This haunting photo from 1948 reveals just how much poverty can destroy a family. Mr. and Mrs. Ray Chalifoux were facing eviction from their Chicago apartment at the time and desperately needed money. So, the unemployed coal truck driver and his wife opted to sell their kids.
Though members of the Chalifoux family have claimed that the mother was paid to stage the image, the children in fact were sold to different homes within two years.
Worse yet, the children — Lana (six, top left), Rae (five, top right), Milton (four, bottom left), and Sue Ellen (two, bottom right) — were known to have been terribly abused by their new families thereafter.
