Ever since his mother gave the final dosage of 100miligrams of valium for him to ?sleep forever? at the age of three, little Richard?s life has never been the same again. At the age of five, he cannot talk, walk or pick food with his own hands to eat. Doctors say he has suffered memory loss and would need a good deal of intensive medical care to be able to recover. Richard was barely three years old when his mother, identified only as Sherry, introduced him to valium (or sleeping tablets as it is popularly known. According to sources near her former home in Kpando, Sherry plied the night business and since she did not want her baby to stand in the way of her profession and also to ensure that he slept deeply till the next day when she returned, Sherry began by giving little Richard a 10mg tablet of valium every night before she went out to embark on her nocturnal business.

At a point in time, the source said, she got tired of the baby and decided to run away to Accra and that was when she gave the boy 10 tablets of valium with the hope that he would die. She?s not been heard of ever since. But for the timely intervention of a next-door neighbour, little Richard would have actually died as his mother intended but God in his own wonderful way found a way of rescuing the baby from the jaws of death. The source who identified herself as Enyonam Afun, a seamstress in Kpando, said that they thought Sherry had taken the baby to Accra but were shocked to the bone when someone took a peep through Sherry?s window on the third day and saw the baby lying still in the room all alone, as though he was dead. Consequently, they managed to get him out of the room and rushed him to the hospital where the doctor said he was in deep coma. For six months, Richard was still in coma and had to be fed intravenously.

When he regained consciousness, he was almost a skeleton. Some people said he was HIV-positive and did not want to have anything to do with him. Little Richard was rejected by his own until the timely intervention of two strangers. Richard is now at the Missahow Charity home and is being taken care of by two sisters, Vicentia 29, and Mawusi, 30 who have decided to dedicate the rest of their lives to the care of children like Richard who have been neglected by their parents.