Birth mom of abandoned kids speaks out

05:44 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 18, 2004

By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

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HOUSTON – The plight of seven Houston children allegedly abandoned by their adopted mother in Nigeria has encouraged people who knew them to come forward.

KHOU-TV The seven siblings, ages 8 to 16, hope they will be adopted together.

According to one of the children’s former teachers, one of the girls was a standout student at Sterling High School.

"She was a pleasure to have in the classroom. She was just a really good student,” remembers Rasheda Malveaux.

The 16-year old was also in ROTC.

"She was attached. Teach me everything. I'm gonna go in the Navy when I get out of school," Chief Petty Officer Joseph Bennett remembers the teen telling him.

Her teachers had high hopes for the student. Then the 16-year-old simply vanished.

KHOU-TV Before moving to Nigeria, the children were regular visitors at the Boys and Girls Club of Houston.

"The only thing I heard from her was 'I think we are gonna move,'" said Bennett.

The girl is one of seven adopted children. The youngest is just 8.

The family also spent time at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Houston. The younger kids confided in Mona Bates.

“Well they came up to me and said their mom didn't want them anymore and that she was sending all of them to Africa. It was very sudden," laments Bates.

The children, she says, disappeared last October.

They were found by San Antonio youth pastor Warren Beemer earlier this month in a Nigerian orphanage.

KHOU-TV LaQuita Teague is the biological mother of the three youngest children.

Beemer remembers the spot where he stumbled upon the American kids. “It was just a very very desolate feeling place. It felt like about the end of the Earth. About the last spot you'd want to end up in."

Pastor Beemer quizzed the oldest girl. He says she rattled off the name of her school and the names of three teachers. It was her only form of identification.

"That's another thing that touches my heart. You never really know. Because we hope that we affect a child’s life but you never really know,” said teacher Celeste McNeil.

Looking at pictures taken in Nigeria, the high school teachers hardly recognize their former student now.

"You see her and it's like 'oh my God this child is really sick,'" said Malveaux.

They all knew the oldest girl. The first one approached by the missionary who would be their savior, she was stronger than they could have imagined.

"That is devastating to me. It hurts me because I know this girl," said an anguished Bennett.

LaQuita Teague knows three of the girl's siblings. She is their birth mother. All she has now is their pictures.

"I knew something wasn't right. I could feel it. I could feel it in my heart where ever they was at," Teague said as she wiped tears from her face.

Seeing the pictures of them now, malnourished and sickly, is too much.

"I miss em. I want them to come home. I don't know how they end up way over there,” lamented Teague.

Only one woman does know and she’s not talking

The children have all been treated for various ailments including malaria and malnutrition.

They are now in the care of two foster families.

Friends of the family say that some people did attempt to alert Children’s Protective Services of the children’s plight in Nigeria, but nothing was done.

CPS officials here did not respond to calls from KHOU on Tuesday.