76-Year-Old Woman Expelled from KFC for Breastfeeding Her 42-Year-Old Son now.snopes.com

image: http://now.snopes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/kfc.jpg

Have you heard about the 76 year old woman breastfeeding her 42 year old son in KFC in Mississippi??? This is gross and hope it’s made up.

image: http://now.snopes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/false.gif

On 24 April 2015, a titillating story hit the online world about a 76-year-old woman supposedly expelled from a KFC restaurant for breastfeeding her 42-year-old son on the premises:

A 76-year-old woman has created controversy yesterday, by breastfeeding her 42-year-old son in the middle of a KFC restaurant. Many customers of the fast food joint would of complained about the incident and prompted Linda Berrety and her son, Michael, to leave the establishment. Both finally got expelled.
 
This unusual episode has sparked strong reactions on social medias and provoked a huge debate on the limits of breastfeeding in public places, while many customers present at the time of the event seem to have seen a gesture of sexual nature and incest, rather than a gesture of maternal concern.
 
“What in God’s name was that?” claims Ali Belfouz, a customer who witnessed the whole scene. “I have nothing against breastfeeding, but that was pure nonsense. I felt like if I was watching some fetish type of porno. You have to be insane to breastfeed your child at that age. They should of got arrested for gross indecency rather then getting expelled.”
 
“It’s my right as a mother to breastfeed my child,” says Mrs. Berrety. “If people don’t agree with the way I raise my son, that’s their problem. I have raised a great man, beautiful, tall, who still lives and stays with me. I think I’ve done a great job as a mother and don’t appreciate getting insulted and expelled just because I decided to breastfeed my child a little longer than other mothers.

Aside from the outlandishness and implausibility of the article’s subject matter, several aspects of the story should have given readers pause to suspect it was not on the up-and-up, including the lack of any specific information about where the alleged incident took place (beyond a single mention of Mississippi in the dateline), the stilted phrasing, and the unjournalistic use of slang (e.g., “the chances of winning of the 76-year-old woman would be pretty excellent, according to many legal experts”).

Moreover, the photograph of “KFC spokesperson Jocelyn Binoy” that accompanied the article is actually a picture of Juliet Bynoe-Sutherland, the Director of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP).

In fact, the article was a hoax that originated with the (apparently short-lived) newswatch28.com fake news site, whose other “news” items included headlined stories such as “Aquarium employee fired for sleeping with a walrus” and “Illegal DNA manipulation leads to sheep giving birth to lamb with human face.”

Read more at http://now.snopes.com/2015/04/24/expelled-from-kfc/#DBWojYFulOkGvumk.99