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The Story of Genie Wiley

What her tragic story revealed about language and development

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Who Was Genie Wiley?

Why was the genie wiley case so famous, did genie learn to speak, ethical concerns.

While there have been a number of cases of feral children raised in social isolation with little or no human contact, few have captured public and scientific attention, like that of Genie Wiley.

Genie spent almost her entire childhood locked in a bedroom, isolated, and abused for over a decade. Her case was one of the first to put the critical period theory to the test. Could a child reared in utter deprivation and isolation develop language? Could a nurturing environment make up for a horrifying past?

In order to understand Genie's story, it is important to look at what is known about her early life, the discovery of the abuse she had endured, and the subsequent efforts to treat and study her.

Early Life (1957-1970)

Genie's life prior to her discovery was one of utter deprivation. She spent most of her days tied naked to a potty chair, only able to move her hands and feet. When she made noise, her father would beat her. The rare times her father did interact with her, it was to bark or growl. Genie Wiley's brother, who was five years older than Genie, also suffered abuse under their father.

Discovery and Study (1970-1975)

Genie's story came to light on November 4, 1970, in Los Angeles, California. A social worker discovered the 13-year old girl after her mother sought out services for her own health. The social worker soon discovered that the girl had been confined to a small room, and an investigation by authorities quickly revealed that the child had spent most of her life in this room, often tied to a potty chair.

A Genie Wiley documentary was made in 1997 called "Secrets of the Wild Child." In it, Susan Curtiss, PhD, a linguist and researcher who worked with Genie, explained that the name Genie was used in case files to protect the girl's identity and privacy.

The case name is Genie. This is not the person's real name, but when we think about what a genie is, a genie is a creature that comes out of a bottle or whatever but emerges into human society past childhood. We assume that it really isn't a creature that had a human childhood.

Both parents were charged with abuse , but Genie's father died by suicide the day before he was due to appear in court, leaving behind a note stating that "the world will never understand."

The story of Genie's case soon spread, drawing attention from both the public and the scientific community. The case was important, said psycholinguist and author Harlan Lane, PhD, because "our morality doesn’t allow us to conduct deprivation experiments with human beings; these unfortunate people are all we have to go on."

With so much interest in her case, the question became what should be done to help her. A team of psychologists and language experts began the process of rehabilitating Genie.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided funding for scientific research on Genie’s case. Psychologist David Rigler, PhD, was part of the "Genie team" and he explained the process.

I think everybody who came in contact with her was attracted to her. She had a quality of somehow connecting with people, which developed more and more but was present, really, from the start. She had a way of reaching out without saying anything, but just somehow by the kind of look in her eyes, and people wanted to do things for her.

Genie's rehabilitation team also included graduate student Susan Curtiss and psychologist James Kent. Upon her initial arrival at UCLA, Genie weighed just 59 pounds and moved with a strange "bunny walk." She often spat and was unable to straighten her arms and legs. Silent, incontinent, and unable to chew, she initially seemed only able to recognize her own name and the word "sorry."

After assessing Genie's emotional and cognitive abilities, Kent described her as "the most profoundly damaged child I've ever seen … Genie's life is a wasteland." Her silence and inability to use language made it difficult to assess her mental abilities, but on tests, she scored at about the level of a 1-year-old.

Genie Wiley's Rehabilitation and the Forbidden Experiment

She soon began to rapidly progress in specific areas, quickly learning how to use the toilet and dress herself. Over the next few months, she began to experience more developmental progress but remained poor in areas such as language. She enjoyed going out on day trips outside of the hospital and explored her new environment with an intensity that amazed her caregivers and strangers alike.

Curtiss suggested that Genie had a strong ability to communicate nonverbally , often receiving gifts from total strangers who seemed to understand the young girl's powerful need to explore the world around her.

Psychiatrist Jay Shurley, MD, helped assess Genie after she was first discovered, and he noted that since situations like hers were so rare, she quickly became the center of a battle between the researchers involved in her case. Arguments over the research and the course of her treatment soon erupted. Genie occasionally spent the night at the home of Jean Butler, one of her teachers.

After an outbreak of measles, Genie was quarantined at her teacher's home. Butler soon became protective and began restricting access to Genie. Other members of the team felt that Butler's goal was to become famous from the case, at one point claiming that Butler had called herself the next Anne Sullivan, the teacher famous for helping Helen Keller learn to communicate.  

Genie was partially treated like an asset and an opportunity for recognition, significantly interfering with their roles, and the researchers fought with each other for access to their perceived power source.

Eventually, Genie was removed from Butler's care and went to live in the home of psychologist David Rigler, where she remained for the next four years. Despite some difficulties, she appeared to do well in the Rigler household. She enjoyed listening to classical music on the piano and loved to draw, often finding it easier to communicate through drawing than through other methods.

After Genie was discovered, a group of researchers began the process of rehabilitation. However, this work also coincided with research to study her ability to acquire and use language. These two interests led to conflicts in her treatment and between the researchers and therapists working on her case.

State Custody (1975-Present)

NIMH withdrew funding in 1974, due to the lack of scientific findings. Linguist Susan Curtiss had found that while Genie could use words, she could not produce grammar. She could not arrange these words in a meaningful way, supporting the idea of a critical period in language development.

Rigler's research was disorganized and largely anecdotal. Without funds to continue the research and care for Genie, she was moved from the Riglers' care.

In 1975, Genie returned to live with her birth mother. When her mother found the task too difficult, Genie was moved through a series of foster homes, where she was often subjected to further abuse and neglect .

Genie’s situation continued to worsen. After spending a significant amount of time in foster homes, she returned to Children’s Hospital. Unfortunately, the progress that had occurred during her first stay had been severely compromised by the subsequent treatment she received in foster care. Genie was afraid to open her mouth and had regressed back into silence.

Genie’s birth mother then sued the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the research team, charging them with excessive testing. While the lawsuit was eventually settled, it raised important questions about the treatment and care of Genie. Did the research interfere with the girl's therapeutic treatment?

Psychiatrist Jay Shurley visited her on her 27th and 29th birthdays and characterized her as largely silent, depressed , and chronically institutionalized. Little is known about Genie's present condition, although an anonymous individual hired a private investigator to track her down in 2000 and described her as happy. But this contrasts with other reports.

Genie Wiley Today

Today, Genie Wiley's whereabouts are unknown; though, if she is still living, she is presumed to be a ward of the state of California, living in an adult care home. As of 2024, Genie would be 66-67 years old.

Part of the reason why Genie's case fascinated psychologists and linguists so deeply was that it presented a unique opportunity to study a hotly contested debate about language development.

Essentially, it boils down to the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Does genetics or environment play a greater role in the development of language?

Nativists believe that the capacity for language is innate, while empiricists suggest that environmental variables play a key role. Nativist Noam Chomsky suggested that acquiring language could not be fully explained by learning alone.

Instead, Chomsky proposed that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace.

Critical Periods

Linguist Eric Lenneberg suggests that like many other human behaviors, the ability to acquire language is subject to critical periods. A critical period is a limited span of time during which an organism is sensitive to external stimuli and capable of acquiring certain skills.

According to Lenneberg, the critical period for language acquisition lasts until around age 12. After the onset of puberty, he argued, the organization of the brain becomes set and no longer able to learn and use language in a fully functional manner.

Genie's case presented researchers with a unique opportunity. If given an enriched learning environment, could she overcome her deprived childhood and learn language even though she had missed the critical period?

If Genie could learn language, it would suggest that the critical period hypothesis of language development was wrong. If she could not, it would indicate that Lenneberg's theory was correct.

Despite scoring at the level of a 1-year-old upon her initial assessment, Genie quickly began adding new words to her vocabulary. She started by learning single words and eventually began putting two words together much the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language.

After a year of treatment, Genie started putting three words together occasionally. In children going through normal language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in novel ways.

Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable to apply grammatical rules and use language in a meaningful way. At this point, her progress leveled off and her acquisition of new language halted.

While Genie was able to learn some language after puberty, her inability to use grammar (which Chomsky suggests is what separates human language from animal communication) offers evidence for the critical period hypothesis.

Of course, Genie's case is not so simple. Not only did she miss the critical period for learning language, but she was also horrifically abused. She was malnourished and deprived of cognitive stimulation for most of her childhood.

Researchers were also never able to fully determine if Genie had any pre-existing cognitive deficits. As an infant, a pediatrician had identified her as having some type of mental delay. So researchers were left to wonder whether Genie had experienced cognitive deficits caused by her years of abuse or if she had been born with some degree of intellectual disability.

There are many ethical concerns surrounding Genie's story. Arguments among those in charge of Genie's care and rehabilitation reflect some of these concerns.

"If you want to do rigorous science, then Genie's interests are going to come second some of the time. If you only care about helping Genie, then you wouldn't do a lot of the scientific research," suggested psycholinguist Harlan Lane in the NOVA documentary focused on her life.

In Genie's case, some of the researchers held multiple roles of caretaker-teacher-researcher-housemate. which, by modern standards, we would deem unethical. For example, the Riglers benefitted financially by taking Genie in (David received a large grant and was released from certain duties at the children's hospital without loss of pay). Butler also played a role in removing Genie from the Riglers' home, filing multiple complaints against him.

While Genie's story may be studied for its implications in our understanding of language acquisition and development, it is also a case that will continue to be studied over its serious ethical issues.

"I think future generations are going to study Genie's case not only for what it can teach us about human development but also for what it can teach us about the rewards and the risks of conducting 'the forbidden experiment,'" Lane explained.

Bottom Line

Genie Wiley's story perhaps leaves us with more questions than answers. Though it was difficult for Genie to learn language, she was able to communicate through body language, music, and art once she was in a safe home environment. Unfortunately, we don't know what her progress could have been had adequate care not been taken away from her.

