#sylvia likens

[morbidology]

16-year-old Sylvia Likens was the daughter of two carnival workers, but when her parents' separated and her mother was jailed for shoplifting, somebody needed to care for her. Ultimately, Sylvia and her sister, Jenny, were sent to live with Gertrude Baniszwewski and her family, paying them $20 to take care of the two girls.

When the payments were late, Baniszwewski would turn on the girls, particularly Sylvia. She would hit the girls with paddles, and whip them. Being fragile and asthmatic herself, Baniszwewski recruited her children and neighbourhood children to subject Sylvia to horrendous abuse over the period of three months.

This abuse included putting cigarettes out on her skin, burning her with scalding water, beating her, rubbing salt in her wounds, forcing her to eat things which would cause her to vomit and on at least two occasions, she was sexually assaulted with a Coca-Cola bottle. On another occasion, a neighbourhood boy, Coy Hubbard, used her to practice his judo, which as a result, caused her to become incontinent. Baniszwewski responded to this by forcing her to eat her own faeces as well as her one-year-old sons.

Jenny, Sylvia’s sister attempted to get help and contacted their older sister, Diana, who came to the house yet did nothing to help. Shortly before her death, Baniszewski took a hot needle and carved “I’m a prostitute and proud of it!” on Sylvia’s stomach. A neighbourhood boy, Richard Hobbs, helped. He also helped 10-year-old Shirley Baniszewski burn the number “3” into her chest with an iron poker. The night before Sylvia died, she attempted to escape the house of horrors. She was caught by Baniszewski who threw her down the stairs into the cellar which had become her home.

The next day, on October 26, 1965, Sylvia’s body gave up after the countless beatings, burnings, sexual assaults, and lack of food and water. She died of a brain haemorrhage, shock, and malnutrition. She had suffered unimaginable torment. Her body was covered in wounds, bruises, and burns. In her final moments, she had almost completely severed her lips with her teeth from the beatings.

Gertrude received a life sentence while the younger assailants received petty sentences and were all released and went on to lead normal lives, something Sylvia could never do. Disgustingly enough, Gertrude was released for good behaviour after just a measly fourteen years in prison.

[makiart44]

Sylvia Likens and Junko Furuta... Angels

Sylvia Likens y Junko Furuta... dos ángeles, eran dos chicas hermosas y dulces merecían lo mejor de este mundo... pero unos monstruos se cruzaron en el camino de ellas.

Pequeño homenaje atrasado... se supone que lo iba a subir en enero porque ese mes las dos victimas nacieron... Sylvia el 3 de enero de 1949 y Junko el 18 de enero de 1971. . . . Sylvia Likens and Junko Furuta... two angels, they were two beautiful and sweet girls who deserved the best in this world... but some monsters crossed their path.

Small late tribute... I was supposed to upload it in January because that month the two victims were born... Sylvia on January 3, 1949 and Junko on January 18, 1971.

song:  youtu.be/k0OYrlS6r70

[daddyd0nt]

A rare color photo of Sylvia Likens (far left)

[forsylvialikens]

i can do it, i am strong

[ladyztardust]

im never getting over junko furuta's case

[werewolfbarbie]

It's an uncomfortable watch for sure and it did take some liberties I'm not a fan off at all. But....it did do some good. One of the audience members who saw it was the Principal of a school in Iowa, and Paula just so happened to be a teacher at that school. She was immediately fired after he saw the film.

So there is justice in that!

i forgot there even was amovie about the torture + death of Sylvia Likens until now cuz im reading Elliott Page's memoir and like. what on earth possessed someone to make a movie out of that, really. why would anyone want to watch that.

[sevicia]

The Sensitive Snacker: Watching Nana

The Brutish Eater: Watching The Girl Next Door

[franki-lew-yo]

James and the Giant Peach is still (mostly) for young children

Despite a single pre-metoo joke and it's uncanny-ish artstyle that's a serious make-or-break-you factor on if you like it, James and the Giant Peach is aggressively a movie for young children. I personally like it as I never find it a patronizing sit for little kids, like Don Bluth's movies from the 90s so often were, but that really is what I think alienates people; the intended audience may be a bit too scared of the visuals (NOT like how they are with TNBC, which kids go in expecting to be scary) where the adult audience who is here for the 'creepy stop-motion' feel like the movie is lacking for not being Nightmare or Coraline, which is unfair. It absolutely scared me as a little little kid but upon finally facing it at, like ten or whenever it was on Cartoon Network's movie show, I realized there was nothing to fear. And that, in turn, was exhilarating. It's such good symmetry that the film is about facing your fears and standing up for yourself because that's exactly what my relationship with it was. It's such a comfort film for me. My og Bluey. JatGP, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Ernest and Celestine = perfect comfort after I watch something serious and/or disturbing.

Half my reason for trying to pied-piper everyone else towards it as it's own merit is I think James and the Giant Peach would hit hard for lovers of weirdcore and dreamcore ala Jack Stauber or @samsketchbook's 'Welcome to Our Dimensional Party'.

