In the 1980s, the shocking story of the "chicken girl" was a major topic in Portuguese newspapers. She simultaneously frightened and attracted with her savagery.
Nobody could believe that something like this happened in their prosperous and civilized country.
Maria Isabel Quaresma Dos Santos (Maria Isabel Quaresma Dos Santos) was born on June 6, 1970 on a small poor farm in the village of Tabua, near the city of Coimbra.
The girl was born in the most ordinary, without mental abnormalities, but her mother had these abnormalities and doctors later confirmed her severe mental disorder. When Maria Isabelle was only a year old, her mother took the girl to the chicken coop and left there to fend for herself.
The girl spent the next 9 years surrounded by chickens, feeding on grain, cabbage leaves and other scraps that the family used to feed the cattle. The mother refused to consider the girl not only a member of her family, but also a person in general. Other relatives pretended that nothing was happening.
Elder brothers of Maria Isabelle grew up as ordinary children, their mother took care of them and loved them. They attended school and played with other children.
At the same time, all the local residents knew that a girl lived in the chicken coop of the Dos Santos family, but no one worried about it, no one even thought to help the child and no one condemned this family.
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Little hope for Maria Isabelle flashed when in 1976 one of her aunts complained about the girl's parents and wanted the child to be examined by a doctor. The girl was actually shown to the doctors and they recognized her as a severely disabled person.
But the further fate of the child again did not bother anyone, the aunt could not find a place for the girl in a mental hospital, and ordinary hospitals refused to take her. And the girl was returned to the chicken coop.
In 1980, Nurse Maria Bihao of the Torres Vedras Hospital learned from other nurses that there was a weak-minded girl living in Tabua who was being kept with chickens in a barn. Bihao was shocked by this story and decided to find the girl and help her.
Maria Bihao arrived in Tabua, found the right house and pulled 10-year-old Maria Isabelle out of captivity. She brought the child to her home and the girl lived with a nurse for 15 days. When Maria realized from the girl's behavior that the case was very serious, she contacted the capital's journalists and asked for their help.
Soon, photographs of Maria Isabelle were on the front pages of all the newspapers in the country.
“It is very difficult to imagine how one could really survive in such conditions,” says journalist Maria Catalina from a newspaper in Lisbon. “But the human indifference is even more shocking. The doctors found out about the girl 4 years ago, but no one helped her."
Manuela Eanes, the first lady of Portugal, played an important role in the further fate of Maria Isabel. With her help, the girl was brought to the largest rehabilitation center in the country. The doctors of the center were shocked by the girl's habits, she was mentally undeveloped, but copied the behavior of chickens with great accuracy.
“From what I have observed so far, I can say that this is a child suffering from intellectual disability, most likely caused by social orphanhood. Maria Isabelle's behavior is at an elementary biological level, that is, she has only the primary reactions of an animal or a person,”the director of the Center reported in 1980.
Maria Isabelle looked deeply withdrawn, withdrawn into herself and no one had ever seen her cry. And she was constantly moving like a chicken. She stood up, took a couple of steps and squatted, while wiggling her bent arms as if they were wings.
The girl did not speak at all, only uttered some kind of laughing sound from time to time, when she wanted to attract someone's attention. She not only spent her entire childhood with chickens, while at the same time she had absolutely no contact with people, although her mother and brothers came to the chicken coop every day to feed the chickens and collect eggs.
Also, due to poor nutrition with almost one grain, Maria Isabelle had problems with growth, she did not seem to be a 10-year-old child, but at most 5-year-old. And her mental development did not exceed that of a two-year-old child.
Many doctors and psychologists worked with Maria Isabel, but even after 10 years of rehabilitation, she did not learn to speak, and expressed all her emotions with gestures. And she still went on taking little chicken steps and clapping her hands.
It was only at the age of 27 that she learned to walk normally over short distances, and also learned to use a chair like ordinary people, and not climbing on it with her feet.
Psychologist Christina Conceis, who constantly works with Maria Isabelle, considers her patient to be smart enough, since she can now at least show with gestures what she wants and what she does not want.
Recently Maria Isabelle turned 48 years old. Many journalists dream of meeting her and writing sensational stories about her, but doctors carefully hide her from the press. The woman lives in a medical facility in Fatima.
Maria Isabelle at the medical center.