Ultimately, her case is so important for the psychology and research field because we must learn from this experience not to revictimize and exploit the very people we set out to help. This is an important lesson because Genie's original abuse by her parents was perpetuated by the neglect and abandonment she faced later in her life. We must always strive to maintain objectivity and consider the best interest of the subject before our own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Genie, now in her 60s, is believed to be living in an adult care facility in California. Efforts by journalists to learn more about her location and current condition have been rejected by authorities due to confidentiality rules. Curtiss has also reported attempting to contact Genie without success.

Along with her husband, Irene Wiley was charged with abuse, but these charges were eventually dropped. Irene was blind and reportedly mentally ill, so it is believed that Genie's father was the child's primary caretaker. Genie's father, Clark Wiley, also abused his wife and other children. Two of the couple's children died in infancy under suspicious circumstances.

Genie's story suggests that the acquisition of language has a critical period of development. Her case is complex, however, since it is unclear if her language deficits were due to deprivation or if there was an underlying mental disability that played a role. The severe abuse she experienced may have also affected her mental development and language acquisition.

Collection of research materials related to linguistic-psychological studies of Genie (pseudonym) (collection 800) . UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Schoneberger T. Three myths from the language acquisition literature . Anal Verbal Behav. 2010;26(1):107–131. doi:10.1007/bf03393086

APA Dictionary of Psychology. Language acquisition device . American Psychological Association.

Vanhove J. The critical period hypothesis in second language acquisition: A statistical critique and a reanalysis .  PLoS One . 2013;8(7):e69172. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069172

Carroll R. Starved, tortured, forgotten: Genie, the feral child who left a mark on researchers . The Guardian .

James SD. Raised by a tyrant, suffering a sibling's abuse . ABC News .

  NOVA . The secret of the wild child [transcript]. PBS,

Pines M. The civilizing of Genie. In: Kasper LF, ed., Teaching English Through the Disciplines: Psychology . Whittier.

Rolls G.  Classic Case Studies in Psychology (2nd ed.). Hodder Arnold.

Rymer R. Genie: A Scientific Tragedy.  Harper-Collins.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Abandoned, Abused, And Exploited: Inside The Tragic Life Of The Feral Child, Genie Wiley

"feral child" genie wiley was strapped to a chair by her parents and neglected for 13 years before she was finally rescued — then she was experimented upon by researchers studying human development..

Getty Images For the first 13 years of her life, Genie Wiley suffered unimaginable abuse and neglect at the hands of her parents.

The story of Genie Wiley the Feral Child sounds like the stuff of fairytales: An unwanted, mistreated child survives brutal imprisonment at the hands of a savage ogre and is rediscovered and reintroduced to the world in an impossibly youthful state. Unfortunately for Wiley, hers is a dark, real-life tale with no happy ending. There would be no fairy godmothers, no magic solutions, and no enchanted transformations.

Genie Wiley was separated from any form of socialization and society for the first 13 years of her life. Her intensely abusive father and helpless mother so neglected Wiley that she hadn’t learned to speak and her growth was so stunted that she looked like she was no more than eight years old.

Her intense trauma proved something of a godsend to scientists of various fields including psychology and linguistics, though they were later accused of exploiting the child for their research on learning and development. But Genie Wiley’s case did beg the question: What does it mean to be human?

This is the haunting story of Genie Wiley.

The Horrifying Upbringing That Turned Genie Wiley Into A “Feral Child”

Genie isn’t the Feral Child’s real name. She was given the name to protect her identity once she became a spectacle of scientific research and awe.

ApolloEight Genesis/YouTube The home in which Genie Wiley was raised by her abusive parents.

Susan Wiley was born in 1957 to Clark Wiley and his much-younger wife Irene Oglesby. Oglesby was a Dust Bowl refugee who had drifted to the Los Angeles area where she met her husband. He was a former assembly-line machinist raised in and out of brothels by his mother. This childhood had a profound effect on Clark, as for the rest of his life he’d fixate on the figure of his mother.

Clark Wiley never wanted children. He hated the noise and stress they brought along. Nonetheless, the first baby girl did come along and Wiley left the child in the garage to freeze to death when she wouldn’t be quiet.

The Wiley’s second baby died of a congenital defect, and then came along Genie Wiley and her brother John. While her brother also faced their father’s abuse, it was nothing compared to Susan’s suffering.

Though he was always a bit off, the death of Clark Wiley’s mother by a drunk driver in 1958 seemed to undo him completely. The end to the complicated relationship they shared fanned his cruelty into a bonfire.

ApolloEight Genesis/YouTube Genie Wiley’s mother was legally blind, which was supposedly the reason why she felt she couldn’t intervene on her daughter’s behalf during the abuse.

Clark Wiley decided that his daughter was mentally disabled and that she’d be useless to society. Thus, he banished society from her. No one was allowed to interact with the girl who was mostly locked in a blacked-out room or in a makeshift cage. He kept her strapped into a toddler toilet as a sort of straight-jacket, and she wasn’t potty-trained.

Clark Wiley would hit her with a large plank of wood for any infraction. He’d growl outside her door like a deranged guard dog, instilling a lifelong fear of clawed animals in the girl. Some experts believe sexual abuse may have been involved, due to Wiley’s later sexually inappropriate behavior, particularly involving older men.

In her own words, Genie Wiley, the Feral Child recalled :

“Father hit arm. Big wood. Genie cry… Not spit. Father. Hit face — spit. Father hit big stick. Father is angry. Father hit Genie big stick. Father take piece wood hit. Cry. Father make me cry.”

She had spent 13 years living this way.

Genie Wiley’s Salvation From Torment

Genie Wiley’s mother was nearly blind which she later said kept her from interceding on her daughter’s behalf. But one day, 14 years after Genie Wiley’s first introduction to her father’s cruelty, her mother did finally muster her courage and leave.

In 1970, she stumbled into social services, mistaking it for the office where they’d give aid to the blind. The office workers’ antennae were immediately raised when they noticed the young girl acting so strangely, hopping like a bunny instead of walking.

Genie Wiley was then nearly 14 but she looked no more than eight.

Associated Press Clark Wiley (center left) and John Wiley (center right) after the abuse scandal broke open.

An abuse case was immediately opened against both parents, but Clark Wiley would kill himself shortly before trial. He left behind a note which read: “The world will never understand.”

Wiley became a ward of the state. She knew but a few words when she entered UCLA’s Children’s Hospital and was dubbed by medical professionals there as “the most profoundly damaged child they had ever seen.”

Wiley’s case soon enchanted scientists and physicians who applied for and were rewarded a grant by the National Institute of Mental Health to study her. The team explored the “Developmental Consequence of Extreme Social Isolation” for four years from 1971 to 1975.

For those four years, Genie Wiley became the center of these scientists’ lives. “She wasn’t socialized, and her behavior was distasteful,” began Susie Curtiss, a linguist intimately involved in the feral child study, “but she just captivated us with her beauty.”

But also for those four years, Wiley’s case tested the ethics of a relationship between a subject and their researcher. Genie Wiley would come to live with many of the team members who observed her which was not only a huge conflict of interest but also potentially begat another abusive relationship in her life.

Researchers Begin Experimenting On The “Feral Child”

ApolloEight Genesis/YouTube For four years, Genie the Feral Child was subject to scientific experimentation that some felt was too intense to be ethical.

Genie Wiley’s discovery timed precisely with an uptick in the scientific study of language. To language scientists, Wiley was a blank slate, a way to understand what part language has in our development and vice versa. In a twist of dramatic irony, Genie Wiley now became deeply wanted.

One of the foremost tasks of the “Genie Team” was to establish which came first: Wiley’s abuse or her lapse in development. Did Wiley’s developmental delay come as a symptom of her abuse, or was Wiley born challenged?

Up until the late 1960s, it was largely believed by linguists that children could not learn language after puberty. But Genie the Feral Child disproved this. She had a thirst for learning and curiosity and her researchers found her “highly communicative.” It turned out that Wiley could learn language, but grammar and sentence structure was another thing entirely.

“She was smart,” Curtiss said. “She could hold a set of pictures so they told a story. She could create all sorts of complex structures from sticks. She had other signs of intelligence. The lights were on.”

Genie Wiley showed that grammar becomes inexplicable to children without training between five and 10, but communication and language remains entirely attainable. Wiley’s case also posed some more existential questions about the human experience.

“Does language make us human? That’s a tough question,” said Curtiss. “It’s possible to know very little language and still be fully human, to love, form relationships and engage with the world. Genie definitely engaged with the world. She could draw in ways you would know exactly what she was communicating.”

TLC Susan Curtiss, a UCLA linguistics professor, helps Genie the Feral Child to find her voice.

As such, Wiley could construct simple phrases to convey what she wanted or was thinking, like “applesauce buy store,” but the nuances of a more sophisticated sentence structure were out of her grasp. This demonstrated that language is different from thought.

Curtiss explained that “For many of us, our thoughts are verbally encoded. For Genie Wiley, her thoughts were virtually never verbally encoded, but there are many ways to think.”

Genie the Feral Child’s case did help to establish that there is a point beyond which total language fluency is impossible if the subject does not already speak one language fluently.

According to Psychology Today :

“The case of Genie confirms that there is a certain window of opportunity that sets the limit for when you can become relatively fluent in a language. Of course, if you already are fluent in another language, the brain is already primed for language acquisition and you may well succeed in becoming fluent in a second or third language. If you have no experience with grammar, however, Broca’s area remains relatively hard to change: you cannot learn grammatical language production later on in life.”

Continued Exploitation Of Genie Wiley

For all their contributions to understanding human nature, the “Genie Team” was not without its critics. For one thing, each of the scientists on the team accused each other of abusing their position and relationships with Genie Wiley the feral child.

For instance, in 1971, language teacher Jean Butler obtained permission to bring Wiley home with her for socialization purposes. Butler was able to contribute some integral insights on Wiley in this environment, including the feral child’s fascination with collecting buckets and other containers that stored liquid, a common trait amongst other children who have faced extreme isolation. She also saw that Genie Wiley was beginning puberty at this time, a sign that her health was strengthening.

