Photography

Feral: The children raised

by wolves

By Fiona Macdonald
12 October 2015

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Oxana Malaya, Ukraine, 1991

Beautiful and disturbing at the same time, the images in Julia Fullerton-Battens latest
project have a dreamlike, fairy-tale quality. Yet the lives they portray are real. There are
two different scenarios one where the child ended up in the forest, and another where
the child was actually at home, so neglected and abused that they found more comfort

from animals than humans, the photographer tells BBC Culture. This image recreates
the case of Ukrainian girl Oxana Malaya. According to Fullerton-Batten, Oxana was
found living with dogs in a kennel in 1991. She was eight years old and had lived with the
dogs for six years. Her parents were alcoholics and one night, they had left her outside.
Looking for warmth, the three-year-old crawled into the farm kennel and curled up with
the mongrel dogs, an act that probably saved her life. She ran on all fours, panted with
her tongue out, bared her teeth and barked. Because of her lack of human interaction,
she only knew the words yes and no. Oxana now lives in a clinic in Odessa, working
with the hospitals farm animals. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)

Shamdeo, India, 1972

This is not like Tarzan, says Fullerton-Batten. The children had to fight the animals for
their own food they had to learn to survive. When I read their stories, I was shocked and
horrified. There are 15 cases in her Feral Children project, staged photographs telling the
stories of people isolated from human contact, often from a very young age. This one

shows Shamdeo, a boy who was found in a forest in India in 1972 he was estimated to
be four years old. He was playing with wolf cubs. His skin was very dark, and he had
sharpened teeth, long hooked fingernails, matted hair and calluses on his palms, elbows
and knees. He was fond of chicken-hunting, would eat earth and had a craving for blood.
He bonded with dogs. He never spoke, but learnt some sign language, and died in
1985. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)

Marina Chapman, Colombia, 1959

The photographer was inspired to start her project after reading The Girl With No Name, a
book about the Colombian woman Marina Chapman. Marina was kidnapped in 1954 at
five years of age from a remote South American village and left by her kidnappers in the
jungle, says Fullerton-Batten. She lived with a family of capuchin monkeys for five years
before she was discovered by hunters. She ate berries, roots and bananas dropped by
the monkeys; slept in holes in trees and walked on all fours, like the monkeys. It was not
as though the monkeys were giving her food she had to learn to survive, she had the
ability and common sense she copied their behaviour and they became used to her,
pulling lice out of her hair and treating her like a monkey. Chapman now lives in
Yorkshire, with a husband and two daughters. Because it was such an unusual story, a
lot of people didnt believe her they X-rayed her body and looked at her bones to see
if she was really malnourished, and concluded that it could have happened. FullertonBatten contacted her: She was very happy for me to use her name and do this shoot.
(Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)

John Ssebunya, Uganda, 1991

The photographer was advised by Mary-Ann Ochota, a British anthropologist and
presenter of the TV series Feral Children. She had been to Ukraine, Uganda and Fiji and
met three of the surviving children, says Fullerton-Batten. It was helpful in directing me
in how they position their hands, how they walk, how they survived I wanted to make

this look as real and as believable as possible. This image deals with the case of John
Ssebunya. John ran away from home in 1988 when he was three years old after seeing
his father murder his mother, says Fullerton-Batten. He fled into the jungle where he
lived with monkeys. He was captured in 1991, now about six years old, and placed in an
orphanage He had calluses on his knees from walking like a monkey. John has
learned to speak, and was a member of the Pearl of Africa childrens choir. While
many of the stories of feral children are as much myth as reality, Ochota believes
Ssebunyas account. This wasnt part of the standard feral-child hoax yarn, she wrote
in The Independent in 2012. We were investigating a real case. (Credit: Julia FullertonBatten)

Madina, Russia, 2013

These strange, feral children are often a source of shame and secrecy within a family or
community, writes Mary-Ann Ochota on her website. These aren't Jungle Book stories,
they're often harrowing cases of neglect and abuse. And it's all too likely because of a
tragic combination of addiction, domestic violence and poverty. These are kids who fell

through the cracks, who were forgotten, or ignored, or hidden. According to FullertonBatten, Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old, sharing their
food, playing with them, and sleeping with them when it was cold in winter. When social
workers found her in 2013, she was naked, walking on all fours and growling like a dog.
Madinas father had left soon after her birth. Her mother, 23 years old, took to alcohol.
She was frequently too drunk to look after for her child and would sit at the table to eat
while her daughter gnawed bones on the floor with the dogs. Madina was taken into
careand doctors found her to be mentally and physically healthy despite what she had
been through. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)

Sujit Kumar, Fiji, 1978

Sujit was eight years old when he was found in the middle of a road clucking and
flapping his arms and behaving like a chicken, says Fullerton-Batten. He pecked at his
food, crouched on a chair as if roosting, and would make rapid clicking noises with his
tongue. His parents locked him in a chicken coop. His mother committed suicide and his

father was murdered. His grandfather took responsibility for him but still kept him confined
in the chicken coop. For the children, the transition after being found could be as difficult
as the years spent in isolation. When they were discovered, it was such a shock they
had learnt animal behaviour, their fingers were claw-like and they couldnt even hold a
spoon. Suddenly all these humans were trying to get them to sit properly and talk. Kumar
is now cared for by Elizabeth Clayton, who rescued him from an old peoples home and
set up a charity housing children in need. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)

Ivan Mishukov, Russia, 1998

Despite the harrowing accounts in her series, Fullerton-Battens images tell a story of
survival. All human beings need human contact, but for these children their whole life
becomes focused on a survival instinct, she says, asking if those living in the
companionship of wild animals were perhaps better off than those whose young lives
were spent with no companionship at all. Ivan ran away from his family at the age of four,
feeding scraps of food to a pack of wild dogs and eventually becoming a kind of pack
leader. He lived on the streets for two years, before he was taken to a childrens home. In
his book Savage Girls And Wild Boys: A History Of Feral Children, Michael Newton
wrote that The relationship worked perfectly, far better than anything Ivan had known
among his fellow humans. He begged for food, and shared it with his pack. In return, he
slept with them in the long winter nights of deep darkness, when the temperatures
plummeted. Fullerton-Batten believes the feral child can reveal much that is hidden
within seemingly civilised societies a city can be as inhospitable as a forest. Ivan ran
away so it was a choice he made, not to be at home but his home must have been so
bad that he would rather be on the streets with a pack of dogs, she says. I was trying
not to be exploitative. Three of the cases inspired charities I wanted to raise awareness
about what is still going on. (Credit: Julia Fullerton-Batten)