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Missing Queens student flies home from S. Africa

By Betsy Scheinbart

A Yale University student from Far Rockaway who was missing in South Africa for several weeks flew into Kennedy Airport Sunday and was greeted by her relieved parents and U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-St. Albans).

Natasha Smalls, 20, a graduate of Far Rockaway HS, was studying at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa as part of her degree program at Yale when she lost contact with her family.

Natasha placed a frantic call to her mother in July saying she was locked in a mental institution in Zimbabwe. Then she missed her flight home Aug. 1.

“People just don’t know what it was like,” Glory Smalls said of not knowing where her daughter was. “It was like a living hell.”

Natasha, a junior at Yale, was escorted home by a professor who had taught one of Natasha’s African studies classes at Yale and was in Johannesburg.

Details of her time in African remained unclear Sunday since her parents did not want to press the young woman on what had happened to her.

“She’s had a terrible, terrible ordeal and her parents are focused on making sure she is taken care of,” Meeks said. “We know she’s been in a hospital and in fear for her life. We have to take our time with her.”

Meanwhile, Meeks’ office and the State Department were working with South African officials to investigate what happened to the young woman.

Natasha’s mother said her daughter was in need of some medical attention and had lost a lot of weight.

“She was abused but to what extent, I don’t know,” Glory Smalls said.

Natasha has been legally blind in one eye since birth but does not take any sort of daily medications, her mother said.

“Natasha is a brilliant girl and she is going to get all the help that she needs,” Glory Smalls said. “We are going to take care of her health and well-being so she can fulfill her dream to graduate from Yale.”

Candace Sandy, the communications director for Meeks, helped piece together what is known of Natasha’s time in Africa.

Natasha arrived in South Africa Feb. 8 to further her studies in African Studies, her major at Yale. Natasha had been to South Africa the previous summer to study Zulu, the language of the Bantu-speaking people.

Her problems started in mid-March when she was the victim of what Sandy called “a really bad assault,” which her family did not want to describe.

Glory Smalls traveled to South Africa after the March attack to be with her daughter.

Determined to graduate on time, Natasha continued to study in Durban after the incident. She called her mother July 27 to tell her she was locked in a mental institution in Zimbabwe and had been injected with drugs.

Meeks’ office could not confirmed that she was in a mental hospital in Zimbabwe, but by July 30 she was in South Africa and called home to tell her parents she was returning home Aug. 1. Natasha then withdrew money from her bank account and signed out of her dormitory in Durban.

Her family gathered at John F. Kennedy International Airport Aug. 1 to welcome her home, but she never arrived.

“If you have a kid, you understand,” Glory Smalls told reporters at an airport news conference Sunday. “Not knowing if they are dead or alive — all kinds of things can go through your mind.”

After Glory Smalls said she failed to receive help from Yale University and the State Department, the family went to Meeks’ office.

Yale University spokeswoman Gila Reinstein said Monday the school never received a call from Glory Smalls and did not know about Natasha’s disappearance until a news reporter contacted them.

Yale then contacted the State Department, which was “right on top” of Natasha’s case from that point forward, Reinstein said.

The State Department did not return phone calls for comment.

Finally, Natasha called home last Thursday from Johannesburg.

“I cried and she cried,” Glory Smalls said of the conversation with her daughter last week. “I was overwhelmed. Tears kept falling down my face.”

A woman Glory Smalls befriended in Durban in March got one of her friends, a taxi driver in Johannesburg, to put Natasha on a flight to Durban.

According to her mother’s friend and the taxi driver, Natasha had been wandering the streets of Johannesburg in a daze and had regressed to the mental state of a 3-year-old at the time she called home.

Glory and her husband, Robert Smalls, were concerned with what she said was a lack of involvement on Yale’s part.

“We can’t afford to let this happen to another family,” Robert Smalls said of his daughter’s disappearance while studying abroad. “The laws and regulations need to be looked into.”

Reinstein said the program Natasha was on is evaluated by the Junior Year Abroad Department and Yale is usually not in constant contact with students studying in foreign countries.

Meeks said he wanted to examine the policies of the school’s study abroad programs to see if Yale had done anything wrong and if any regulations on these sorts of programs need to be changed.

Reach reporter Betsy Scheinbart by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 138.