The arrangement went along well enough for a time until Butler claimed she caught Rubella and would need to quarantine herself and Wiley. Their temporary situation turned more permanent. Butler turned away the other physicians on the “Genie Team” claiming that they were subjecting her to too much scrutiny. She applied for the foster care of Wiley as well.

Later, Butler was accused by other members of the team of exploiting Wiley. They said Butler believed her young ward would make her “the next Anne Sullivan,” the teacher who helped Helen Keller to become more than invalid.

As such, Genie Wiley later went to live with the family of therapist David Rigler, another member of the “Genie Team.” As far as Genie Wiley’s luck would allow, this seemed to be a good fit for her and a time to develop and discover the world with people who genuinely cared for her well-being.

The arrangement also gave the “Genie Team” more access to her. As Curtiss later wrote in her book Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day Wild Child :

“One particularly striking memory of those early months was an absolutely wonderful man who was a butcher, and he never asked her name, he never asked anything about her. They just connected and communicated somehow. And every time we came in — and I know this was so with others, as well — He would slide open the little window and hand her something that wasn’t wrapped, a bone of some sort, some meat, fish, whatever. And he would allow her to do her thing with it, and to do her thing, what her thing was, basically, was to explore it tactilely, to put it up against her lips and feel it with her lips and touch it, almost as if she were blind.”

Wiley remained an expert in non-verbal communication and had a way of expressing her thoughts to people even if she couldn’t speak to them.

Rigler, too, recalled how one time a father and his young son carrying a fire engine passed by Genie Wiley. “And they just passed,” Rigler remembered. “And then they turned around and came back, and the boy, without a word, handed the fire engine to Genie. She never asked for it. She never said a word. She did this kind of thing, somehow, to people.”

Despite the progress she displayed at the Riglers’, once the funding ended for the study in 1975, Wiley went to live with her mother for a brief period. In 1979, her mother filed a lawsuit against the hospital and her daughter’s individual caregivers, including the scientists on the “Genie Team,” alleging they exploited Wiley for “prestige and profit.” The suit was settled in 1984 and Wiley’s contact with her researchers all but entirely severed.

Wikimedia Commons Genie Wiley was returned to foster care after the research on her ended. She regressed in these environments and never regained speech.

Wiley was eventually placed in a number of foster homes, some of which were also abusive. There Wiley was beaten for vomiting and regressed greatly. She never regained the progress she had made.

Genie Wiley Today

Genie Wiley’s present life is little-known; once her mother took custody, she refused to let her daughter be the subject of any more studies. Like so many people with special needs, she fell through the cracks of proper care.

Wiley’s mother died in 2003, her brother John in 2011, and her niece Pamela in 2012. Russ Rymer, a journalist, tried to piece together what led to the dissolution of Wiley’s team, but he found the task challenging as the scientists had all divided on who was exploitative and who had the feral child’s best interests in mind. “The tremendous rift complicated my reporting,” Rymer said. “That was also part of the breakdown that turned her treatment into such a tragedy.”

He later recalled visiting Susan Wiley on her 27th birthday and seeing:

“A large, bumbling woman with a facial expression of cowlike incomprehension… her eyes focus poorly on the cake. Her dark hair has been hacked off raggedly at the top of her forehead, giving her the aspect of an asylum inmate.”

Despite this, Genie Wiley is not forgotten by those that cared about her.

“I’m pretty sure she’s still alive because I’ve asked each time I called and they told me she’s well,” Curtiss said. “They never let me have any contact with her. I’ve become powerless in my attempts to visit her or write to her. I think my last contact was in the early 1980s.”

Curtiss added in a 2008 interview that she has “spent the last 20 years looking for her… I can get as far as the social worker in charge of her case, but I can’t get any farther.”

As of 2008, Wiley was in an assisted living facility in Los Angeles.

Genie Wiley’s story is not a happy one as she drifted from one abusive situation to another, and by all accounts, was denied and failed by society at every step. But, one can hope that wherever she is, she continues to find joy in discovering the still-new world around her, and instills in others the fascination and affection that she had for her researchers.

After this look at Genie Wiley the Feral Child, read about teenage murderer Zachary Davis and Louise Turpin , the woman who kept her children captive for decades.

PO Box 24091 Brooklyn, NY 11202-4091

The Feral Child Nicknamed Genie

Sad case of child abuse sheds light on language production versus comprehension..

Posted July 10, 2017 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Genie was born to deranged parents. Her father was extremely intolerant of loud noises and didn't want children, but he and his wife ended up having babies. Lots of them. Most of them died from child neglect. Genie was one of few who survived.

Because of her father's sensitivity to noice and lack of care for others, Genie spent the first 13 years of her life strapped to a potty or a chair in a homemade straightjacket. If she made any noise whatsoever, her dad would beat her with a baseball bat. She was never spoken to. She was a true feral child.

When Child Protective Services finally intervened, Genie had virtually no physical abilities beyond those of a toddler. She was severely underweight and couldn't speak.

Linguist Susan Curtiss befriended her and attempted to teach her language and challenge her mental abilities. Susan Curtiss quickly learned that Genie was highly intelligent. She was able to tell sophisticated stories, not in words, but in pictures. Using pictures, she could tell intricate narratives.

Susan Curtiss worked with Genie to teach her English. Genie soon developed a rather large lexicon and was able to express herself. But despite extensive training, she remained unable to produce grammatical sentences. Here is a transcript of one of her reports of her time in the hands of her father:

Father hit arm. Big wood. Genie cry ... Not spit. Father. Hit face—spit ... Father hit big stick. Father angry. Father hit Genie big stick. Father take piece wood hit. Cry. Me cry.

Despite the tragedy that surrounds the case of Genie, her case teaches us an important lesson about language abilities. Telling a story (not necessarily in a grammatical way or even by using words) as well as understanding language are very different from being able to produce grammatical sentences in a language.

The language areas of the brain are actually divided between Wernicke's area and Broca's area (among other important language facilitating areas). Wernicke's area sits on the left side of the head (just above the ear) in the temporal lope, whereas the Broca area is located at the beginning of the frontal part of the brain (a bit further front). Wernicke's area is responsible for understanding speech and other communicative signals, whereas Broca's area is mainly in charge of producing grammatical sentences (alongside the motor area, which is needed to express what you want to say verbally—using lip movement and gestures, for instance).

The case of Genie confirms that there is a certain window of opportunity that sets the limit for when you can become relatively fluent in a language. Of course, if you already are fluent in another language, the brain is already primed for language acquisition and you may well succeed in becoming fluent in a second or third language. If you have no experience with grammar, however, Broca's area remains relatively hard to change: you cannot learn grammatical language production later on in life. But the abilities to understand language and produce language in ways that do not rely on grammar largely make use of Wernicke's area in the temporal lope. This area is capable of expanding and rewiring throughout life—even after the teen years. The case of Genie confirms this. Grammar was beyond reach for her. But language comprehension and storytelling were not.

The takeaway of this tragic case sits well with the established idea that Wernicke's area in the brain—the area for language comprehension—absorbs various languages and meaningful signals in a unified way, whereas the Broca area—the area of the brain that is in charge of grammatical speech production—stores native (or first) languages and (second) languages learned later in life in separate areas.

Berit "Brit" Brogaard is an author of The Superhuman Mind .

Berit Brogaard, D.M.Sci., Ph.D. , is a professor of philosophy and the Director of the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research at the University of Miami.

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Genie the Feral Child: the Girl Who Spent 13 Years Locked in a Room All Alone

• Post author: Janey Davies, B.A. (Hons)
• Post published: May 11, 2021
• Reading time: 9 mins read
• Post category: Personality

If you haven’t come across the shocking case of Genie the feral child, then prepare yourself. Genie’s suffering has been described as one of the worst cases of child abuse ever seen.

The Tragic Case of Genie the Feral Child

The case of Genie the feral child came to public attention in 1970 on November 4 by accident. A mother, suffering from cataracts, walked into a Los Angeles County welfare office by mistake. She was looking for assistance for her own medical health problems. But caseworkers were quickly alerted to the filthy little girl that accompanied her.

The girl exhibited extremely odd behaviour. She didn’t stand upright but stooped and took little hops to follow her mother around. She couldn’t extend her arms or legs and would frequently spit.

The girl wore diapers, was incontinent, and did not talk, nor did she seem able to focus her eyes. She had two complete sets of teeth yet could not chew or eat properly.

Caseworkers judged the girl’s age to be around 5 from her appearance and behavior but were stunned to learn from the mother that Genie (her name has been changed to protect her identity) was 13 years old.

Was this girl disabled or had she been injured, they wondered? When the truth finally emerged, it shocked the world.

Genie’s Horrific Background

Genie had spent all her childhood in a blacked-out room isolated from the family. She had been forced to sit in a homemade straitjacket, strapped to a chair with a potty underneath for all her childhood.

Forbidden to cry, talk, or make any noise, no one talked to Genie or touched her. Her father would periodically growl and beat her.

But how did this happen in the quiet and tranquil streets of suburban America?

Genie’s Abusive Parents

Genie’s father, Clark Wiley , was a controlling man with an acute aversion to noise. He worked as a machinist during WW2. As a child, he lived in whichever brothel his mother happened to be working in at the time.

He married the much younger Irene Oglesby , a helpless submissive woman who acquiesced to his every demand.

Clark did not want children from his marriage. They were too much trouble and too noisy. But he did want to have sex with his young wife. So, inevitably, children came along. This infuriated Clark.

When his first daughter was born, he left her in the garage to freeze to death. Luckily for Clark, the next baby died of complications at birth. Then, a son survived – John, and finally, Genie.

Genie’s Nightmare Begins

It was when Clark’s mother was killed by a drunk driver in 1958 that he descended into brutality and rage. Genie bore the brunt of his cruelty . She was little more than 20 months old, but Clark had decided she was mentally deranged and useless to society. She should, therefore, be shut away from everyone.

From this day, Genie’s nightmare began. She spent the next 13 years in this room, with no contact with the outside world, suffering beatings in complete silence.

