EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to say USDA inspectors raised concerns about veterinary care at The Gorilla Foundation in 2012, 2014 and 2017.

The nonprofit battling the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden over a gorilla is famous for another gorilla, Koko, who learned a form of sign language – but it also has a complicated past.

The Gorilla Foundation, which is based in California, has been the target of criticism from people who say it doesn’t live up to its mission. And in 2005 was sued by two former employees who said they were pressured to expose their breasts for Koko – who, it seems, did have a completely non-sexual, but pervasive interest in nipples.

Less known is that the nonprofit, which is located in the Santa Cruz Mountains, has been home to just two gorillas since 2000.

And after Koko’s death in June 2018, it was left with one, a 37-year-old silverback named Ndume, which the zoo is trying to get back.

A lawsuit pending in federal court in California will likely decide what happens next. The zoo has asked a judge to rule immediately and order Ndume sent to Cincinnati. On Jan. 24, Judge Richard Seeborg in U.S. District Court in San Francisco heard arguments from both sides but has not yet made a ruling.

The foundation says the transfer could kill Ndume.

The zoo loaned Ndume to the foundation in 1991 to be a mate for Koko, but he was not part of the foundation’s decades-long project – to promote "interspecies communication."

Ndume, a western lowland gorilla, was 10 at the time. The foundation has said it honored the request of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums not to involve him in its sign language project.

The mating didn’t work out. Koko shunned Ndume, even tormented him, according to former employees, and the animals eventually were separated.

Ndume lives in one of the trailers at the foundation’s facility and has access to an outdoor, fenced-in enclosure.

“He’s basically alone, and has been for a long time,” said John Safkow, who worked at the foundation between about 2009 and 2012. Safkow created a Facebook page partly to shed light on a foundation that requires employees to sign nondisclosure agreements.

A foundation official declined to comment for this story because of the pending litigation.

Gorilla sign language

The Gorilla Foundation was co-founded by Francine “Penny” Patterson. As a graduate student at Stanford University, Patterson in the early 1970s began working with a 1-year-old Koko to teach the gorilla sign language as part of her doctorate in psychology.

Patterson ended up purchasing Koko from The San Francisco Zoo, and in 1979 moved her and another young gorilla, Michael, to the same mountain facility the foundation uses today.

Ndume arrived in 1991. He was born in Cincinnati 10 years earlier, but in 1988 was transferred to the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois to breed with that zoo’s gorillas.

Court documents say Ndume integrated into a new family group and “sired multiple offspring.”

But documents also say Ndume also had developed a “throwing” habit.

“He repeatedly threw his own feces and regurgitated food at zoo staff and the public,” the documents say.

It was something he did for attention, to elicit a reaction, according to caregivers. By 1991, he had been transferred back to the Cincinnati Zoo.

That same year, according to the zoo, it agreed to loan Ndume to The Gorilla Foundation, “so he could have social companionship with Koko and a little more space.” The zoo said he had few socialization opportunities in Cincinnati because all the zoo’s female gorillas at the time were related to him and involved in breeding situations.

The foundation said Koko selected Ndume after watching video recordings of several gorillas.

The selection process was documented by the PBS program Nature.

“Koko-love. Bring,” the gorilla signs, according to the program’s translation. Koko then kisses video monitor screen that was showing Ndume. Patterson asks: “Would you like him to visit?” “Me. Him,” Koko responds.

That long-distance selection process may have been the most tender interaction between the two gorillas because at the foundation they did not connect.

Koko was known to throw things at Ndume or even urinate on him, former employees said.

That should have been expected, given that Koko was raised by humans and treated almost like a human. She watched television. She drank lattes. She may have even considered herself a human.

Ndume, on the other hand, “is still a gorilla,” a former employee noted.

The other male gorilla, Michael, who it was hoped would breed with Koko, also eventually was separated from Koko. Michael died in 2000.

Disillusioned

A stream of employees cycled through the foundation over the years. Four told The Enquirer they left disillusioned. Most did not want to be named because of the nondisclosure agreements they had signed.

