Reporter: David Muir, Primetime, ABC
Producer: Jim Dubreuil
Just when you think you've seen it all, this comes along. Monkey kids. Yes, you're hearing right. They are little monkeys raised as human children.
And it's not as rare as you might think.
In America alone, there are thousands of seemingly ordinary people who have adopted monkeys as surrogate kids.
That means the nappies, the prams, the high chairs, the bedtime stories. The lot.
Sound cute? Well, it might be up to a point.
But as David Muir reports there's more to this story than dressing up and baby talk.
It gets deadly serious. And you'd better watch out when mother's little darling goes totally ape.
Full transcript:
DAVID MUIR: It is a role Laurie Johnson cherishes - her role as mother so when the last of her six children was graduating from high school and moving out, it was a crushing change. Laurie fell into a deep depression.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: That's what it was, emptiness. And really depressed. I wanted something that was going to take over from my kids. I thought about babies but we just did not want to go through the pre-teens and all again.
DAVID MUIR: Laurie knew having another child was out of the question - at least, a human child. But Laurie still found a way to have another daughter. Peek into her toy-filled red stroller and you'll find her five-pound monkey dressed in a jeans skirt and a diaper - her solution for the empty nest.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: That's okay, here we go.
DAVID MUIR: Her name is Jessica Marie, Jessie. A Capuchin monkey that Laurie bought from a breeder.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: She was seven weeks old, but I got her.
DAVID MUIR: A baby?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Very baby.
DAVID MUIR: And little Jessie gets more than her share of attention. PLAYGROUND CHILD: That's an ape!
DAVID MUIR: At the playground, children are mesmerised by the sight.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Isn't she silly.
DAVID MUIR: She likes of the swings as much as the children do.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: She thinks she is a child. She does not like other monkeys at all. We have taken her places where other monkeys are and she does not like them.
DAVID MUIR: She would rather play with the kids at the playground?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Yes, she would rather play with the kids.
DAVID MUIR: How old do you think the monkey is? Do you think, one? For the children it is impossible to tell. She is 18. 18 years old and sometimes she has more than just the temper of a teenager, more like the temper of a wild animal as we witnessed when this curious little boy got too close.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: No, no, no, she does not like to be hugged, honey.
DAVID MUIR: Laurie says this happens from time to time - a swipe at the park.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Be nice, be nice.
DAVID MUIR: Or nipping her parents.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: You are in trouble, daddy.
DAVID MUIR: That's why Laurie had Jessie's teeth removed. She says it is a lot of work raising this teenager. It has been around-the-clock work since the very beginning. So when you first got her she was attached to you just like this?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: She attached to me like this.
DAVID MUIR: For how many months?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Six months. I showered, went to the stores, cooked, slept, everything with her on my arm.
DAVID MUIR: At home with Laurie and her husband Jim, Jessie gets the royal treatment. As our cameras roll Jessie puts on a fashion show.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Goodness gracious, you are so pretty.
DAVID MUIR: This satin number is a favourite. It is the dress Jessie wore for Laurie and Jim's wedding. So you have been married nine years now?
JIM JOHNSTON: Right.
DAVID MUIR: And you were told this is part of the deal?
JIM JOHNSTON: This is part of the deal. I said, "you've got me for ever."
DAVID MUIR: The monkey too.
JIM JOHNSTON: The monkey too.
DAVID MUIR: You come to the park often, and when people say, "Look, it's a monkey"...
JIM JOHNSTON: It upsets me. That is my daughter! Jessie's daddy's baby.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Are you talking to Daddy?
JIM JOHNSTON: Jessie's daddy's baby.
DAVID MUIR: Was there ever a moment when you thought, "I love Laurie but maybe I cannot handle the monkey too"?
JIM JOHNSTON: Never.
DAVID MUIR: Never? You signed up for both?
DAVID MUIR: I signed up for both.
DAVID MUIR: Wherever Laurie and Jim go, Jessie is right there with them.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: We are going to get monkey fries. Yeah, you like monkey fries. Yeah, you do. Quarter pounder, no cheese and fries.
DAVID MUIR: Jessie loves fast food.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: I know, you like your frenchie fries. I'll get you one, hang on.
DAVID MUIR: Laurie calls them monkey fries, whatever you call them Jessie knows exactly what they are. And at dinner Jessie sits at the head of the table, she sips from an adult glass, eats off china, and like most children, she is scolded when she does not mind her manners.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: You are supposed to be on your chair and not on the table. There you go. Thank you. She eats just about everything we eat.
DAVID MUIR: But remember, these primates are from the South American rainforest and normally spend the majority of their day, two-thirds of it, feeding and hunting for their dinner. A dinner consisting of not junk food, but fruits, nuts, vegetables and even small animals.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Our diet is not monkey-like. Like the ice-cream and cake and the lollipops.
DAVID MUIR: Is that good for the monkey?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Our veterinarian told us that there is nothing wrong with it. That their diet system is a lot like ours.
DAVID MUIR: To some, this may seem like monkey madness. On the Internet - just type in the word 'capuchin' and you can watch hundreds of videos of monkey kids and their proud parents. In the US alone, it is estimated there are 15,000 monkeys purchased as pets or surrogate children, living in homes with humans.
