Mom denies abandoning adopted kids in Nigeria

HOUSTON – The lawyer for the adoptive mother of seven children who were found ill in a Nigerian orphanage said they were abandoned by the woman’s brother-in-law while she was in Iraq.

Michael Delaney said Mercury Liggins has been drained after learning what had happened to the children and had checked into a hospital for nervous exhaustion.

“She trusted the wrong person,” Delaney told the Houston Chronicle in a story published Friday. “She feels badly for her kids.”

The seven were discovered early this month in Ibadan, Nigeria, by a Texas missionary, telling him Liggins had abandoned them in the country in October.

The three boys and four girls, ages 8 to 16, are now in Houston foster homes. Liggins, 47, faces a custody hearing next Thursday.

The children say Liggins struck them with switches and a cane and repeatedly threatened to take them to Africa if they ever told law officers about earlier abuse reports.

Liggins also faces a state investigation stemming from payments she received to help with the children’s care, and the FBI is also investigating.

Delaney defended his client.

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

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 schools in states near Texas and in Mexico but decided on the Nigerian school because her husband is Nigerian and attended a boarding school there as a child.

Liggins and her brother-in-law toured at least two schools before enrolling the children in one. After returning 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.

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

Child welfare officials investigated four previous complaints of abuse dating back to 1997, but no mistreatment was ever proved, a spokeswoman said this week. Her $512-per-child monthly stipends were halted in March after officials learned the children were not living with the mother.