News articles about feral children

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This list includes various newspaper articles and news agency items that feature feral children. Where the publication title is underlined, you can click on it to read the article (they are all offsite). For the other items, you'll need to go to a newspaper library.

Follow-Up

Newspapers don't have the time or budget to follow up these stories years later: life is so hectic that they move onto the next story immediately. Thus apart from the original brief story it's very difficult to obtain any further information, especially as so many feral children are found in remote areas of countries with little in the way of communications infrastructure.

One noticeable exception is the story of Isabel Quaresma. The paper that had covered the original story sent a team 18 years later to check on her (rather sorry) progress. They were only able to track her down with some considerable difficulty.

Newspaper reports

For many feral children, the only "evidence" we have is an account in a newspaper article. Although there will sometimes be articles in several publications about the same child, they usually are all working from the same source.

Often, by the time the story reaches a newspaper, it can be many years old. It will have received much embellishment and lost some detail. Usually, where several versions of the same story appear, the details differ significantly.

Hoaxes?

On one occasion the newspapermen are believed to have been responsible for making up a story entirely: the case of The Syrian Gazelle-Boy.