that kind of isolation for a child of that age and for that length of time followed by the next big chunk of years being held in a brothel and beaten and abused til the age of 14 is why I find this particular lady's story unbelievable.
The brothel would not be a place to learn to trust or emulate human behavior once again. It would drive her further from wanting to have anything to do with humans I would think.
The violence and abuse she experienced might have been exaggerated for dramatic effect and there seems to be a lot of inconsistency/ uncertainty about the length of time she actually spent in the jungle and in the brothel.
But I have a huge problem with the ease that she seems to have slid into normal employment and family life with absolutely no benefit from any therapy or education as well. Maybe she tells more in her book but there is nothing about her ever getting any in the articles that I've seen.
There, aged nine, she began calling herself Luz Marina. After narrowly escaping being sold into prostitution, she spent her teenage years with a group of homeless street children in an organised petty crime ring.
Later, she found work as a housekeeper. Her initial employer abused her. But she was then taken in by the working-class family of a local woman called Maruja Eusse, who found her work with some cousins in Bogota. The family, who worked in textiles, later attempted to emigrate to the UK. In 1978, they spent six months in Bradford, where she met and fell in love with John Chapman, the organist at an evangelical church where she worshipped.
They married shortly afterwards, when Marina was in her late 20s, had two daughters, and for the ensuing three decades have lived inconspicuously in tidy, three-bedroom semi in Allerton, a suburb of Bradford.
After moving to Yorkshire and starting a family, Mrs Chapman worked part-time at the National Media Museum, and at a local nursery, remained active in her evangelical church, and started a small catering company.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-says-raised-monkeys-story-just-bananas.html
So, we have a young woman who spent five years in the jungle with tiny monkeys and then her teenage years as part of a street children's petty crime ring. She gets employed as a housekeeper? Where on earth does she get any housekeeping skills? She hasn't even
lived in a house, apart from the time in the brothel. Ana-Karmen made her mop and polish, was that sufficient? There is no mention that she ever had any chance to go to school or learn to read and she would presumably be somewhat cognitively delayed or retarded by her deprived background and ignorant of social norms. How on earth did she manage to live inconspicuously, get employed and even run a business in a strange country? She even became active in the church which is nice for her but I think it is a bit unusual for a feral child to have the kind of spiritual mindset that is able to understand and embrace structured religion. The monkeys would have taught her no abstract thinking skills, no reading, no calculation, nothing about the way human society is run, nothing about God, salvation, sin, and other invisible tenets of religion etc. Where did she even get the concept of worshipping? (Yeah, she might have lived in a religious family before being kidnapped but from the way she describes her jungle experience it doesn't seem like she thought of God back then)
In her article in the DN (in her own words, apparently) she also claims to have understood no language after her rescue or capture from the jungle.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-rescued-jungle-home-sold-brothel-parrot.html
But my reverie was interrupted by the man. Though I had no human language, it was clear what he thought. He was making it clear I wouldn’t be welcome.
The hunters departed and Ana-Karmen spoke, opening her mouth and letting a stream of noise out.
Ana-Karmen set me to work. I had very little idea what ‘work’ was. So I was given instruction. And the most important lesson was how to mop floors. The wooden spoon in Ana-Karmen’s belt – initially so terrifying – soon seemed the mildest of punishments. And I was punished constantly.
So this woman who talks in streams of noises that the girl doesn't understand gave her "instruction"? Oh, ok. I guess she could have shown her what to do but instruction is a strange word choice imo for a nonverbal imitational activity. She gives no indication that anyone at all made any efforts to teach her to speak and understand language again but soon enough she is fluent enough to run errands in shops and quote things people said in her hearing apparently verbatim 50 years later.
The single-storey house I was now imprisoned in was inhabited by young women and several children. There were regular male visitors.
One day, as I ran errands to the nearby shops, I was given a frightening vision of the future
It's not exactly imprisonment if she was free to run errands. How come she didn't run away earlier if she was beaten and afraid of being cooked?
Regarding her jungle life descriptions, I am very curious to know whether it has ever been documented that capuchin monkey females simply lay down and die from grief if their youngsters are taken, and it doesn't really make sense to me why, after describing in detail the fear and horror caused by human hunters she'd seen before, she'd feel compelled to show herself submissively to one simply because the hunter appeared female. Why would it make any difference to a scared monkey-child? I'd as soon be eaten by a male alligator as a female one.