But now she was in the custody of Los Angeles Children’s Services, the question was – could this feral child be saved?

The Feral Child Genie Is Discovered

Genie was moved to an LA children’s hospital and the race was on for who would get the chance to examine and rehabilitate her. After all, Genie was a blank slate. She presented a unique opportunity to study the effects of severe deprivation on a child .

Funding was provided and a ‘Genie team’ assembled, which consisted of psychologists David Rigler and James Kent , and UCLA linguistics professor Susan Curtiss .

“I think everybody who came in contact with her was attracted to her. She had a quality of somehow connecting with people, which developed more and more but was present, really, from the start. She had a way of reaching out without saying anything, but just somehow by the kind of look in her eyes, and people wanted to do things for her.” Rigler

UCLA linguistics professor Susan Curtiss worked with Genie and soon discovered that this 13-year-old had the mental capacity of a 1-year-old toddler . Despite this, Genie proved to be exceptionally bright and quick to learn.

At first, Genie could only speak a few words, but Curtiss managed to expand her vocabulary and the horrifying story of Genie’s life emerged.

“Father hit arm. Big wood. Genie cry … Not spit. Father. Hit face—spit … Father hit big stick. Father angry. Father hit Genie big stick. Father take piece wood hit. Cry. Me cry.”

Kent described Genie as “the most profoundly damaged child I’ve ever seen … Genie’s life is a wasteland.”

In spite of the horrific abuse , Genie’s progress was rapid and encouraging. Curtiss had become attached to the feral child and was hopeful for Genie. Genie would draw pictures when she could not find the right words. She scored highly on intelligence tests and was engaging with people she met. But try as she might, Curtiss could not get Genie past telegraphic speech.

Why Genie Could Not Learn Language

Telegraphic speech is made up of two or three words and is one of the first steps in language development , (e.g., Want doll, Daddy come, Funny dog). It is typical of 2-3 year-olds.

Gradually, a child will begin to add more words and start to construct sentences that include adjectives and articles, (e.g., The car drives. I want a banana, Mummy brings me teddy).

Language acquisition

Language sets us apart from other animals. While it is true that animals do communicate with each other, it is only humans that use complex forms of language which includes grammar and syntax. But how do we acquire this capability? Do we pick it up from our environment or it is instilled within us from birth?

In other words, nature or nurture?

Behaviorist BF Skinner proposed that language acquisition was the result of positive reinforcement . We say a word, our mothers smile at us and we repeat that word.

Linguist Noam Chomsky disputed this theory. Positive reinforcement cannot explain how humans form grammatically correct unique sentences. Chomsky theorised that humans are prewired to acquire language. He called it the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).

However, there is only a small window of opportunity for grammatical language to be acquired. This window is available between the ages of 5 – 10 years old. After that, the child may still build up a large lexicon of words, but they will never be able to form sentences.

And this what happened with Genie. Because she was kept in isolation and complete silence , she did not have the opportunity to listen or converse with others. This is what activates the LAD.

The System Failed Genie the Feral Child

Genie was such a special case that right from the start researchers and psychiatrists had vied for the chance to study her. But in 1972, the funding had been used up. Fierce debates about Genie’s future ensued, with Curtiss battling on one side and scientists and teachers on the other.

One such teacher specializing in rehabilitation – Jean Butler , convinced Genie’s mother Irene to sue for custody of Genie, which was successful. However, Irene was ill-equipped to deal with Genie’s complex needs. Genie was placed into a foster home, but this quickly failed.

She ended up in state institutions. Curtiss, who had made so much progress with Genie in the initial stages of her recovery, was forbidden to see her. As were all the other researchers and teachers.

Genie fell back into her old feral child ways, defecating and spitting whenever she felt stressed. Staff beat her for these infractions and she regressed even further. The promising improvement she had made since her release was now a thing of the past.

Where Is Genie the Feral Child Now?

There have been a few reports of Genie since her separation from Curtiss and placement into the state.

Journalist, Russ Rymer, author of ‘ Genie: A Scientific Tragedy ’ wrote of his shock at the devastating effect the years in state institutions had on Genie:

“A large, bumbling woman with a facial expression of cowlike incomprehension … her eyes focus poorly on the cake. Her dark hair has been hacked off raggedly at the top of her forehead, giving her the aspect of an asylum inmate.” – Rymer

Psychiatry and behavioural science professor Jay Shurley attended Genie’s 27th and 29th birthday parties. He was heartbroken at Genie’s appearance, describing her as depressed, quiet, and institutionalised.

No one knows what happened to the little feral child that hopped into that LA welfare office all those decades ago. Even Curtiss can’t reach her, although she believes that Genie is still alive.

It is thought that Genie the feral child today is living in an adult foster home.

Watch this documentary to learn more about this tragic story:

Final Thoughts

Some believe that the rush to learn and study Genie the feral child was at odds with Genie’s wellbeing and recovery. However, at the time, little was known about acquiring language and Genie was a blank slate. This was an ideal opportunity to learn.

So, should she have been studied so intensely? Was Genie’s case simply too important to put her welfare first and to ensure she received continued care? What do you think?

References :

• www.sciencedirect.com
• www.pbs.org

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This Post Has 3 Comments

This story has haunted me as a child. I am extremely angry that the American government cannot go in and rescue her!

Layla, your comment doesn’t make make much sense. Genie isn’t a political prisoner in a foreign land who needs the Navy Seals to make an undercover rescue mission. And she’s a ward of the state so she’s already in the hands of the government

so the institutions the state etc. just gave up on her and put her away. that is insane and disgusting.

why is Curtiss not allowed to see her? seems like the psyateix system haswnt evolved the last 50 years.

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The Tragic Story of Genie, the Feral Child, Whose Father Locked Her Up for 13 Years Alone in a Room

Genie’s father mostly grew up in orphanages, while his mother ran a brothel and only rarely visited him. This caused him develop resentment and anger problems. Genie’s mother was twenty years younger than Genie’s father and had degenerative vision problems in one eye. This was followed by severe cataracts making her increasingly dependent on her husband. Genie’s father disliked children considering them noisy, and after Genie’s birth began to isolate himself and his family from others. Just like the children before her, Genie was born with Rh incompatibility and was in the lowest 50th percentile for weight. Though she seemed to become healthier at eleven months of age, she fell to the 11th percentile of weight.

After her paternal grandmother died in an hit-and-run accident, her father became even more antisocial and abusive. He blamed Genie’s brother, who was walking with their grandmother at that time, for the accident. He soon quit his job and moved his family to his mother’s home which was considerably isolated from the neighborhood. He continued to impose strict restrictions when it came to sounds. He refused to have a working radio or television and almost never allowed his son and wife to speak, especially when near Genie. He would punish them every time they did so without his permission.

Wiley would also force his son into abusing Genie as he did. He fed her so little that at the age of thirteen she looked like she was only six or seven years old. Around 11 p.m., whenever possible, her mother would sneak extra food up for Genie which caused her to develop an abnormal sleeping pattern. She would sleep from 7 to 11 p.m., wake up for a few minutes to eat, and then go back to sleep for an additional six and a half hours. Her physical confinement also left her underdeveloped in terms of limb movement. The only part of her body she could move during that time were her extremities.

In 1970, Genie’s parents began to have violent arguments. Three weeks later, Genie’s mother walked out with Genie while her husband was away to apply for disability benefits for the blind but accidentally entered general social services office next door because of her near-blindness. There a social worker and her supervisor contacted the police which led to the arrest of Genie’s parents for child abuse. Things soon became public and the morning before his appearance in court, her father committed suicide leaving a note that said: “The world will never understand.”

Genie was admitted to Children’s Hospital, and therapist David Rigler and physician James Kent taking were assigned to her case. At that time, she quite malnourished: 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 meters) tall, weighing only 59 pounds (27 kilograms), had a bloated stomach, and two complete sets of teeth. Due to being restrained for so many years, her buttocks have developed thick callus and heavy bruising, her hips were deformed, her ribcage was undersized, and her bones seemed to be that of an 11-year-old. She couldn’t even stand up straight and had a characteristic “bunny walk” in which she held her hands in front like claws.

The individual attention and care she received at the hospital had significant positive impact on her. She gained weight and gradually began to interact with those with whom she had become friends. She also became very interested in sounds, trying to find their sources and moving objects to make sounds. After a brief stay at one of the researchers’ house which the hospital staff believed had negatively affected her, she was taken in by David Rigler and his wife who became her temporary foster parents.

In 1975, when Genie turned 18, her mother wished to care for her but soon found it overwhelming. However, in January 1978, she stopped allowing the research team see her daughter. Genie was switched between at least four foster homes between 1978 and early 1990s where she faced physical and mental abuse causing her to get depressed and withdrawn.

Now a ward of the state of California, Genie lives a simple life in an undisclosed private facility for mentally underdeveloped adults in Los Angeles. Her mother died of natural causes at the age of 87, and her brother, who ran away from home when he turned eighteen, died in 2011 of diabetic complications. [source: Wikipedia , The Guardian ]

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Genie Wiley: A Story of Abuse, Rescue, and Lingering Questions

• by Psychologs Magazine
• January 9, 2024
• 5 minutes read

People who are passionate about the academic discipline of psychology will surely be aware of the multiple controversial experiments that have been conducted throughout its history. Most of these experiments had ethical and moral considerations. Some of the most infamous and unethical experiments that psychologists have ever designed and implemented include the Little Albert Experiment, Milgram’s Prison experiment etc.

Through this article, however, we are delving deep, not into an unethical experiment that was conducted by the pioneers of the discipline, but rather into the intricacies of a case study that turned eyes towards the fate of feral children. Genie Wiley was a feral child who was raised with no human contact and was forced to spend over a decade locked and abused in her bedroom and was later rescued. Hers became the first case to be used to test the critical period theory in developmental psychology. To understand her case, we need to delve deep into the nuances of her life story.

