A wheelchair-bound homeless woman in Cape Town needs help in tracking down her seventeen children.
|||Cape Town - A wheelchair-bound homeless woman in Cape Town needs help in tracking down her 17 children.
Dianne Julies, 55, says she has three sets of twins and 11 other children who she is now trying to find.
She has been living on the streets for the last decade.
The woman is now a common sight in Hanover Park where she begs for whatever she can. She also sleeps at the day hospital there.
“I sleep in my wheelchair,” she told the Daily Voice.
“I wasn’t born disabled, but 10 years ago I had a fight with a relative and she hit me with something on my back and I have not been able to walk again.
“Now I have to wear nappies which I change myself.”
She said she had to give up all her children because she doesn’t have a permanent place to stay.
“I lived in Retreat with my husband before he passed away 15 years ago,” she said. “And after that I was in Port Elizabeth and Ceres.
“I just couldn’t take care of my children. So I decided to give them up for adoption.”
Julies said she had four children before she got married, five with her husband and seven with her current boyfriend who works at sea.
“I also had a child with my stepdad, who raped me, and I had an 18th child, but he died,” Julies said.
Her oldest child is 37 years old and the youngest is four months old.
“I know my eldest child lives in Mitchells Plain and when I see her, she gives me R1, but now I would like to see my other children so they can take care of me,” she added.
“I last saw my four-month-old baby when he was born. Some others, I saw them a year ago, and others more than 20 years.”
* If you can help Julies find her children, SMS DIANNE KIDS to 32832.
Daily Voice