I have 12 kids & live in council house – trolls say I'm a ‘jobless sponger on £6k benefits', they couldn't be more wrong

The Sun

21-04-2025

A MUM-OF-12 has hit back at trolls who claim she's a jobless sponger on benefits - insisting they couldn't be more wrong.
Zoe, 46, and Ben Sullivan, 50, and their bumper brood make up one of Scotland's biggest families.
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The pair are parents to Elizabeth, 20, Olivia, 18, Noah, 15, Evangeline, 13, Tobias, 12, Agnes, seven, Joseph, six, Flo, three, and two sets of twins, Charlotte and Isabelle, 17, and Leah and Erin, nine.
They live in a six-bedroom council house in Burghead, Moray, where they regularly document their hectic lives on their YouTube channel.
In a recent video, Zoe exposed comments from trolls who flooded her with hateful messages after revealing she spends £400 on the weekly food shop.
One read: "All paid for by the taxpayer, lovely."
"When the benefits roll in", a second wrote.
A third claimed: "Think you'll find they receive a lot in benefits. Child benefit, Scottish child payment ad whatever other UC they are claiming."
"Neither parent works", another poison note read.
Meanwhile, a fifth added: " £400 a week on shopping? That's crazy. She's either got a hardworking husband who can earn enough to feed his family or she gets good benefits."
Opening up about the hate, Zoe said: "We get attacked quite a lot by trolls.
"We can say it doesn't bother us as much as we like but there will be times when it does bother you.
I'm a mum of two and get a £1.7k Universal Credit payday each month people hate me as they work 40 hours a week for the same
"A lot of people say 'well you put yourself out there so you deserve what you get'. Well actually no, you don't. You don't deserve that at all.
"You don't. Just because we choose to share our life online that doesn't mean that we deserve to be bullied and made fun of."
She added: "People assume that we claim like £6,000 a month in benefits.
"I was like 'wow can you even claim that much?'. We definitely don't.
"There is this assumption that number one, we don't work and number two we bring in mass incomes on benefits and then spend it all on rubbish.
"People seem to be so angry at large families, [they] just assume you have children and you suddenly become a sponge on society."
And the busy mum was quick to set the record straight about the money her family earns and the bills they pay.
She revealed that Ben has a military pension after serving 26 years in the RAF.
Now, the couple make cash from social media platforms where they share their experience as a large family.
She said: "That is how we earn money. We are both self-employed so we both earn on social media. And whilst it might not be huge amounts, it's enough to get us by.
"Obviously getting us by, there's 14 of us, it takes quite a lot of money. But we budget, we make ends meet.
"There are some people that get really aggravated by the fact that they think their taxes go directly to me and my 12 children, to our family of 14.
"They automatically assume you've got 12 kids so you must be on every benefit under the sun and paying nothing into the system.
"We pay our taxes, we pay our bills, we pay our council tax, we pay our rent, we pay all that stuff."
Even when talking about child benefit, Zoe pointed out: " A third of our children are actually adults."