Examples of Isolated and Feral Children
Russian Bird-Boy
Date found: 2008-2-29
Age when found: 7
Location: Kirovsky, Volgograd, Russia
Years in confinement: 7
Apparently this boy was raised by his mother in a tiny-two room apartment surrounded by bird cages. Confined in this apartment since birth, he never learned to speak. Instead, he chirps like a bird.
The boy was fed and cared for by his mother, but was never spoken to. After being rescued from his home in Kirovsky, Volgograd, Russia by social workers, he was taken into care.
Jason Lopez
Date found: 2008-4-3
Age when found: 9
Location: López Arellano, Honduras
Years in confinement: 4
Jason was confined to a room by his parents between the ages of 4 and 9, when he was finally freed. In that time he was fed very little, so that by the time he was released he was about the size of a two-year-old and weighed 8 kg.
Jason can't speak, and can't walk. The room he was confined to was dark, and he was dressed only in a disposable nappy.
In the cases of Victor and Wild Peter - and probably other cases of feral children - it's not clear whether problems with development were caused by them being abandoned, or whether they were abandoned because their parents were struggling to cope with children with special needs. The same is true in this case. One report suggests that Jason Lopez was confined because he could not walk or talk. Although a neighbour could hear the moans of a child over a period of several years, she has been assured by the parents that Jason was OK. About a year before Jason was freed, she said, the moaning had stopped. People who knew about Jason didn't intervene because they were afraid that Jason's family would carry out some sort of revenge attack. In the end, Jason was rescued because (someone) knew that nobody else was in the house.
Houston Attic-Boy
Date found: 2007
Age when found: 13
Location: Houston, Texas, USA
Years in confinement: 13
Apparently this boy had been locked in an attic where he was starved. Although 13 when found, he was the size of a 7-year-old. He'd been fed only a liquid diet supplement. Four other children living in the home of Geneva Foster, his mother, and Michael Ryan, his stepfather, had not been abused. In addition to being starved, the boy also showed signs of physical abuse when he was rescued from the house in the Houston area of Texas, USA.
Rochom P'ngieng, Cambodian Jungle Girl
Date found: 2007-1-13
Age when found: 27
Location: Cambodia
Years in the wild: 19
Lost in the Cambodian jungle for eight years
Rochom P'ngieng was lost in the Cambodian jungle at the age of eight when herding buffalo with her six-year-old sister (who also disappeared), and was discovered on 13 January 2007 after a villager noticed some of his food had been taken. He staked out the area and sighted a naked woman stealing his rice.
She was captured by villagers. She was unable to speak any intelligible language. She was recognised by her father, policeman Ksor Lu long, because of a scar on her back. Her parents have apparently agreed to a DNA test so her identity can be confirmed. Subsequently, the family changed their mind. Further suspicion was aroused by stories of a naked man seen with the woman, and marks on her wrists as if she'd been bound. The mystery deepens…
Apparently, she didn't like to wear clothes, shower, or use chopsticks at first, and is thus having difficulty re-adjusting to normal life.
Jeffrey Baldwin
Date found: 2002-11-30
Age when found: 6
Location: Toronto, Canada
Years in confinement: 5
Jeffrey Baldwin was confined to his room for years by his maternal grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, who were both sentenced to life imprisonment on 10 June 2006. Jeffrey died at the age of 6, when he weighed just 21 pounds and stood just 37 inches tall.
Bello, the Nigerian Chimp Boy
Date found: 1996
Age when found: 2
Location: Nigeria
Years in the wild: 1
Animals: chimps
Abandoned by his parents
Bello, the Nigerian Chimp Boy was found in 1996, at the age of about two. Both mentally and physically disabled, he had probably been abandoned by his parents at the age of about six months, a common practice with disabled children among the Fulani, a nomadic people who range great distances over the west African Sahel region.
Raised by Chimpanzees?
Believed to have been adopted and raised by chimpanzees, Bello was found with a chimpanzee family in the Falgore forest, 150 km south of Kano in northern Nigeria. When the story reached the news agencies some six years later in 2002, Bello had been living at the Tudun Maliki Torrey home in Kano.
Bello exhibits feral characteristics
When first discovered, Bello walked like a chimpanzee, using his legs but dragging his arms on the ground. He would leap about at night in the dormitory, disturbing the other children, smashing and throwing things. Six years later Bello was much calmer, but would still leap around in a chimpanzee-like fashion, make chimpanzee-like noises, and clap his cupped hands over his head repeatedly.
Bello died in 2005.