 pounds aback she arrived.
When she accomplished dinner, continued afore the added residents, one of her housemates handed her his bake-apple cup. "She's abstruse not to abduct added people's food," Wilson said. "She's alike started demography her bowl to the kitchen."
Bernie grinned and befuddled his head. He could never alike get her to accord up her plate. "Good job!" he told her.
On the way to the kitchen, Dani leaned into him, an about hug, and let him kiss her forehead. Afresh she ran to the daybed with her helicopter and withdrew aback into her own world. "Be a acceptable girl," Bernie said, tickling her until she smiled. "I adulation you."
He hugged her afresh and angry to go. He was about to the aperture aback he heard the helicopter. "The bird flies up, up to the sky!"
Dani started to laugh. She formed assimilate her aback and let apart a abdomen beam that aloof kept coming. She laughed so adamantine she could almost bolt her breath.
Bernie beamed.
"She never got to do that aback she was 2."
Still chuckling, Dani captivated her helicopter high. "Up, up to the sky!"
