Sherin Mathews: A Tragedy In An Apparent Fairytale

As an infant, she was abandoned by her parents in a small city in Bihar.

By God’s grace she was taken in by an NGO and some time later adopted by an Indian family settled in America.

It seems like a perfect setting for a fairytale life for the little girl, Saraswati, who was renamed, Sherin Matthews.
But it was not to be.

A little more than a year after being adopted by Sini and Wesley Matthews, Sherin went missing on October 7th, when her father insensitively punished her to stand outside their house at 3 a.m. in the morning because she had not finished her glass of milk.

Yesterday, 14 days after being reported missing, Richardson police officials have discovered the body of a little girl in a tunnel near the house of the Matthews.

The police do not yet have a positive ID of the body but they have said that they have no reason to believe that the body could be of anybody else’s other than Sherin.

As soon as the news of the missing girl had spread across social media there had been pleas and prayers to find the little girl safe and sound. But all that seems to be in vain, as today, in all probability, Sherin lies dead because we, the people, failed her.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority of India has been silent on the entire issue. They have conveniently put the blame on the foreign adoption agency Holt International which was supposed to submit follow-up reports of home visits after Sherin’s adoption.

It is not uncommon to find children adopted and then abandoned by their parents with no accountability on anyone’s head. But today the truth remains that humanity died another death with Sherin when she was abandoned yet again by her father, the man who was supposed to love and nurture her for life.