Sylvia Likens

Sylvia Marie Likens was born to Lester and Betty Likens, two carnival workers, on January 3, 1949. In 1965, when she was 16 years old, her father arranged for her and her younger sister Jenny, 15, to stay at the home of the mother of a girl his daughters had become acquainted with. The mother, Gertrude Baniszewski, had seven children and was paid 20 dollars a week by Likens for the two girls' room and board. At first Sylvia and the other children went to school and church together, and played happily together. Soon after, her life would take a turn for the worse. Gertrude, for reasons known only to her, decided to make Sylvia an object of humiliation and abuse. Not only did Gertrude persist in beating Sylvia, she encouraged her children and neighborhood kids to come over and beat and torture the girl as well. They did such things as burn her with matches and cigarettes, make her strip naked and insert a pop bottle into herself, and push her repeatedly down the basement stairs. Eventually Sylvia was locked in the basement and not allowed to use the toilet, and was forced to eat feces and urine. Gertrude, after wrongly accusing Sylvia of stealing and promiscuity, and intent on punishing her for these imagined sins, heated up a needle and began to carve the words I'm a prostitute and proud of it on Sylvia's abdomen as the girl lay helpless on the floor. Unable to continue the horrific task, she had a neighborhood kid Richard (Ricky) Hobbs, 15, finish carving the words into her victim's flesh for her. Sylvia, after learning Gertrude was planning to have some of the kids take her body to a nearby dump, attempted to run away but was caught by Gertrude. As punishment she was again tied up and left alone in the basement, where she vainly tried to claw her way out - bending her fingernails backwards in the process. On October 26, 1965, after suffering numerous beatings, burnings, malnutrition, and other abuses, she died of a brain hemorrhage, dehydration, and shock . Show less «