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Leontina EspinozaChilean mother of many children who turned out to be a fraud
Country:
 Chile |
Content:
Biography of Leontina Espinoza
Leontina Judith Albina Espinoza was born in 1925 in Chile. Her childhood can hardly be called happy - she and her brother grew up first in an orphanage attached to a church, and later in an orphanage for orphans. Perhaps it was their difficult childhood and the lack of a home that later prompted Leontina to become such a good mother that even the Guinness Book of Records took notice. Thus, the total number of children for this Chilean woman reached 58. But later it turned out that not everything in this family story was true...
Early Life
Very little is known about Leontina's early childhood, but she herself often talked about how difficult it was for her and her brother to grow up without a family. Orphanages, cold children's homes, and shelters - their parents abandoned them when they were very young, and perhaps it was then, dreaming of parental love, that Leontina promised herself that she would become an exemplary mother to her own children. She married early, at the age of 12, after running away from the orphanage, and joined her life with a mule driver named Gerardo Secundo Albina, who was 30 years old at the time. Despite the significant age difference, this couple turned out to be very strong. They got married in Argentina in 1946 and later lived in Chile.
Extraordinary Fertility
It was in Chile that Leontina became a kind of celebrity and gained fame for her extraordinary fertility. The couple first had five consecutive sets of triplets, all boys. After moving to Chile, their sons were joined by daughters, and by the 1980s, the spouses had a total of 40 children, 24 boys and 16 girls. But they did not want to stop there - Leontina later confessed that she had firmly decided to give birth to as many children as heaven would send her. The heavens were indeed generous, and even at the age of 55, Leontina continued to give birth, eventually reaching a total of 58 children. The Guinness Book of Records registered Leontina Espinoza's record in 1983, when she was considered the world's most fertile mother with 58 children. Unfortunately, later representatives of the Guinness Book of Records had to annul Leontina's record because the couple could not provide documentary evidence of the birth of all their children. According to their words, the birth certificates of the children born in Argentina were destroyed in a fire, and although Leontina and her husband were ready to swear that they would not falsify the numbers, they were still denied an official record.
Allegations and Controversy
It became known that the couple and all their children lived in less than ideal conditions, crowded in a small apartment on the outskirts of Santiago. Their children scattered all over the world, from Japan to Sweden and the United States. Leontina said that at some point they wanted to stop, and she even tried contraception methods, but it was all in vain - even an intrauterine device did not prevent her from getting pregnant.
Leontina Espinoza passed away from diabetes in August 1998, and by that time, Chilean authorities had already started to scrutinize her more closely. There were indications that there was fraud and deception involved. It was said that Leontina simply recruited homeless children from the streets, doing so in order to receive food aid and financial grants from the government. However, there was another explanation - Leontina was seeking money and food not for herself, but for poor families who could barely support their own children. After a police investigation, the number of her own children was revealed to be 14 - it was claimed that Leontina herself gave birth to this many, and all the other children were not hers. Her husband later went into hiding, and relatives and numerous "children" of Leontina participated in the investigation. As a result, the police confirmed the fraud and deception, and, of course, there was no longer any talk of a record.
