Ten-year-old girl abused to death

A 10-year-old girl has suffered the same torment like her mother had, but she was not lucky enough to survive the torturing.

Shirley Deal, 38, fled from what she described as an abusive household several years ago, leaving behind her daughter with her ex-husband and his family.

Last Friday, she found out about the death of the girl, Ame Deal, in Phoenix of United States from an online news portal.

Police said Ame had been placed inside a locked plastic storage box as punishment on July 12, after months of other abuse by adults she was living with.

Judith (left) and Cynthia

Four people – the girl's grandmother Judith Deal, 72, aunt Cynthia Stoltzmann, 44, cousin sister Sammantha and her husband John Allen, both 23 - were arrested.

They have been charged with murder, child abuse and kidnapping. But Ame's father David Deal is free.

Shirley said she married David in 1996, and they shared a home with his mother and sister.

She claimed she was abused by the relatives and so, she ran away.

Sammantha and John Allen

The accused had told police that Ame and other children in her extended family had been playing hide and seek, and they believed the girl must have hidden in the box and accidentally suffocated.

But detectives found that the child had been placed in the box as punishment for taking a frozen treat from a refrigerator.

Investigators said the girl apparently had been put in the box at least five times in recent months for 'misbehaving'.

She also had been beaten with a wooden paddle and been forced to swallow hot sauce and eat dog faeces.

Police said the girl slept on the floor of a stall shower in the home with no blanket or pillow as a disciplinary measure for bed-wetting.

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian

Blinded woman forgives her attacker

An Iranian woman has forgiven the man who blinded and disfigured her face, by throwing acid at her.

The AAP reported she forgave her attacker and decided not to go ahead with the court-ordered retribution, which involved a doctor putting acid into his eyes.

This is based on the Islamic law system of "qisas," or eye-for-an-eye retribution.

She asked the doctor to spare him at the last minute in a dramatic scene broadcast on Iran's state television.

Ameneh Bahrami lost her sight and suffered horrific burns to her face, scalp and body , when attacked by a man whose marriage proposal she rejected.

"It is best to pardon when you are in a position of power," she said.

The sobbing man, Majid Movahedi, said Bahrami was "very generous."

It was a change of heart when the court handed down the sentence in November 2008.

Bahrami was then happy with the ruling.

"I am not doing this out of revenge, but rather so that the suffering I went through is not repeated," she said in that March 2009 interview.

Warm Regard, Sara Pandian