MONKEY OWNER: Look at the belly on that one!
DAVID MUIR: What you say to folks who might say it is a little weird. Or why would you want to have a monkey for a daughter?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: I want a monkey because it is not going to grow up, I am not going to grow up.
DAVID MUIR: Despite Jessie's age, Laurie says her capuchin still has all the demands of a two-year-old toddler. There are endless hours at her side.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Let mama get your face. Oh boy, oh boy.
DAVID MUIR: Vacations planned with Jessie in mind?
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Yes, we do it, yep.
DAVID MUIR: Like any child Jessie costs a lot of money. Laurie estimates she spends upwards of $6,000 on Jessie's upbringing every year.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Mummy got to put diapy on. My goodness, what in the world is that thing? It looks like a rabbit. A wallaby?
DAVID MUIR: And at the end of the day - TV time. On this night it is the Animal Planet Channel and a bedtime snack...
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Come here. there you go.
DAVID MUIR: ..in the same bed as her parents.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: Let's go nighty-night, give me a kiss.
DAVID MUIR: Just one bedtime story, but not every monkey-tale has a happy ending.
ANGELLE SAMPEY: I just wanted what was going to make me feel better, and what made me feel better at the time and was having an animal that I treated like a child.
DAVID MUIR: A son?
ANGELLE SAMPEY: Yes, I had a surrogate son.
DAVID MUIR: Like thousands of other Americans Angelle Sampey found her monkey on the Internet. She bought him, from a breeder in the Midwest. And was flown to Louisiana on an aeroplane. At the airport - little Andy - her new son.
ANGELLE SAMPEY: I was so happy I had a baby, I could dress him, and put the diaper on him, he would drink bottles. And he held on to my arm for six months straight, but to me that was cute - "he loves me", and I did not see it as "this animal needs his mother".
DAVID MUIR: In fact it was after she brought Andy home that Angelle learned how most monkeys are removed from their mothers. In some cases they dart the mothers to sedate them, when they separate the babies. They are pulled away, both mother and baby screaming. Can you imagine taking a baby from a mother out of the hospital? That is what we did it.
ANGELLE SAMPEY: He is a wild monkey, he is never going to be domesticated, and it took me seven years to realise that.
DAVID MUIR: Seven years and a growing Andy destroying everything. His custom-made room - tearing up the walls, the windows, the wiring. She was convinced that he was acting out because she had taken him from his real mother and his real surroundings. He was lonely?
ANGELLE SAMPEY: Very, very lonely.
DAVID MUIR: And depressed?
ANGELLE SAMPEY: And depressed.
DAVID MUIR: But her heart-wrenching decision would not come until after Andy's most vicious attack. She had given him peanuts and when she entered his caged room, he thought she was trying to take back the food.
ANGELLE SAMPEY: He bit me everywhere he could bite me, he ripped my elbow open and right across my wrist here on the back of my knee, it all happened within about three seconds. I got out of the room as fast as I could but I got out of the room, bleeding all over the place.
DAVID MUIR: That night she went online looking for help.
ANGELLE SAMPEY: But this was the closest thing to a human child that I could ever possibly imagine, but it was just completely and utterly wrong. And I did it, and I it am going to do the best I can to to fix it.
DAVID MUIR: Angelle found Kari Bagnall who runs the Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary in Florida. When you listen to Angelle's story...
KARI BAGNALL: It is a very familiar story. I hear the same story over and over.
DAVID MUIR: The same tears, and the missing of the son or the daughter?
KARI BAGNALL: We have a lot of monkeys here that people bought as surrogate children.
DAVID MUIR: Andy is at his new home. Now, Angelle is adding her name to a growing list of human mothers and fathers whose monkeys were far more than they could ever handle. After seven years together, it is an agonising break-up. On this day, Angelle tearfully delivers Andy to his new home.
ANGELLE SAMPEY: I am trying not to cry.
DAVID MUIR: Once the monkeys are brought here to the sanctuary, there are extraordinary challenges, in many cases their teeth have been pulled, sometimes their fingers have been cut off by owners who simply decided they were too much to handle.
KARI BAGNALL: I have monkeys here that the people have had for 20 years. Never had a problem then all of the sudden and they do not even know what set the monkey off, 20 years later the monkey attacks. So it is just something that is going to happen. It is not a matter of IF they going to attack, it is WHEN.
DAVID MUIR: What about the pet owners who say "Well, I've removed the teeth"?
KARI BAGNALL: That is mutilation. That is horrible.
DAVID MUIR: Still, there are those like Laurie Johnson and her husband Jim who have made raising their monkey daughter a full-time commitment. They say they're doing nothing wrong. What you say to the people at the sanctuaries who say this should not be happening, you should not have a monkey at home.
LAURIE JOHNSTON: I do not approve of that. If you're devoted, you spend the money, you learn what it takes to care for a monkey, and you want your life to be involved around it I think it is fine for anyone that wants one. If you have love in your heart and you love the animal, you can do it. And nobody should tell me I can't. C'mon let's go.
