In April of 1963 at the military hospital in Aden, Yemen, a pair of twin girls were born. Their births were not unusual, nor were their dispositions as infants, but soon enough, Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons realized that their twin daughters, Jennifer and June, were different. Not only were they far behind their peers in regard to language skills, they were also unusually inseparable, and the two girls seemed to have a private language that only they could understand. The two would come to be known as the “silent twins” for their unwillingness to communicate with anyone except each other. By the time the girls were teenagers, their language had become unintelligible to anyone else. In 1981 the twins committed several crimes, including vandalism, petty theft and arson, which led to them being admitted to Broadmoor Hospital. The twins were sentenced to indefinite detention under the Mental Health Act and were held for 11 years. The twins had a longstanding agreement that if one died, the other must begin to speak and live a normal life. During their stay in the hospital, they began to believe that it was necessary for one of them to die, and after much discussion, Jennifer agreed to make the sacrifice of her life. In March 1993, the twins were transferred from Broadmoor to the more open Caswell Clinic in Bridgend, Wales. Upon arrival, Jennifer could not be roused. She was taken to the hospital, where she died soon after of acute myocarditis, a sudden inflammation of the heart. There was no evidence of drugs or poison in her system and her cause of death was declared to be from natural causes. After Jennifer’s death, June moved near her parents in West Wales and lived quietly and independently. She is no longer monitored by psychiatric services and has sought to put the past behind her. The twins’ sister Greta revealed that the family had been deeply troubled by the girls' incarceration. She blamed Broadmoor for ruining their lives and for neglecting Jennifer's health. She had wanted to file a lawsuit against Broadmoor, but Aubrey and Gloria refused, saying it wouldn't bring Jennifer back.
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| June today |