That "looks unsettling/potentially disturbing but actually cute or gentle" vibe pairs perfectly with dreamcore aesthetic. We're coming up on it's 30 year anniversary I hope to see a genuine resurgence. If I had it my way and I was Dan Olson I'd make an hour-long look at the movie, the original book and Henry Selick's filmography as a surrealist the way Dan made an hour-lookback at Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. But I'm not. Cause I'm not Dan Olson and I can't build up the nerve to either show my face or figure out how to make videos in two years.

But anyway, about the title of this post (content warning: downer nsfl stuff; mentioning of real life child ab*se cases):

James' life with his aunts hits VERY different when you're an adult and you've watched too much true crime.

It's not intentional on the part of Dahl or Henry Selick. Selick had Mariam and Joanna ham up the screen and they clearly loved every minute of it and Dahl I think was just trying to tell an 'authentic' type fairytale story where the main character has to escape their evil family. Point being- Spiker and Sponge are supposed to be 'evil for the sake of evil' villains who could only exist as hammy caricatures in an already weird story. They aren't supposed to be like the parents in Matilda or the Twits who I'd argue are a little more 'realistic' depiction of awful people...except for the fact that legal guardians like Spiker and Sponge DO actually exist.

There's a heavy implication in the film that no one else in their county even knows James lives with Spiker and Sponge (literally the only people around to recognize James' existence are the bugs when they first meet him!). His aunts seem to make James work out of frustration for having to take him in, like he's a burden and they're making him pay for being one by being their slave. They actively don't feed him except for rotting fish and then shame him for not eating it. The Lane Smith picture book implies that James' parents weren't killed by a rhino but rather it's Spiker and Sponge who put that idea in James' head and use it to control him. And all that BEFORE the beatings which you know are happening off screen.

After the horrifying cases of Ruby Franke, Sylvia Likens and the Turpins, the "every child deserves a parent but not every parent deserves children" reality of it all makes you realize that James probably would have died if he lived with his aunts. Considering how they flip out on him in New York- that boy REALLY needed to escape, giant peach or no.

This is absolutely another reason for why JatGP is a comfort movie for grownups. You have this horrific childhood rescued by loving in-human parents who will kill everyone in the room and then themselves if you touch their human boy. It's like Opal but if Claire found a happier family. Of bugs. None of that was intentional, ftr, but it's what sticks out to me.

[the-fruit-tea-devil]

Not that it does any justice for Sylvia but Gertrude did die from lung cancer 5 years after her release. I hope every minute of it hurted like hell. 

I just learned about the case of Sylvia Likens this year, and it’s a story I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

But in a way, it is important to remember cases like hers: the ones who could’ve had a much longer life but instead ended up in the hands of vile, terrible people, the ones who went through things that sound fictional but were in fact very real acts committed.

You deserved better, Sylvia.

And as for Gertrude, she got off way too easy and deserved worse.

[thebookdragonshoard]

alright, y’all. i just finished The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and it’s time to discuss this fig tree analogy.

buckle up cause we’re gonna be properly capitalizing. it’s that serious.

If you’re unfamiliar with The Fig Tree analogy, let me quote it for you, so you can feel the pain I felt the first time and for contextual purposes.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was and Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black and plopped to the ground before me.” - The Bell Jar, chapter 7

First of all, uhm OW SYLVIA?! I did not need to be called out like that right before bed, but here we are anyway.

Basically, if you don’t get it (and it’s perfectly okay if you don’t!!), Esther (the main character) likens the different paths in life available to her as figs on the branches of a fig tree she sits in. However, she doesn’t know which life to pick (i.e. which fig to eat) because, to her, picking one life means losing access to all the others. And because she finds herself unable to choose one life, they all start withering away before her as time goes on until there are no lives left to pick from, symbolized by all the figs blackening and falling to the ground.

And while this is already a beautiful and profound analogy, humor me by allowing me to take it a little further by looking at it from a different perspective.

What about gluttony???

Hear me out, folks. Imagine that Esther, instead of being paralyzed by indecision, instead tries to take a bite from every fig on the tree, therefore trying to live every life available to her? If she can’t choose just one, why not choose all of them?

But, as she’s trying to live all of these different lives and taste all of these figs, she only has the time to take a bite or two from each fig, leaving them half-eaten around her. She can only enjoy small portions of each life available to her, unable to sit back and fully enjoy the sweetness that life can offer her.

And so, as she tries to live all of these different lives and taste each of the figs, by the time she manages to taste each fig, they’ve all begun to rot anyways. But now, instead of just falling to the ground beneath her and rotting away, they’re rotting away in her hands and all around her. And now she’s suffocating under the sickly sweet stench of their decay. The sickly sweetness of all the lives she tried to live, how she only manage to enjoy a portion of each of them. And at the time, it was fun and she was enjoying living this way. But now, she’s suffocating under the weight of these nice, sweet lives she lived that are now taking their toll on her because we as humans are not meant to do so much at once.

And because she was gluttonous and greedy, she is now too full from all the bites of fig she consumed, consequently giving her a stomach ache from overconsumption. And so, the body’s natural reaction is to get rid of the extra in some way.

