Marina Chapman, now in her mid-70s, has recounted how she survived five years alone in the Colombian rainforest after being abducted by trafficking gangs as a child. She was just four when she was taken from her village and abandoned deep within the jungle.
Ms Chapman remembers waking up in the rainforest and discovering a group of capuchin monkeys staring at her. Initially, the animals kept their distance, but they gradually became more comfortable around her, eventually climbing onto her shoulders and playing with her hair, offering companionship during what she described as an incredibly lonely period of her childhood.
Comfort from a capuchin
In a new interview with OMG Stories Up Close, Ms Chapman said: "That was a great comfort for me because I was feeling very isolated after so many months or days. I felt very solitary and for this animal to climb over my shoulders and stay there playing with my hair. That was really comforting for me when I was waiting for people to come for me. Nobody turned up."
She explained that she survived by drinking plenty of water and eating seeds and scraps left behind by the monkeys. In her autobiography, she also described suffering terrible food poisoning from tamarind, which made her believe she was going to die.
Rescue and later life
Recalling a moment of desperation, she told OMG Stories Up Close: "I was just looking at this old monkey and I was really crying out and I was feeling very desperate. So he just walked towards me and he grabbed me forcefully and he pulled me into the water straight. It was a puddle of water, it wasn't very deep. He put me there and he held me and I was just trying to push back."
She added: "I drank so much water and I was quite sick after until I looked at his face. He was staring at me. I realised something about his eyes, he didn't want to kill me. I just thought there was something special about when I looked at his eyes. I felt he was a good monkey. He didn't want to kill. But I felt better in my stomach after a while."
When asked whether the monkeys felt like family, she said: "I felt like I was part of them because of the hands. They behave like a human. I was shocked when I found a piece of mirror. It was a shock of my life because I didn't realise about my face. It was the first time I saw my face. For me, I just thought, I am not like a monkey. I felt like I was related to them. I was beginning to feel a little bit confused. I don't think I speak any language. I think I forgot my own language because I began to recognise the noises."
From jungle to Bradford
After several years in the rainforest, hunters rescued her, but by that point she had no human language. According to Ms Chapman, she was later sold to a brothel, then lived on the streets, before becoming a slave of a mafia family. A neighbour, Maruja, rescued her, and Maruja's daughter, Maria, adopted Ms Chapman when she was about 14, sending her to Bogota to live with one of her daughters.
Her story attracted the attention of National Geographic, which created the documentary Woman Raised by Monkeys, premiering on December 12, 2013. She also shared her life story in her autobiography, The Girl With No Name, published by Mainstream Publishing in 2013. The family had connections to Bradford through the textile industry, sending their children there in 1977 and sending Ms Chapman to work as a nanny. She has lived in Yorkshire for many years and now has a family of her own.