Read More: The Psychology Behind Morality

The Case of Genie Wiley

Genie’s existence before her discovery was one of complete deprivation. She spent the majority of her days strapped naked to a potty chair, only able to move her hands and feet. When she made a noise, her father beat her. Her father’s interactions with her were limited to barking or growling. Genie’s narrative was revealed on November 4, 1970, in Los Angeles, California. A social worker discovered the 13-year-old kid when her mother sought help for her health. The social worker discovered that the girl had been confined to a small room, and an investigation by authorities swiftly revealed that the youngster had spent the majority of her life in this room, often tied to a potty chair. Both of Genie’s parents were charged in court for abuse.

Read More: Understanding the Role of Psychiatric Social Workers

However, Genie’s father committed suicide the day before his scheduled court appearance, leaving behind a note that said, “The world will never understand.” The tale of Genie’s case quickly spread, gaining attention from both the general public and the scholarly world. Harlan Lane, PhD, who was an author and a renowned psycholinguist later quoted this case to be groundbreaking and highly significant for research in the discipline since “our morality does not allow us to conduct deprivation experiments on humans; these unfortunate people are all we have to go on.”

Read More: Suicide Awareness: Unveiling the Truth

Her State After Being Rescued

Her rehabilitation team noted that when Genie first arrived at UCLA, she weighed only 59 pounds and moved with a weird “bunny walk.” She spat frequently and was unable to straighten her arms and legs. She was silent, incontinent, and unable to eat at first, appearing to recognize only her name and the word “sorry.” They described Genie as “the most profoundly damaged child I’ve ever seen,” based on her emotional and cognitive capacities. “Genie’s life is a wasteland.”

Her quietness and inability to communicate made it difficult to judge her mental capacities, but on tests, she performed at the level of a one-year-old. She quickly progressed in certain areas, learning how to use the toilet and dress herself. Over the next three months, she made more developmental gains, but her verbal skills remained weak. She adored going on day outings outside of the hospital and exploring her new surroundings with the zeal that astounded her carers and outsiders alike. The theories of nativism and that of the earlier mentioned critical period come up into question as soon as we discuss Genie’s case. Nativism is a renowned theory in psychology that believes and propagates that language or the ability to handle language present in human beings is innate for every individual.

While various behaviourists, during those days of the discipline development claimed that language is learnt through the various proposed models of learning, nativists like Noam Chomsky, who was also a linguist, argued that acquiring language in human beings is an innate process, i.e., each person is born with a language acquisition device that would aid them completely in acquiring and using the language. Once the child at a young age is exposed to their mother tongue or any other language for that matter, the Language Acquisition Device that they are mentally equipped with would completely take over the process of language.

Linguist Eric Lenneberg contends that, like many other human behaviours, the ability to acquire language is subject to critical periods. A critical period is a limited period during which an organism is sensitive to external stimuli and capable of learning specific skills. According to Lenneberg, the key time for language acquisition lasts until approximately age 12. He argued that once puberty sets in, the brain’s organization becomes fixed, and it is no longer capable of learning and using language fully functionally. Despite scoring at the level of a one-year-old on her initial evaluation, Genie quickly expanded her vocabulary.

She began by memorizing individual words and gradually progressed to combining two words. Following a year of treatment, she began to form three-word sentences on occasion. In children undergoing normal language development, this stage is followed by a language explosion. Unfortunately, this never occurred to Genie. Her language skills were stalled at this point, and she appeared unable to apply grammatical principles or utilize language in a meaningful way. Her progress stalled at this time, and her learning of a new language came to an end. This provides great evidence for the propagation of critical period theory.

The National Institute of Mental Health which had earlier provided the funds to the rehabilitation team to conduct scientific research to comprehend the linguistic and developmental intricacies of Genie’s life, now retrieved the funds once and for all in 1974, given the fact that there were no much scientific findings. Further, it was found that the main researcher under which Genie was left to be “studied”, a renowned linguist Susan Curtiss, had conducted her research in a disorganized and anecdotal manner which was not quite useful in addition to the required scientific findings.

In 1975, Genie went back to live with her birth mother. When her mother found the work too tough, Genie was placed in a series of foster homes, where she was frequently subjected to additional cruelty and neglect. Genie’s circumstances worsened. She returned to Children’s Hospital after being in foster care for a long time. Unfortunately, the progress made during her first stay was greatly hampered by the subsequent treatment she got in foster care. Genie was terrified to speak and had relapsed into silence.

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https://www.verywellmind.com/genie-the-story-of-the-wild-child-2795241

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Genie – The Feral Child

What do you think of when you hear the words, “feral child?” You might have come across a feral cat or feral dog at a shelter, but feral children are not anywhere near as common. They seem to only exist in stories, like The Jungle Book or Tarzan. You might be surprised to learn that not all feral children are raised in the wilderness by wolves or gorillas. Some modern cases of feral children, like the case of Genie, are still alive today. Genie’s story is one of mental health, forbidden experiments, and the failures of society to protect people who have been left behind.

Who Is Genie?

Genie was a child who was born healthy, but raised in an environment with severe neglect and abuse. Due to this, she was unable to learn how to speak and function in society. Genie is used as an example of feral child syndrome and has been studied in developmental psychology. 

Feral children may grow up in the wilderness, completely abandoned by their parents. They may also grow up in a home, like Genie did. Genie, born Susan Wiley, was born in April 1957 to parents Clark and Dorothy Wiley. Dorothy was 90% blind, and had migrated to California from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. Clark was the son of a brother owner, who had been bounced around from foster home to foster home his whole life.

Genie was born at a healthy weight and height. She had a five-year-old brother with allegedly no developmental disabilities. In her infancy, Genie appeared fairly normal. She was, however, diagnosed with a congenital hip dislocation. The issue resulted in Genie wearing a splint through her infancy and delays in walking. At the time, Genie’s father Clark believed that his child had mental disabilities, along with physical. Many psychologists believe that Clark felt that he had to protect Genie, partially explaining his horrific behavior later in Genie’s life. Others believe that Clark was delusional, spurred by intense feelings of rage and grief after the death of Clark’s mother. At 20 months old, Genie’s family moved into Clark’s mother’s home, and Genie was shielded from the world for the next 12 years.

(Her childhood home is featured on this Reddit post .)

Severe Neglect and Abuse

This isolation is what made Genie a “feral child.” During the day, Clark strapped Genie to a child’s toilet with a diaper and DIY straightjacket. At night, Genie was confined to a crib, bound by wires.

She failed to develop language, partially because she never attended formal education, but also partially because her father would growl and bark at Genie like a dog. If Genie (or any member of the family) were to make any sort of noise or fuss, Clark would beat them with a plank. Although Genie’s mother claimed that Clark would feed Genie three square meals a day, these meals consisted of baby food. Clark would spoon-feed Genie, sometimes rubbing her face in the food.

Clark ran his household like a cult, and was extremely paranoid. He continued to threaten his wife, and only allowed his son to leave the house to go to school. When his son came back to the house, he had to identify himself in various ways to be let in. Clark would sit in the living room with his shotgun on his lap, sometimes falling asleep in front of the front door with said shotgun.

When Genie’s brother was 18, he ran away from home. That year, Genie and her mother were allowed out of the house after a huge fight with Clark. Genie’s mother brought Genie into what she thought was a state office to apply for disabilities. Her near-blindness led her to the state social services office. Upon seeing Genie, who was severely malnourished and had a strange “bunny walk” (with her hands poised at her chest like a bunny,) employees thought that the girl was 6 or 7 - she was almost 14. Genie was taken into protective care and her parents were arrested.

Clark committed suicide before he could go to court and face his crimes. All charges against Genie’s mother were dropped after she cited that the abuse she suffered from Clark prevented her from being able to care for Genie. Her case made national headlines, and because she was a minor, her true name was never used in stories. Instead of Susan Wiley, the “Wild Child” became known as “Genie.”

Studies on Language Acquisition

One distinct feature of feral children is that they never develop a first language. Genie could only understand a handful of words when she first examined at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Her ability to speak was limited further. Eerily, the two phrases linguists recorded her saying were “no more” and “stop it.”

Genie became infamous not only because her case was one of the most horrific incidents of child abuse in modern history, but also because her situation was known to psychologists as a “forbidden experiment.” At the time that Genie was rescued from her parents, Noam Chomsky’s theory of innateness was popular in the linguistic psychology world. Chomsky believed that humans have an innate ability to acquire language. His theory of universal grammar appeared to support the idea that language is wired into our brains. Think nature, rather than nurture.

This theory can be supported to a degree, but experts could not prove universal grammar or innate language acquisition through experiments with children. Isolating one child from language for the sake of a psychological study, much less enough children to prove the theory, is highly unethical. Genie provided researchers a unique chance to look at the way that language is developed or stunted due to nature or nurture. From the moment that Genie was rescued, she was examined. An entire team of researchers visited her for years, sometimes on a daily basis. They monitored her brain activity, observing that she had an estimated mental age of a 5- to 8-year-old. Her linguistic development was that of a 1- or 2-year-old. She exhibited bizarre behaviors, some that could be explained by her childhood and others that appeared to have no explanation. Many questions, including that of whether she really had a mental disability like her father suggested, have gone unanswered.

This is partially due to the custody battles and ethical questions that went on throughout Genie’s later teenage years. The first “foster home” that Genie had was the home of her special education teacher, Jean Butler. Butler butted heads with the scientists who were observing Genie throughout her teenage years. Some questioned Butler’s intentions, even recalling Butler saying that Genie could make Butler “the next Anne Sullivan.” (Anne Sullivan is known for being Helen Keller’s teacher. Their story has been told in countless movies.)

David Rigler, the chief psychologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, took custody of her next. He observed her behavior and worked with her for many years. During this time, she was able to learn some sign language and communicate through drawings. But her foster care with David Rigler ended at the age of 18. Throughout her teens, Genie had been in contact with her mother. At 18, she moved back in with her mother. Genie’s father was dead, but living with her mother was not the happy ending that anyone would have hoped for. Within a year, Genie’s mother sued many of the researchers involved in Genie’s case. She claimed that the researchers had crossed boundaries, breached confidentiality agreements, and overworked Genie. The next year, her mother forbade any of the research team from interacting with or studying Genie. But she also relinquished care of Genie, leaving her to be bounced around from foster home to foster home. When the researchers did try to reach out or find Genie, they were often disappointed to hear that she was not making the progress that she had been making as a teenager.