By choosing all of the figs, she consequently still ends up choosing none of the figs because they now all rot around her and her body cannot keep them down, leaving her with no figs whatsoever instead of the one she could have had if she had found a way to make a single choice.

Does this make sense?? I hope it does. All I know is I came up with this last night, texted it to my book bestie, and then she was Unwell the rest of the night.

[jalwyn21]

I have to ask genuinely...what tf is wrong with Taylor Swift? I'm not talking about some armchair diagnosis but rather just genuinely how does someone like that even exist? This level of maliciousness towards anyone who's ever looked at her wrong and just holding on to grudges from a decade ago. Even if someone else is still mentioning her, if she truly is all about karmic justice, then why keep bringing it up? If karma is indeed the guy on the Chiefs and a relaxing thought, then why is she still so bitter? And how could anyone make an entire album aesthetic based off of mental illness? Her using Joe's mental health against him aside, how could anyone actually think that this is a good idea? I can't even bring myself to watch any videos or listen to the full album because the idea of her using mental illness like this and using historical figures like Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf who actually dealt with serious mental health issues (that too at a time where people with mental illnesses were literally tortured) and likening herself to them. I'll bet you anything that the majority of Swifties creaming themselves over how alike Clara Bow and TS supposedly look had never even heard of Clara Bow before and still don't know anything about her beyond what they think are similarities between her and TS. How idiotic yet hateful can one person be? And how can so many people not only adore her so senselessly but follow her example and defend every single thing she does?

She gets away with so much just cause she is a woman. If a man would do half the things she does, he'd be labelled toxic and abusive and controlling and be canceled immediately.

[daddyd0nt]

Music that Sylvia would have listened to during the end of her life. I want to know more about her as a person, not just how she died

[sjweminem]

just finished s1e1 i can't do this. i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry scott. unless you pull your entire gigantic dick out at least once in every single episode after this one i can't be here for you

thinking of just saying fuck all life and diving into gilmore girls and see what new syndromes it gives me

[forsylvialikens]

.•* ♡ she was so brave

[petr1kov]

i was reading a bit more about the sylvia likens case these days (there are not enough trigger warnings in existence that cover this case so truly, beware) and became genuinely frustrated at the the common reactions to it i see floating around; especially regarding her younger sister jenny and how she didn't intervene until it was too late, when the reason why she didn't (or couldn't) is painfully obvious. this case is horrific for many reasons but what stands out to me the most is how it exemplifies the extreme lack of autonomy children had in society, how they were denied personhood and treated like property by the adults surrounding them - and how very little that has changed, even today.

the feeling of 'had anyone noticed it, had someone like me been there, all of this would have been avoided' always permeates cases such as these, but what makes this particular case so notable is precisely the fact that other people did know what was being done to sylvia. even excluding the other kids that participated in her torture as a sort of morbid game, other adults did take notice of her abuse - not exactly the full extent of it, but the physical evidence on her was undeniable, after a while - and still, they did nothing. one neighbor reported seeing a girl with open sores, and a school nurse came to investigate, but was quickly dissuaded by claims from her 'guardian' gertrude (the woman who most abused her) that sylvia was just a wild girl that ran away from home frequently and was out of control. other neighbors saw her with a black eye, visibly malnourished, or even heard her scream and later hit the walls to try asking for help, but they still did nothing. sylvia and jenny met up with their older sister, who was already a married woman by then, and told her what was happening - she thought they were exaggerating, being dramatic about some 'standard' disciplinary beatings.

that all seems quite absurd when laying it out like this, but on a culture that found beating a child to be not only acceptable but even necessary to raise them well, that granted absolute authority of an adult over a child in their household, is that even so surprising? mistreating a child was simply naturalized, a part of the scenery.

jenny was threatened with being subjected to the same treatment her sister was receiving if she said anything about it to anyone. she attempted to sometimes, anyway, but was swiftly dismissed. if she went to the police, would any of it had been different, or would they have just sent her back on her way to get one of those 'corrective beatings' from her noble guardian and guaranteed themselves one more victim in the process? if even sylvia herself had managed to escape with her life and report her own case, would they take her seriously, or would they readily accept gertrude's version of the facts, the one she was already orchestrating by then and that neatly placed the blame on sylvia's (imaginary) immorality? would this case have even been given attention, a closer look, if it hadn't escalated so horribly that it ended with a girl's death? i don't think so.

[virginstoner666]

moment of appreciation for my bedside reading rotation (and a delightful can of white claw):

unforgiving destiny: autobiography of david mcmillan an ex heroin smuggler in the 70s and 80s the auctoneer: dont know the plot yet, but its one of grady hendrix's paperbacks from hell so i avoided looking up plot or spoilers

the waterworks: another e.l. Doctorow mystery thriller

house of evil: the investigation launched after the death and trial of sylvia likens muder and torture.

the politics of heroin cia complacency in the global drg trade (exactly what it says on the tin)

petals on the wind: sequel to flowers in the attic

born to bleed: sequel to the summer i died

helter skelter: (you already know what this ones about lol)

soldiers and ghosts: a history of the military and battling of ancient greeks and romans