A family who have a complicated history of inbreeding have been left with heart breaking genetic defects as a result of their incest relatives with some of them only being able to communicate through grunts and barks.
The Whittaker family from West Virginia, US can't remember much about their parents or other family members and were unaware their genetic issues were down to inbreeding.
Living sheltered away in the village of Odd, which is 75 miles from Charleston, some members of their clan are unable to properly speak and run away when outsiders try to talk to them, the Mirror reports.
One of the daughters, Betty would not say if her parents were related when questioned about their background by documentary maker, Mark Laita but she later confirmed that her mum and dad are double first cousins.
The inbreeding began with a set of identical twin brothers, Henry and John Whittaker, whose children got married and had over a dozen kids together. Henry and his wife Sally had seven children, including John Emory Whittaker in 1913 while John and his spouse Ada Riggs, who was his own first cousin, had nine kids, including Gracie Irene Whittaker in 1920.
John and Gracie, who were double cousins and shared both sets of grandparents, married in 1935 and went on to have 15 children together. Lots of their kids had multiple severe physical and mental impairments which are believed to have been as a result of inbreeding.
Their eldest, Aileen, passed away in June 1997 after suffering from a heart attack, while oldest boy Emery died a month after being born in 1938 after suffering from pneumonia. Betty, who was born in 1952 is now the head of the family after promising her mother she would not marry so she could look after her 14 siblings.
Ray and Lorene, who have a son called Timmy that was born in 1979 are both seemingly unable to speak and can only communicate through grunts and barks, However, they seem to understand the limited forms of communication they exchange between one another, even if it may sound unintelligible to other humans.
A relative said: "They understand what you talking about. If they don’t like it, they start yelling — let you know they don’t like that idea."
Timmy is the only member of the Whittaker clan who has graduated from high school. A filmmaker who documented the lives of the unusual family first met with them in 2004 after he found them living in a cramped shack with several dogs.
The photographer did not receive a warm welcome when he first met with the Whittaker's as a protective neighbour threatened him with a shot gun. It's a well known fact that the family's neighbours watch over them and chase anyone away looking to taunt them but Laita managed to win their trust and begin a relationship which lasted two decades.
Speaking on the Koncrete KLIPS podcast, he explained that his first impressions of the family were like a scene from 1972 thriller Deliverance. He said: "We came around to this road, which turns into a country road, which turns into a dirt road, and we come to this trailer and then a little shack on the other side of the road.
"And there’s these people walking around and their eyes are going in different directions and they are barking at us. And then one guy, you would look at him in the eye or say anything and he would just scream and go running away, and his pants would fall around his ankles, and he would go running off and go and kick a garbage can.
"And this would happen over and over. It was out of control - the craziest thing I have ever seen." The Whittaker's eventually allowed him to take some photos after he offered to take a portrait for them to place in the casket of a loved one who had recently passed away.
He added: "They are kind of protected by the neighbours and the relatives [who] don’t like these people coming to ridicule them. And everybody in the area kind of knows of them and are like, 'let's go over to the Whittaker's' and laugh at them or whatever.'"
Over the years, Laita has returned to visit the family on numerous occasions and filmed a documentary in 2020 about the way they live their lives, which has been watched more than 28 million times. The film showed him speaking with the three siblings, Betty, Lorraine and Ray, as well as with their cousin, Timmy.
When asked why their eyes don't point forward, another relative, Kenneth, said: "Might be coal mining." Laita returned to the Whittaker's home in 2022 for another follow up visit after setting up a GoFundMe page which has raised $55,000 (£44,000) for the family and discovered the conditions inside their home had greatly improved.
Mark was pleased to see they had spent the entire sum of the donations on a number of home improvements including a new truck, roof, kitchen refit and coal heater. One of the relatives takes Mark on a tour of their cramped home where two adult men share a single bed and an elderly woman sleeps on a sofa in the living room all year round.
The photographer explained that his overall goal is to shed light on issues in parts of the country that people rarely see. He said: "People can say that people in Appalachia are leading these wonderful lives, leave them be.
"But they could also get a lot more support from the government or corporations or something so they could not be digging up roots in the middle of the winter, climbing mountains to survive on $10,000 a year. Despite the fact that they don’t complain, it’s a really rough life."
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