My mum was raised by monkeys... now I've quit Bradford to live in the jungle too

Vanessa Forero was just seven when she realised her mum was very different to anyone else's.

-  SANJEETA BAINS

Whenever the final bell rang at her primary school, the children would dash out to find their parents gossiping at the gates.

But not Vanessa's mum. She would usually be blowing a whistle and waving from the branches of a tree she had just climbed.

"I knew other mums didn't do that," Vanessa recalls. "But that was just mum. My playful mum.

"She loved the outdoors, creating obstacle courses in the back garden, making monkey noises, climbing trees.

"Our pets were animals that my mum caught for us - we had a couple of wild rabbits that eventually escaped and a seagull." It all sounds rather bizarre for a family in Bradford. But that's not the half of it. Vanessa's mum is Marina Chapman - a housewife who was born in Colombia, kidnapped aged four by trafficking gangs and abandoned in the rainforest where she claimed she was raised by monkeys. White-faced capuchins to be precise.

Aged 10 she was found by hunters and sold to a brothel before being thrown out for being too feral.

Years later, on a trip to the UK, Marina fell in love with a man she met in church. They would go on to get married and have two daughters Vanessa, now 40, and Joanna, 43.

The only sign of Marina's past was her unconventional approach to the school run.

And the bizarre family story had a final twist. After the end of her own 15-year marriage, Vanessa left the UK to set up home in the same type of Colombian jungle where Marina claimed to have lived like a female Tarzan.

Not even the most creative types in Hollywood could have dreamt up this saga.

Speaking from her remote lodge in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Vanessa feels she is finally where she belongs.

She says: "I always decorated my room at home with images of nature and mountains.