Where Is Genie Now?

Genie is only in her 60s now. She remains a ward of the state, and has not been in direct contact with the researchers that studied and took care of her after her rescue. Investigators who looked into her well-being reported back that she was happy, and although she didn’t use much verbal communication, she did take to sign language.

Still Many Questions to Be Answered

When Genie was rescued in the 1970s, researchers jumped at the opportunity to work with a “forbidden experiment.” Their passion for the research, and their eventual attachment and care for Genie, ultimately ended in unfinished work and estrangement from Genie. To this day, one researcher has repeatedly tried to make contact with her. Many researchers were drawn to Genie’s charisma, despite her being nonverbal and developmentally delayed due to severe childhood trauma.

What does Genie’s case say about innate language acquisition? It depends on who you ask. Some say that her case is evidence for innate language acquisitions . Others argue that the case supports the critical-period hypothesis, which argues that we can “tap into” our innate ability to acquire language, but only during a specific period of development.

Nature vs. Nurture

What about nature vs. nurture ? The jury is out on this one, too. Although the cruelty and trauma endured by Genie undoubtedly slowed her development, other research argues that her developmental disabilities were also due to her genetic makeup. If she did have mental and developmental disabilities, like her father believed as an infant, the impact of his cruelty would be a less prominent factor in her delays.

Genie is far from the only case of recent feral children, but is one of the most infamous. Her case also shows that issues of ethics and great debates in psychology are more blurry than they appear on paper.

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Genie Wiley, the Feral Child

Tom Need / Getty Images

• Archaeology

• Ph.D., Psychology, Fielding Graduate University
• M.A., Psychology, Fielding Graduate University
• B.A., Film Studies, Cornell University

Genie Wiley (born April 1957) was a severely neglected and abused child who was discovered and taken into custody by authorities when she was 13 years old. While her circumstances until that point were undeniably tragic, they also presented an opportunity for psychologists, linguists, and other researchers to study psychosocial, emotional, and cognitive development in an individual who had suffered from severe social isolation and deprivation. In particular, the discovery of Genie presented an opportunity to study whether a child who was past the so-called "critical period" for language acquisition could learn to speak a first language.

Key Takeaways: Genie Wiley

• Genie Wiley was abused and neglected for over a decade until she was discovered in 1970 when she was 13 years old.
• Known as the feral child, Genie became an important subject of research. Of special interest was whether she could acquire language, as she was no longer within the "critical period" for language development.
• Genie's case presented an ethical dilemma between prioritizing her care or prioritizing research on her development.

Early Life and Discovery

The case of Genie Wiley came to light on November 4, 1970. Genie was discovered by a social worker when her mother, who was partially blind, went to apply for social services. Genie had been isolated in a small room starting at the age of 20 months until her discovery at 13 years and 9 months old. She spent most of her time naked and tied to a potty chair where she was given limited use of her hands and feet. She was completely cut off from any kind of stimulation. The windows were curtained and the door was kept closed. She was only fed cereal and baby food and wasn’t spoken to. Although she lived with her father, mother, and brother, her father and brother would only bark or growl at her and her mother was only permitted very brief interactions. Genie’s father was intolerant of noise, so no TV or radio was played in the house. If Genie made any noise, she was physically beaten.

Upon her discovery, Genie was admitted to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles for evaluation. She was severely underdeveloped. She was thin and looked like a child of six or seven. She couldn’t stand up straight and could only walk with a hunched “bunny walk.” She was unable to chew, had trouble swallowing, and spat frequently. She was incontinent and mute. At first, the only words she recognized were her name and “sorry.” Testing shortly after she came to the hospital revealed that her social maturity and mental abilities were at the level of a one-year-old.

Genie didn’t walk at a normal age, so her father came to believe she was developmentally disabled. However, the researchers brought onto the case after Genie’s discovery found little evidence of this in her early history. It appeared she never suffered from brain damage, mental disability, or autism. Therefore, the impairments and developmental delays Genie exhibited upon being assessed were the result of the isolation and deprivation she was subjected to.

Both of Genie’s parents were charged with abuse , but Genie’s 70-year-old father committed suicide the day he was supposed to appear in court. The note he left said, “The world will never understand.”

The Rush to Research

Genie’s case drew media attention as well as great interest from the research community, which considered it a rare opportunity to discover whether it was possible for Genie to mentally develop after such severe deprivation. Researchers would never deliberately conduct deprivation experiments with people on moral grounds. So, Genie’s sad case was ripe for study. Genie was not the child’s real name, but the name given to the case in order to protect her privacy.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided funding for research and a team was assembled whose goal was to rehabilitate and study Genie’s progress. Genie soon learned basic social skills like using the toilet and dressing herself. She was fascinated by her environment and would study it intensely. She especially enjoyed visiting places outside the hospital. She was talented at nonverbal communication, but her ability to use language did not proceed rapidly. As a result, psychologist David Rigler decided to focus the research on Genie's language acquisition.

Language Acquisition

The discovery of Genie coincided with a debate about language acquisition in the scholarly community. Linguist Noam Chomsky, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claimed humans are born with an innate ability to develop language. He believed language isn’t acquired because we learn it, but because it’s part of our genetic inheritance. Then, neuropsychologist Eric Lenneberg added a caveat to Chomsky’s ideas. Lenneberg agreed that humans are born with the ability to develop language, but suggested that if a language wasn’t acquired by puberty, it might never be. Lenneberg’s proposal was called the “critical period hypothesis.” Yet, there was no ability to test the theory until Genie came along.

Within the first seven months after her discovery, Genie learned many new words . She had even begun to speak but only in single words. By July 1971, Genie could put two words together and by November she could put together three. Despite signs of progress, Genie never learned to ask questions and she didn’t seem to understand the rules of grammar.

After beginning to speak in two-word phrases, normal children experience a language “explosion” a few weeks later in which speech develops quickly. Genie never experienced such an explosion. Her speech seemed to plateau at creating two to three-word strings, despite four years of additional work and research with her.

Genie demonstrated that it’s possible for an individual to learn some language after the critical period. Yet, her inability to learn grammar, which Chomsky believed was key to human language, indicated that passing the critical period was detrimental to the complete acquisition of a first language.

Arguments and Ethical Considerations

During Genie’s treatment, there were disputes amongst the members of her team. In the early days after her discovery, she entered her first foster home with her teacher Jean Butler. Butler claimed she felt that Genie was being subject to too many tests and attempted to make changes to Genie’s treatment. She wouldn’t allow the linguist Susan Curtiss or the psychologist James Kent into her house to see Genie. Other team members claimed Butler thought she could become famous through her work with Genie and didn’t want anyone else to get credit. Butler’s application to become Genie’s permanent foster parent was rejected about a month later.

Psychologist David Rigler and his wife Marilyn stepped in and fostered Genie for the next four years. They continued to work with her and let others continue their research throughout that time. However, Genie left the Riglers’ home after NIMH stopped funding the project due to problems with data collection.

Throughout the four years in which Genie was being tested and studied, there was debate about whether she could be a research subject and a rehabilitation patient at the same time. The ethics of the situation were murky.

In 1975, Genie’s mother regained custody after being acquitted of all charges of child abuse. Genie’s care quickly became too much for her to handle, though, so Genie began to bounce from foster home to foster home. She was once again subjected to abuse in those homes. Soon, she stopped talking and refused to open her mouth entirely.

Meanwhile, Genie’s mother filed a lawsuit against Genie’s team and the Children's Hospital alleging that the researchers prioritized testing Genie over her welfare. She contended that they pushed Genie to the point of exhaustion. The case was eventually settled but the debate continues. Some believe the researchers exploited Genie, and therefore, didn’t help her as much as they could have. However, the researchers say they treated Genie to the best of their ability.

Historian and psychologist Harlan Lane points out that “there's an ethical dilemma in this kind of research. If you want to do rigorous science, then Genie's interests are going to come second some of the time. If you only care about helping Genie, then you wouldn't do a lot of the scientific research. So, what are you going to do?”

Genie Today

Genie is believed to be alive and living in an adult foster home as a ward of the state of California. While the linguist who worked with Genie, Susan Curtiss, has attempted to get in touch with her, she’s been repeatedly rebuffed. However, she said that when she calls the authorities, they inform her that Genie is well. Yet, when journalist Russ Rymer saw Genie at her 27 th birthday party, he painted a much bleaker picture. Similarly, psychiatrist Jay Shurley, who was at Genie’s 27 th and 29 th birthdays, claimed Genie was depressed and had withdrawn into herself.

• Cherry, Kendra. “Overview of Feral Child Genie Wiley.” Verywell Mind , 9 March 2019. https://www.verywellmind.com/genie-the-story-of-the-wild-child-2795241
• Pines, Maya. "The Civilizing of Genie." Teaching English Through the Disciplines: Psychology , edited by Loretta F. Kasper. Whittier Publications, 1997. http://kccesl.tripod.com/genie.html
• NOVA. "Secret of the Wild Child." PBS , 4 March, 1997. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html
• Fromkin, Victoria, Krashen, Stephen, Curtiss, Susan, Rigler, David, and Rigler, Marilyn. "The Development of Language in Genie: A Case of Language Acquisition Beyond the 'Critical Period'" Brain and Language , vol. 1, no. 1, 1974, pp. 81-107. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0093-934X(74)90027-3
• Carroll, Rory. "Starved, Tortured, Forgotten: Genie, the Feral Child Who Left a Mark on Researchers." The Guardian , 14 July 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/14/genie-feral-child-los-angeles-researchers
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Wild Child Speechless After Tortured Life

Straitjacketed for 13 years, adult "Genie" still lives a shuttered life.