The gorillas, they said, were kept in cluttered trailers, with little access to the other gorillas, and only their human caregivers to interact with.

The zoo and other experts say that gorillas are social animals whose well-being depends on interaction with other gorillas.

Former employees also were concerned about what they saw as a lack of veterinary care, and about Patterson's use of a homeopathic doctor who would prescribe supplements, herbs and other things over the phone.

USDA inspectors visited the facility at least annually and raised concerns about veterinary care in 2012, 2014 and 2017. In recent years, inspectors repeatedly described chipping and missing paint in Ndume’s trailer.

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A September 2018 inspection found: “some areas on the floors in the primary enclosures for the male gorilla – trailers X and Y – where there is chipping and missing paint, especially around the toilets.”

In addition to the same paint problem, an April 2017 inspection found “evidence of a current and significant rodent infestation” in the facility’s kitchen.

Also in recent years, there was video monitoring of at least Koko’s trailer.

Former employees described being asked to wear headsets, over which they would receive instructions from Patterson as she monitored them by video from another location.

Jennifer Chatfield, who was brought in by the foundation in 2013 to work with its employees and help them with gorilla care, told The Enquirer how she found out about the video surveillance.

Chatfield, who spent 30 years as a gorilla keeper at the Los Angeles Zoo – many of those years as the zoo’s primary keeper – was sitting with Koko in her trailer.

Not much was happening with Koko that day. To Chatfield, the gorilla mostly seemed to want to tell her what to do.

To pass the time, Chatfield began checking her cellphone for messages. She soon received one from Ken Gold, who was hired that year as managing director of gorilla care and research.

Put your phone away, Chatfield recalled Gold’s message saying. Penny can see you’re using it.

Chatfield came away from her experience believing that Patterson was overstating gorillas’ capacity for communication.

“I don’t think gorillas are capable of some of the complex things that Penny claims they are,” Chatfield said. “They’re incredibly intelligent. They’re just so different.”

“Gorillas are not lesser humans,” she added. “They are perfect gorillas. They evolved into what they are, for a reason.”

The foundation faced unwelcome publicity in 2005 when two former employees said in a lawsuit that Patterson repeatedly “pressured” them to expose their breasts to Koko.

The former employees, Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller, refused to go through with it.

Depositions filed in the case described how another female employee was seen lifting up her T-shirt for Koko.

“Question: And she showed Koko her breasts?”

“Answer: Correct.”

“Question: And she was not wearing a bra?”

“Answer: Correct.”

Patterson, according to the lawsuit, told Alperin that exposing one’s breasts to Koko was “a normal component to developing a personal bond with the gorilla.”

The case settled out of court.

Safkow and others who worked at the foundation after the lawsuit was settled said Koko often asked to see their nipples. Although Safkow would do it, he said he was never instructed or pressured by Patterson to do so.

"The nipple thing," he said, "was real."

'Unwanted child'

Former employees described Ndume as being like the unwanted child. He seemed lonely and bored, much of the time. They also described him as highly intelligent with a tender side.

Like Koko, he understands a lot of spoken English.

He also makes a purring sound when he’s content. He would put his back against the wire mesh that separated his section of the trailer from where the caregivers could go, to have his back scratched.

The foundation says in court documents that Ndume has bonded with his current human caregivers, listens to music and books, “celebrates birthdays and holidays (and receives gifts),” and even uses toilets that are available to him.

“He is with a strong family support group of human great apes, from whom he takes great comfort,” Patterson said in a September 2018 letter to the zoo, in which she opposed transferring Ndume.

The zoo says the transfer is safe and is something done regularly. It also says The Gorilla Foundation, which is not accredited by the AZA, agreed to a revised loan agreement in 2015. The agreement said that after Koko died, Ndume would be transferred to a zoo designated by an independent gorilla organization.

The Cincinnati Zoo is the designated institution.

"This is not a new development," the zoo said in a letter to the foundation. "TGF has known about it for years and agreed to (it) in writing."