Twelve years ago, a little girl named Lauren Kavanaugh was found starving to death and imprisoned in a tiny urine-soaked closet. But, today, she has revealed how she survived six years of sexual, emotional and physical abuse in a powerful interview with The Dallas Morning News.
"Her arms, they appeared to be no bigger than an inch wide to me. She was naked"
Lauren was two years old when the courts ordered her loving adoptive parents, Bill and Sabrina Kavanaugh, to hand her back to her biological mother, Barbara Atkinson. The couple, who had loved her since the day she was born, had given the little girl a wonderful home. She called them "dada" and "ma-ma". She learned to walk clutching their hands.
But, due to a clerical error in her adoption paperwork, it was all too easy for her biological mother Barbara Atkinson to file a petition to take her daughter back. And, once she had the little girl in her clutches, she and Lauren's stepfather Kenneth made the child's life a living nightmare.
She would hold Lauren's head under water, laughing as she gulped and clawed for air. She would watch and laugh as her husband raped the todder, Lauren's screams filling the house. And, when Lauren was starving, Barbara reportedly sat her down with a bowl of food and said she could chew it, but not swallow a single bite.
This abuse went on for six years, until a neighbour discovered the little girl living in the closet. Despite being an eight year old girl, Lauren was the size of a toddler; her body had cannibalised its muscle, organs and bones to stay alive. She was covered in her own faeces, her legs were red raw from sitting in her own waste and, to the woman who found her, the sight was terrifying:
“What I pictured was a monster, a little bitty monster. She was so frail and without colour. Her arms, they appeared to be no bigger than an inch wide to me. She was naked.”
She added: “It was worse than what I’ve seen for a Holocaust victim. It was that devastating. I’d never seen anything that bad on TV, and I just didn’t know what to do.”
"It was worse than what I’ve seen for a Holocaust victim"
Her body had cannibalised much of its muscle, organs and bone to stay alive. Lauren had been deprived of food for so long, her stomach lacked the enzymes required to digest food. To save her, doctors were forced to use refeeding methods developed for Holocaust victims.
She had cigarette burns and puncture wounds across her back and face, her hair was infested with lice and her airways were clogged with faeces, carpet fibres and plastic. Investigators also found that the little girl's body had been so badly damaged by years of sexual abuse that she needed a series of reconstructive surgeries:
"She did not have a separate vagina and an anus. They came out together as one opening.”
Sabrina and Bill, the couple who had adopted her and loved her as a baby, re-adopted Lauren as soon as they could. And, together, they worked to heal the psychological wounds that Lauren had suffered. They found her sleeping in the closet at night, so they took the door off of every closet in the house. They found her stealing food under cover of darkness, so they started leaving cookies and pink lemonade on the kitchen table.
“She didn’t need to have food locked away. She needed to learn that it would always be there for her," said Sabrina.
And bath time was always difficult, as Lauren has been held under the water by Barbara in the past:
Her adoptive mother explained: “Trying to wash her hair, oh my God, I’ll never forget that. She’d scream, ‘Please don’t drown me. Please don’t drown me.’ How do you explain to an 8-year-old you’re not going to drown her?”
Sadly, despite Sabrina and Bill's love and attention, it was not the end of Lauren's abuse; n 2005, case workers encouraged her adoptive mother to relax her tight rein on her daughter, so she let Lauren go to stay with her niece's family.
The following morning, her niece's husband took Lauren outside and sexually assaulted her. He was jailed for the attack, but the damage was done; Lauren has since endured fits of rage, has self-harmed, has attempted suicide and has admitted she is incapable of love. In fact, while she readily says she would "take a bullet" for Sabrina, she doesn't love her or anybody else.
“I’m not saying I’m not capable of love. I just haven’t felt it yet”
It's unsurprising; psychologists say that adopting a child who's suffered extreme abuse is an exercise in sacrifice. And one of Lauren's case workers admitted that, for Lauren, it's a case of never feeling loved enough:
“You can’t fill Lauren up. She wants more, she needs more, she never feels loved enough.”
In the new series of interviews, Lauren has revealed her that she hopes "one day I'll be able to have a normal life." She prefers to be seen in an asexual way, dressing in boys clothes, and finds it difficult to make friends. But, to those who know her best, the girl who spent six years of her life inside a closet is a strong, beautiful and accomplished young woman. She;s graduated from high school, enrolled at a college, is no longer taking medication for depression and more than willing to talk about the past.
Lauren's therapist explained: "When I first started seeing her, she was not social, she was chronically depressed, she was suicidal, she felt worthless. Today, she's ready to embrace her past. She's not embarrassed about it or ashamed about it anymore. She's like, 'This happened to me, but I'm still here. I survived and I'm thriving'."
And, for Sabrina - the adoptive mother who has lavished Lauren with love and affection since the day she came back into her life - it was all worth it.
"There were a lot of tough years in there. Sometimes I wasn’t sure we were going to make it. But all things considered, Lauren's doing great. I think we may have turned a corner."