Marina Chapman | |
|---|---|
| Born | circa 1950 |
| Notable work | The Girl With No Name |
| Children | 2 |
Marina Chapman (born circa 1950) is a Colombian-born British woman known to have spent much of her early childhood in the jungle and was raised solely by a group of capuchin monkeys. [1] [2]
Marina Chapman was born around 1950 in Colombia. She was born during the La Violencia civil war in Colombia which was fought primarily in the countryside. When she was five or six years old, she was taken away from her village (the name of which she was too young to have learned) and taken to a jungle, which may have been part of the Amazon rainforest, by a unknown group of persons, where she was left behind and abandoned, for a reason that she did not understand. She obviously was not able to return back home and could not leave the jungle, so she wandered alone in the jungle, for a really long period of time. Due to a lack of food in the jungle, she could not find food and began to suffer from severe malnutrition and soon suffered total weakness and later starvation. She became extremely weak and ill, and she almost died from starvation, until she was discovered and rescued by a group of capuchin monkeys, who took her in and nourished her back to health. She spent the next four or five years being raised by the capuchin monkeys, surviving by copying their ways, and by learning where to find edible food to eat and how to climb tall trees. She struggled to adapt to the new environment. When she was around ten years old, she was discovered by a group of hunters, who caught her and took her out of the jungle, and kept her captive, until she was sent to the city of Cúcuta. In Cúcuta, she was sold to a brothel and was forced to become a prostitute, but she left after she was either expelled as she was too feral, or she simply escaped on her own. She then lived on the streets of Cúcuta as a homeless girl, and subsequently then became a slave of a Colombian mafia family. [3]
A neighbour, Maruja, rescued her and sent her to Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, to live with one of her daughters. Maruja's daughter Maria adopted Marina when she was approximately 14. [3] This family had connections to the city of Bradford in Yorkshire, England, through the textile industry, and in 1977 sent their children there with Chapman to be their nanny. [2]
Chapman currently lives in Bradford. [3] She married a scientist from the area, [2] with whom she has two daughters. [2] [4]
Carlos Conde, a professor in Colombia, performed a test using pictures of Chapman's adopted family and capuchin monkeys that strongly suggested that Chapman was telling the truth. The University of London psychology professor Chris French argued that Chapman may be affected by false memories. [2]
National Geographic created the documentary Woman Raised By Monkeys. It premiered on Thursday 12 December 2013. [5]
Chapman collaborated on her autobiography The Girl With No Name (published 2013 by Mainstream Publishing), with the help of her musician daughter Vanessa Forero and writer Lynne Barrett-lee. [6] [2] Chapman and her daughter both appeared on BBC Breakfast Time in 2013 [7] to promote the book which had initially been rejected by several publishers because they suspected it was not authentic, but it went on to be published internationally. [3] [8]
Kate McKinnon performed a satirical impression of Chapman on the Weekend Update segment of the April 13, 2013 episode of Saturday Night Live. [9] [10] [11]
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