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Adoptive mother: Nigerian relative trusted to provide care

HOUSTON — The lawyer for the adoptive mother of seven children found malnourished and sick in a Nigerian orphanage is defending the woman's actions, blaming a brother-in-law for abandoning them while she was in Iraq.

Mercury Liggins faces a custody hearing on Aug. 26. Harris County Child Protective Services officials have referred to police new abuse complaints from the children, who claim that she struck them with switches and a cane and had repeatedly threatened to take them to Africa if they ever told law officers about earlier abuse reports.

Liggins, 47, also faces a state investigation stemming from payments she received to help care for the three boys and four girls, who range from 8 to 16 years old. They are in Houston foster homes.

Also, the FBI is investigating the case to see whether and any federal laws were broken.

Attorney Michael Delaney said Thursday that Liggins has checked in to a hospital for nervous exhaustion. The shock of hearing that the children had been in the orphanage and the sudden realization that her brother-in-law had duped her have drained her, he said.

"She trusted the wrong person," Delaney told the Houston Chronicle in Friday's editions. "She feels badly for her kids."

The youths told a Texas pastor who discovered them in the orphanage that they had been abandoned in the country by Liggins in October. They proved their American citizenship to the missionary by singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and he notified U.S. authorities who returned them to Texas last week, nine days after they were found in Ibadan, Nigeria.

"Before the public judges this lady they need to hear the entire story, both sides, not just the sensationalistic allegations," Delaney said.

Child welfare officials investigated four previous complaints of abuse going back to 1997, but no mistreatment was ever proven, a spokeswoman said earlier this week. CPS officials halted $512-per-child monthly stipends in March after learning that the children from Houston were not living with the mother.

"She certainly never intended to abandon the kids," said Delaney. "She thought he was caring well for the kids."

Liggins adopted four of the children, all siblings, in Houston in 1996. Five years later, she adopted three siblings in Dallas.

Delaney said Liggins had decided a boarding school would be the best place for the children while she trained and worked in Iraq as a contract food-service employee supporting U.S. troops. The woman investigated boarding schools in states near Texas and schools in Mexico, but decided on the Nigerian school because her husband is Nigerian and he had gone to a boarding school there as a child.

Liggins and her brother-in-law toured at least two of the schools and decided on the one that best suited the children and their means and enrolled them. After she returned to Houston, she talked on the phone with the children often before she left for Iraq, Delaney said.

"She was caring for her children as a working mother, financially supporting them in the best possible care that she could while she was overseas," he said.

Information from: Houston Chronicle

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August 20, 2004 - 8:07 a.m. EDT
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