May 7, 2008 — -- They called her "Genie" -- a pseudonym to protect her privacy -- because since infancy her life had been bottled up in the horrors she experienced in one dimly lit room.

Alternately tethered to a potty seat or tied up in a sleeping bag in a mesh-sided crib under a metal cover, Genie had contact only with her abusive father during nearly 12 years of confinement.

After her emergence from that torture in 1970, the waiflike child became a cause celebre among researchers and do-gooders who wanted both to learn from her and save her. For doctors, her case is like that of the three children recently released from years of isolation in an Austrian cellar.

The world read with revulsion last week the details of Austrian Josef Fritzl's 24-year imprisonment and abuse of his daughter and three of the seven children he fathered with her.

The twists of Genie's life since her release -- a succession of breakthroughs, setbacks and manipulations at the hands of caregivers, researchers and foster homes -- offer some perspective on the path ahead for the severely stunted Austrian children, who communicate mostly in simple grunts and gestures, much like Genie did after her rescue.

During the four years she was under the intense care of specialists at Children's Hospital at UCLA, Genie progressed, but only briefly.

Though she eventually learned to speak, the team of credentialed doctors with millions of dollars in federal funding could not rescue Genie from a fate of abuse and exploitation.

Doctors argued over her care and affections. Finger-pointing, hateful allegations and a lawsuit followed. Even storytellers and filmmakers took sides, and ultimately, Genie regressed.

Today Genie is 51. She is again in psychological confinement as a ward of the state -- her sixth foster home. And again, she is speechless.

"We fumbled the ball," James Kent, a consulting psychologist for the Victims of Crime program in California and Genie's psychologist told ABCNEWS.com. "We had the opportunity to allow more of her potential. It was as much out of ignorance as disagreements."

Genie's story began 20 months after her birth in 1957. Believing she was mentally retarded, Clark Wiley locked his daughter away, separating her from her nearly blind mother and 6-year-old brother, under the guise of protecting her.

Wiley spoon-fed her only Pablum and milk, and spoke to her mostly in barks and growls. He beat her with a wooden paddle every time she uttered a sound.

In 1970, Genie's 50-year-old mother, Irene, escaped with Genie, then 13. Her brother, John, then 18, was left behind, and told ABCNEWS.com that he, too, had been abused at the hands of his father -- a man who was raised by a "bar girl" in a bordello and didn't "pamper or baby."

Mother and child turned up at welfare offices in Los Angeles, seeking financial support. Caseworkers noticed the odd child, who spat and clawed and moved in a jerky "bunny walk," with her hands held out front.

The Wileys were charged with child abuse, but the day they were to appear in court, Clark Wiley shot himself to death after reportedly leaving a note that read: "The world will never understand."

John Wiley, now 56 and a housepainter in Ohio, admitted he had often been in the room where Genie was tortured. "Whether I liked what I seen or not, it wasn't like I was in a position to tell my mom. I was a captive audience and could do nothing about it."

When she entered Children's Hospital at the age of 14 -- still in diapers -- Genie was the size of an 8-year-old with the language and motor skills of a baby, speaking only a few words -- including "stopit" and "nomore."

Her discovery coincided with the premiere of Francois Truffaut's film "The Wild Child," about an 18th century French "wolf boy" and the doctor who adopted and tried to civilize him.

Riveted during a private showing of the film, the staff assigned to Genie's care applied for a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study Genie's rehabilitation.

The hottest academic issue of the day was the 1967 Lenneberg theory that maintained that children cannot learn language after puberty. In some ways, Genie disproved this, but she had passed the "critical period" and was never able to master grammatical structure.

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The Person Who Was Locked in a Room for 25 Years

No sunlight nor social interaction for 25 long years.

by Andrei Tapalaga | Sep 7, 2022 | Culture

At the peak of her teenage years, she was attracting many suitors from the high society as she was receiving many letters. This reached a point where it made Louise Monnier (her mother) very angry as she was with the idea of her daughter being too precious for marriage. Since that day Blanche just vanished from Paris, or did she?

Isolated from everything and everyone

Louise Monnier had locked her daughter in her room for good, boarding the windows so that no sunlight, and most importantly no one can see her. This left Blanche isolated from the whole world apart from her parents, brother, and servants around the house. She was not allowed to get off the bed in her room nor was she allowed any sort of basic hygiene. For half of her life, Blanche lay in bed where she ate, urinated, and defecated.

Blanche’s parents told her friends and relatives that she was sent to some sort of Boarding school in the United Kingdom and due to her schedule she was not able to come back home very soon. At the point where she was supposed to finish her study, the lies advanced to Blanche making a life of her own in Scotland, which separated her from any relatives in France.

The Horrific Discovery

After 25 years, on the 23rd of March, 1901, the attorney general from Paris received an anonymous letter stating that a well know family from Paris is hiding something behind closed doors. Even to this day, the author of the letter is still unknown, however, historians do believe it was one of the servants.

Monsieur Attorney General: I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally serious occurrence. I speak of a spinster who is locked up in Madame Monnier’s house, half-starved and living on a putrid litter for the past twenty-five years — in a word, in her own filth.

The Monnier family was seen as highly regarded in the Parisian community which made the authorities reluctant about the claims made in the letter, but nevertheless, the authorities went to investigate the Monnier estate. At first glance, the property looked “clean”, until the investigators noticed a rotting smell coming from one of the rooms. =

Upon reaching the room from which the rotting smell was coming, the investigators noticed that the room has been locked for years as the padlock seemed rusty. The authorities smashed the padlocked and barged into a room full of horror. The authorities had written a grim report based on their findings, here is a paragraph from those reports, summarising their findings:

The woman looked extremely malnourished whilst lying completely naked on a rotten mattress. All around her formed a crust made from excrement and fragments of food… We also saw bugs running across Mademoiselle Monnier’s bed. The air inside the room was so unbearable, it was impossible for us to proceed with our investigation any longer.

The room was so dark the investigators broke the barricades from the window, that was the first time that Blanche has seen the sunlight after 25 years. She told the investigators that she was chained for 25 long years and offered the bare minimum to survive. Her health condition was so bad that she weighed only 25 kilograms and she did not have the power to stand up on her own feet.

Once she was transported to the hospital she mentioned how wonderful it is to smell the fresh mesmerizing air. The doctors have mentioned how incredible it is that she managed to survive in such an atrocious condition with no movement for so many years.

Justice served

A big case took part where all of the Monnier family was interrogated. Louise Monnier was arrested but died 15 days after her imprisonment from what the authorities think was a heart condition, but many assume she drugged herself. Marcel Monnier, Blanche’s brother tried to defend himself by saying his mother was in charge of this crime. Despite the evidence that was provided, Marcel was sentenced to 15 years for playing a role in Blanche’s mistreatment and imprisonment.

Even if now Blanche was free, life wasn’t easy for her. Because of the 25 years of imprisonment, Blanche developed major mental issues and health problems such as coprophilia, exhibitionism, and schizophrenia. Due to all these problems, she was commissioned to a psychiatric hospital where she died in 1913.

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A Little Girl Was Locked In A Basement By Her Own Parents For More Than A Decade

On November 4, 1970, Los Angeles child services discovered an unprecedented case of child neglect. At 13, Susan Wiley had the demeanor and appearance of a 6 or 7-year-old girl. When the authorities began investigating parents Irene and Clark Wiley, they found that two of the four Wiley children passed within months of their births. A third child lived with Clark’s mother until her unexpected passing, and the fourth was Susan, also known as “Genie.” Genie, despite her age, was unable to speak, feed herself, or use the toilet. At less than 60 pounds, the girl walked with an unusual gait, the result of years of confinement. 

After child services rescued Genie, child psychologists devoted themselves to the girl’s recovery. Known as a “ feral child ,” Genie’s isolation from society in her formative years caused her to have stunted cognitive and behavioral abilities. She never developed the ability to communicate with language, although her behavioral and social skills improved with years of positive reinforcement and therapy. Since Genie, other cases of feral children have come to light, such as Danielle Crockett , known as “The Girl in the Window,” and Ukraine’s Oxana Malaya .

The courts arrested Genie’s parents, but Clark took his own life before the trial. The judge subsequently dismissed the charges against Irene. In 1994, Nova - a PBS series - released an Emmy-winning documentary about Genie called Secret of the Wild Child . As of 2016, Genie lives in a Los Angeles facility as a permanent ward of the state.   

Her Family Locked Her In A Room And Ignored Her

• via YouTube

Susan Wiley, whom psychologists later referred to as “Genie,” was born April 18, 1957. Doctors determined the infant was healthy except for a hip disorder, which prevented her from walking correctly. Researchers later concluded, based on early medical records, that Genie exhibited no signs of impaired mental development from birth.

When child services discovered Genie’s abusive home life, psychologists found the 13-year-old unable to talk or chew. Her stunted development resulted from a case of severe neglect and isolation. Her father, Clark Wiley, who reportedly was an abusive man with an insensitivity to sound, forcefully deprived Genie of human contact.

He confined his daughter to a room and frequently bound her to a potty chair for extended periods of time. Clark also forbade Genie’s mother and older brother from interacting with the child. Genie lived imprisoned from the outside world for over a decade.  

She Was Physically And Emotionally Abused

Genie’s father punished her for making any noise or for acting out, especially around feeding time. Clark only allowed Genie’s mother, Irene, a few minutes to feed the girl. When Genie had trouble chewing and swallowing, Clark would shove the food in her face . If Genie attempted to make any sounds, Clark beat her with a wooden board until she was again silent. He used the same board on Genie’s brother, John. 

When authorities investigated the Wiley home for child abuse, they found Genie living in extreme neglect. The girl, dirty and unbathed, was wearing soiled diapers. She had never learned how to use a toilet . Her father used cloth - fashioned like a straight-jacket - to bind Genie to a potty chair. He also confined her to a crib covered in wire, bound so that she could not attempt to move.   

