'Selling four children': how was the life of the kids from the scandalous photo of 1948
'02.12.2020'
Source: Culturology
In 1948, a photograph of a woman putting up her young children for sale flew around almost every newspaper in America. It's hard to believe, but it's not a joke at all. What kind of tragic story is hidden behind this heartbreaking picture and how the life of these children developed - tells Culturology.
This photograph is a silent witness to a seemingly impossible tragic story that actually happened. The Chalifux family, 40-year-old truck driver Ray, and his 24-year-old wife Lucille, who are pregnant with their fifth child, have put up for sale all their four young children.
After the head of the family lost his job, the family fought for several months against poverty and the threat of eviction hanging over them. And in despair, when the situation seemed completely hopeless to them, the couple decided on this inhuman act that shocked everyone - to sell the children. Perhaps they thought then that for their children this would be a good chance for a better life.
On the steps of the house, four cute smiling children are sitting, hugging each other, almost all of them are of the same age, from two to six years old. Next to them is a large advertisement for the sale of these children and a mother hiding her face from the camera.
On the top step is the eldest girl Lana, six years old, and five-year-old Ray Anna, and below is Milton, four years old, and little Sue Ellen, who is only two years old.
Some people claimed that it was just a staged photo, and that it was not about selling children, in fact it was a cry for help. And surely this cry was heard, and after the publication, many offered this family help - and not only financial, but also work and shelter. However, two years later, all the children were indeed sold out, including another boy, Bedford, who was born to this woman a few months later.
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How does it feel to be sold by your own mother?
Several decades later, journalists made an attempt to find these children and find out how their fates developed. It turned out that all the children survived, and some of them even managed to meet each other already in the 21st century.
Ray Anna and Milton
In 1950, the seven-year-old girl was bought by the family of farmers John and Ruth Zoetman. Milton, not wanting to part with his sister, burst into tears, and the couple decided to take him to them. They changed their names and began to call them Beverly and Kenneth. The life of the children turned out to be quite hard, they lived in a barn, and during the day they worked in the field, while they were constantly beaten and humiliated in every possible way.
According to Milton, on the very first day, the "adoptive" father tied him up, beat him and said that he would use him as a slave. Milton agreed with this, dtlm the little boy didn't even know that word.
After a while, again brutally kicking him, John tied the boy for several days in a barn full of rats and fed him only milk and peanut butter. The boy had to fight off the rats with a corn picker. In response to Milton's question about what he was punished for, John replied that he was doing this for prevention, so that from now on he would be afraid of him and always obey.
Once grown-up Milton could not stand it, and after another beating he gave John back, after which he called the police. Milton was tried and nearly jailed, but the prison was replaced by a mental hospital.
At the age of 17, having freed himself, he left home. When he was 21, Milton tracked down his biological mother.
She divorced shortly after the sale of the children, remarried and gave birth to four more children. After living with her for a month and never feeling any love, care and regret from her, Milton left her, this time on his own. In addition, her second husband also began to raise his hand to him.
After that, he left for Chicago, got married there, and later, on the advice of doctors, moved with his wife to Arizona.
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Rei Anna, when she was 17, was kidnapped and raped. When the Zoetman couple learned that she was pregnant, they sent her to Michigan, to a shelter for single women with children. There she gave birth to a girl, but the child was not given to her, and Rei returned back to the farm.
Rey, like Milton, also saw her mother once, but their meeting was also cold.
Bedford
The youngest sold child, Bedford, born in 1949, seems to be the luckiest one. He was officially adopted by the McDaniels, who had no children of their own. The baby looked very bad, he was all bitten by bugs. After the adoption, his name was changed, and now his name is David.
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The adoptive parents loved the boy, although they were brought up in severity. They lived in Whitfield, a few kilometers from the Zoetman farm, where Ray and Milton grew up. After David found out about this, he several times went to them on a horse or bicycle and saw how bad their life was, sometimes even finding them tied up in a barn.
He now lives in Washington, DC, works as a driver. David said that as an adult, he also met with his own mother.
“Having got rid of us, she got married again, she has four more daughters. She lives with them, but she didn't want to be with us, ”says David.
Seeing her son, she just said: “You have the same look as your father,” and not a drop of regret in her voice ...
David dreamed very much about getting all five children together, and even planned a meeting for 2013. But, unfortunately, it turned out that their older sister Lana died back in 1998 from cancer, and their other sister, Sue Ellen, died a few weeks after the publication in the New York Times of an article about the children sold in 1950.
Ray Anna and Sue Ellen
Rei, already at the age of 70, thanks to journalists who were able to find the children once sold, met her younger sister. Sue was already very sick then, she could not even talk, she only wrote, she was 67 years old.
Sue was very happy to meet. Rei showed her the dress she had been sold in and which she had kept. A note is attached to the dress that the girl has no other personal belongings. About her mother, Sue wrote that she would never forgive her and wish her to burn in hell. Apparently, her life was no better than Rei's.
David is perhaps the only child sold who does not judge his mother.
"We are all humans. We all make mistakes, ”he said. “She may have been thinking about children. I didn't want them to die. We shouldn't judge her. ”