Half Of Her Siblings Passed When They Were Infants

• Kelsey Orleck

Clark and Irene Wiley had four children together, although Clark reportedly did not want to be a father. He physically abused Irene and did not allow her to leave the house. On some occasions, her injuries were so severe she had to go to the hospital.

In 1948, she had their first child, Dorothy Irene. Clark began to show signs of aversion to sound. When the baby cried, he found it disturbing, so he put the baby in the garage, where she caught pneumonia and died shortly after . 

Their second child, Robert Clark, was born in 1949 and died after two days, possibly from neglect . In 1952, they had one more son, named John. At 4-years-old, John went to live with Clark’s mother, Pearl. Two years later, he witnessed a truck hit and kill her. After the death of his mother, Clark moved his family into Pearl’s home and became both reclusive and more abusive.   

She Wasn't Rescued Until She Was 13

Irene Wiley was legally blind, the result of a childhood accident. At that time, Clark forbade his wife from leaving the house, and John had already run away. In 1970, after a violent argument, Irene took her daughter and left, unbeknownst to Clark. She decided to try to get aid for her physical disability but went to the social services office by mistake. Instantly, a social service worker noticed Genie, who appeared neglected .

At 13, Genie looked like she was about 6 or 7 years old. The child weighed less than 60 pounds and looked gaunt. Social services contacted the police, who investigated the Wiley home.  

Irene later told authorities she had attempted to interact with the child when she could, but suffered such severe beatings from Clark that she was not able. She maintained she also attempted to give Genie extra food, but the girl was often unable to eat. The courts later dropped the child abuse charges against Genie’s mother.   

She Wasn't Able To Chew, Use A Toilet, Or Even Straighten Her Limbs

In 1970, by the time she finally got to the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, Genie was malnourished, weak, and filthy. During her evaluation , doctors reported Genie walked awkwardly, spat all the time, and couldn't straighten her limbs all the way. 

Her muscles were incredibly underdeveloped, and she could not feed herself. When she was fed, they discovered she could not chew and had trouble swallowing. She was entirely incontinent, as her parents never taught her how to use a toilet. 

Step two of this assessment was to check her cognitive abilities. Testing her was difficult because she was mute and did not appear to fully understand language - although she did seem to respond to her own name. Her assessment revealed she had the cognitive level of a 1-year-old. Doctors also concluded that Genie was not autistic , nor did she suffer from any kind of mental or physical disease.   

Psychologists Tried To Help Her

Genie's case attracted a lot of attention from the scientific community. There had been few cases of truly feral children to study, and Genie presented a unique opportunity. Researchers and psychologists set out to see if they could teach Genie language, motor, and behavioral skills. 

The psychologists allowed her to explore the outdoors under supervision. They also began teaching her how to walk. Initially, she had behavioral problems, like masturbating in public and urinating and defecating in inappropriate places. 

Genie was able to learn how to dress, potty train, and recognize shapes and objects by name. Over time, she began stringing words together to express thoughts. When asked what happened to her in her previous home, Genie spoke in a halting manner :

Father hit arm. Big wood. Genie cry. [...] Not spit. Father. Hit face - spit. [...] Father hit big stick. Father angry. Father hit Genie big stick. Father take piece wood hit. Cry. Father make me cry.  

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How Would the Ordeal in Room Affect a Kid in Real Life?

Throughout her seven-year imprisonment at the hands of a sadistic stranger, Joy, the protagonist of  Room  — which was recently  nominated  for four Oscars, and which will be spoiled in the sentences that follow — finds meaning and salvation in caring for her son, Jack. After they finally escape, Joy is wracked not only by the psychological scars of her confinement, but by guilt over whether her 5-year-old son could be permanently traumatized by having spent the first half-decade of his life in near-total isolation. In one of the most harrowing scenes in the film, a TV journalist asks Joy an immensely painful question: Did Joy do the right thing in keeping her son? Might Jack have incurred less psychological damage if his mother had asked their captor to give the boy to a foster home instead? The reporter’s blunt questions send Joy over the edge: Shortly after the interview, she swallows a near-fatal dose of sleeping   pills.

As it turns out, her worries are unwarranted: After an initial period of shyness, Jack soon begins to adapt. Within months of their rescue, he is proving his resilience and developing close relationships — first with a dog, then with his grandmother, and eventually with another boy his own age. As the credits roll, his future looks practically   rosy.

But how would a real-life boy in Jack’s situation — one who grew up believing that the world consisted of 100 squalid square feet — actually fare? The first few years of life are critical for cognitive, social, and linguistic development, after all, and in spite of his mother’s best efforts, Jack’s environment was seriously limited until age 5. How would a child develop if he grew up interacting with only one other person? Would his speech and behavior be irrevocably impaired? Would he even be able to integrate into normal society? These questions are impossible to answer without the kind of empirical research that ethics preclude (Imagine making that pitch to an ethics board: The treatment group, its members determined by a coin flip, gets locked in a room for their early years, while the control group gets a normal childhood). But psychologists are willing to speculate, and a few real-life cases offer further   clues.                                                                                 

He would probably struggle to communicate with other kids, at least at first. “If Jack is just hearing his mother speak, he may not understand words, registers, or speech acts that would be unlikely in an interaction between a parent and child,” said Jesse Snedeker, a professor at Harvard’s Lab for Developmental Studies. Peers play a crucial role in children’s language acquisition.  Research  suggests that later-born children — who spend more time interacting with their siblings than do firstborn or only children — have an edge in developing conversational skills (though firstborns, who have more opportunities to engage with adults, end up with bigger vocabularies at the same   age).

Snedeker speculates that Jack’s biggest struggle would be with pragmatics , “the place where language intersects with social communication.” He would have had no opportunities to navigate the complex social dynamics and hierarchies that most kids participate in and observe; he would have learned about humanity from a single source. “He might initially be frightened of others and be uncommunicative,” said Snedeker. “He might be overly familiar once he gets to know someone even a little. He might have trouble being a part of conversations with multiple   participants.” 

Jack might also be affected by witnessing his mother’s suffering. Though Joy does her best to shield her son from the violence she endures — and succeeds in preventing Old Nick from touching or seeing their son — Jack does sometimes hear him sexually or verbally abusing his mother. Witnessing the abuse of a parent can be almost as damaging as being a direct victim. A 2003  meta-analysis  found that children who were both victims and witnesses of domestic violence fared just slightly worse than those who were only witnesses. “During a critical period of development, Jack was exposed to high levels of stress, which would increase the risk that he would develop symptoms of anxiety or depression or PTSD ,” said Charles Nelson, professor of pediatrics at   Harvard.

It’s clear, then, that Jack would face an uphill battle. But a handful of real-life cases suggest that kids who grow up in conditions of even more severe isolation and sensory deprivation can make a full recovery. The  Fritzl case , which loosely inspired  Room author Emma Donoghue, might provide the most relevant model for how a boy like Jack would react to the outside world. Imprisoned in her father’s basement for 24 years, Elisabeth Fritzl raised three children in captivity, including Felix — who, like Jack, was 5 years old when the family was rescued. Upon their release, Felix and his teenage siblings would communicate mostly “with noises that are a mixture of growling and cooing,” a local police chief  said  at the time. The siblings were both awed and frightened by the outside world. Felix was  reportedly  thrilled to ride in a police car and transfixed by the sight of the moon; one of his favorite pastimes was sitting on the hospital lawn,  playing with grass . The family has largely stayed out of the press, but five years after their escape, it was  reported  that Felix was attending a regular school and leading a normal   life.

Another positive sign for Jack is the recovery of a child known as Isabelle, born in Ohio in 1932. The family did not approve of the fact that Isabelle’s mother was unmarried, and locked her and her daughter in a dark room of the family home for the first six years of Isabelle’s life. Isabelle’s mother was deaf and mute, and the two communicated mostly through gestures. When the girl was discovered, she was incapable of speech and terrified of strangers; in a  1947 paper , sociologist Kingsley Davis likened her behavior to “that of a wild animal.” The doctors assigned to her case had little hope for her future: “The general impression was that she was wholly uneducable,” wrote one speech specialist who worked with her. But they went ahead with an intensive treatment plan anyway, and within a year and a half, Isabelle was described as “a very bright, cheerful, energetic little girl.” By age 14, she was fitting in with her peers at a local public school. “At least for some individuals, extreme isolation up to age 6 does not permanently impair socialization,” Davis   concludes.

Perhaps a key thing to keep in mind here is that even in the most trying of circumstances, good, attentive parenting can go a long way. The psychologists I spoke to emphasized that — in spite of what the TV reporter implied — Jack’s relationship with his mother might well insulate him from serious psychological damage. Throughout their captivity, Joy does her best to stimulate her son’s mind and create some semblance of a normal environment. She tells him stories, sings him lullabies, and adapts calisthenic exercises for their ten-by-ten-foot space. “The bottom line is that the right kind of maternal care might well buffer Jack against most of the deleterious effects of his isolation,” said Frank Keil, director of the Cognition and Development lab at   Yale.

As for what steps a parent could take after the end of their ordeal to help ensure their child’s healthy development, psychologist Rebecca Bailey, who has helped kidnapping victims like Jaycee Dugard reintegrate into society, would advise the family to work with a team of therapists and gradually introduce Jack to the world. “You can’t make the victims feel like there’s something wrong with them,” she said. “You can’t make them feel like they’re sick.” Befriending his step-grandfather’s dog would be a healthy step for Jack: Bailey says animals can be “a fabulous bridge” between seclusion and the complexities of the human world. ( Horse therapy  was a big part of Dugard’s   recovery.)

Ultimately, “If his mom received treatment and Jack was then raised in a normal world, the odds of his recovering from this would be good,” said Nelson. “Although whether he would make a full recovery is unclear.” It’s a grisly thought experiment — and hopefully, we’ll never have enough data to know for   sure. 

• child development
• science of us

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The Girl in the Locked Room

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Betty Hartman

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

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Ethan Smith

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Jane Fitgzgerald

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Michael Woodward

Continue reading, get digital and print.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's.

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