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The Story of Genie Wiley

What her tragic story revealed about language and development

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."

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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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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Genie Wiley, the Feral Child

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• Ph.D., Psychology, Fielding Graduate University
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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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History Uncovered Episode 36: Genie Wiley, The ‘Feral Child’

In one of the most infamous cases of child abuse in modern American history, Genie Wiley was isolated and terrorized for 13 years before she was finally rescued from her father's horrifying clutches.

In October 1970, a woman walked into a Los Angeles welfare office with a child at her side. The woman had walked into the wrong room — she was looking for services for the blind — but the girl who was with her caught the welfare workers’ attention. They didn’t know it yet, but one of the worst victims of child abuse in U.S. history had just walked through their door.

The girl, who appeared to be seven or eight years old, was actually 13, but clearly malnourished and undersized. She had a fluttering, unfocused gaze, she couldn’t speak, and she walked only in a strange bunny hop.

Soon, authorities discovered that this girl — since given the alias Genie Wiley in case files — had spent most of her life up until that point bound and locked away in isolation, either chained to a training toilet or confined in a crib-like cage. From the time she was an infant, her father had subjected her to this severe abuse; meanwhile, her mother simply ignored it.

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

Believing Genie to be mentally disabled, her father locked her away and forbade anyone from engaging with her in any way. He tied her naked to a potty chair or threw her into a crib covered with chicken wire. Genie’s father deprived her of stimulation or affection, beat her with a wooden board, and fed her only milk or Pablum, a processed cereal for babies.

After welfare workers rescued her, Genie became a case study for researchers at UCLA’s Children’s Hospital. They studied how the abuse had impacted her, attempted to see if she had the capability to learn and speak, and began to care deeply for this fragile teenager.

Eventually, Genie the “feral child” started to get better. She even started communicating in halting, choppy phrases about her abusive father, saying:

“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.”

But these years in the hands of researchers and doctors offered only a reprieve — not an escape — from the nightmare that was Genie’s life. Eventually, conflict would tear her care team apart and Genie would be sent to foster care, then to adult home care. Today, she’s a ward of the state of California, her whereabouts and condition unknown to the public.

Discover the full story behind the tragic life of Genie Wiley .

Learn more about the music used in our podcast. History Uncovered is part of the Airwave Media network . Learn more about your ad choices by visiting megaphone.fm/adchoices .

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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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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 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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The Heartbreaking Story Of Genie, A Feral Child Who Will Never Learn To Communicate

Genie lived 10 years of her life chained to this potty chair. after intensive therapy, she finally told researchers that she even slept there. but her parents never bothered to potty train her. when a social worker found her in 1970 at age 13, she still wore diapers..

Susan Curtiss, a linguistics graduate student from UCLA, gave her the name "Genie." "When we think about a genie, we think about a creature who emerges out of a bottle, or whatever, into society past childhood," she said.

Genie had a strange "bunny-walk" and constantly spit and clawed at herself. She didn't speak or make any noise either. Genie's parents most likely beat her for making noise, Curtiss said.

Genie was the most disturbing case Jay Shurley, an expert in solitary confinement, had ever seen. "Solitary confinement is, diabolically, the most severe punishment, and in my experience, really quite dramatic symptoms develop in as little as fifteen minutes to an hour, and certainly inside of two or three days. And try to expand this to ten years boggles one's mind," he said.

Genie's mother, a nearly blind elderly woman, claimed to be a victim herself. She blamed Genie's father for much of the abuse. When Genie was a baby, her father decided she was "retarded" and kept her in isolation.

Shortly after the authorities discovered Genie, her father shot himself. He reportedly wrote "The world will never understand" in a suicide note.

When researchers ran diagnostic tests on Genie, sleep studies showed abnormal brain waves. Some researchers, like Shirley, thought this suggested she experienced brain damage at birth. Others, however, like Curtiss, refused to accept that theory. Throughout Genie's testing though, she showed improvement. Mentally challenged children and adults don't.

James Kent, another researcher on Genie's team, thought her condition would improve if she could form meaningful relationships with people. He began feeding her breakfast in the morning and tucking her in at night with a story and a kiss. But "doctors aren't supposed to love their patients," he said.

Initially, Genie didn't respond to his efforts. Then, one day, Genie frowned and pulled Kent's arm when he tried to leave. She didn't want him to go.

Genie's first, real breakthrough came during a session with language teacher Jean Butler. Jean said to Genie, "You [tie your shoe] and then we can tell Doctor Kent what you can do." Although difficult to understand, Genie repeated the word "doctor." She knew more than 100 words by that Spring. The question became: Could Genie fully recover?

Genie had her first birthday after being found — her 14th — at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Over the course of her therapy, Genie's timid nature morphed into a natural inquisitiveness about the world around her. Going anywhere became a fascinating, new adventure.

"She had a way of connecting with people and reaching out without saying anything," said David Rigler, the man who would eventually act as Genie's foster parent for years.

Rigler recalled one instance where, without a word, a little boy gave Genie his brand new firetruck. The two had only passed each other on the street.

Eventually, Genie went to live with Butler. Her rehabilitation team thought a stable foster home would help.

She developed a passion for hording items, especially glasses and containers — behavior exhibited by many other severely abused children.

But Butler, concerned all the testing and research hurt Genie's well-being, began to restrict the other team member's access to her. Others, like Curtiss, thought Butler was using Genie to become famous.

Eventually, child services removed Genie from Butler's house. After only a few hours at Children's Hospital, she was placed with a new foster home with David Rigler, the chief psychologist at Children's Hospital. Doctors almost never undertake the role of parent too, but the team was desperate to find a stable home for Genie.

Rigler's wife, Marylin, became Genie's new teacher.

Marilyn taught Genie how to express her anger outwardly, how to scream and have a fit. She used to tear at her own hair and face.

Eventually, Genie could even use words to express her emotions. She would say "rough time." As an older Marilyn shows below, Genie would wag her finger if she felt very upset, while simply waving her hand meant something wasn't a big deal.

Here, Marylin tries a sort of primitive role-playing, speaking harshly to Genie like her mother might have. Eventually, these sessions elicited memories for Genie. She began using simple language to explain what had happened before language became a part of her lfe — an incredible breakthrough.

Genie's rehabilitation continued. She could read and started to attend nursery school. Her team began to think and hope she might fully recover.

Rigler even started teaching Genie sign language. He thought her past therapists made the mistake of focusing on spoken language.

Despite Genie's shocking progress, she couldn't fully communicate. When asked to create a question, she would say, "What red blue is in?" Genie may have known how to use everyday words, but she couldn't arrange them in a grammatical way.

Unfortunately, the National Institute of Mental Health revoked funding for Genie's treatment and research in the Fall of 1974. Because of the blurred lines between foster family and research team, no one could produce well-kept records or steadfast findings. Alleging the research damaged Genie's recovery, her mother even sued the team and hospital for excessive testing.

Genie returned to live with her mother, acquitted of all charges. But her mother soon found taking care of Genie too difficult. Genie made the rounds to foster home after foster home where she experienced abuse and harassment.

One set of foster parents severely beat Genie for vomiting. So traumatized, she returned to Children's Hospital. But she was afraid to open her mouth and regressed back to silence.

Today, it's not clear what happened to Genie. Curtiss said she spent 20 years looking for her. One person, who wishes to remain anonymous, said he hired a private investigator to locate Genie. She's in a private facility somewhere for mentally underdeveloped adults. "It was a little pathetic, but she was happy," he said.

Children in prison often spend time in isolation, too.

Click here for sad photos of kids behind bars »

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"Genie" The Story of the Wild Child, 1970

Introduction.

Text-to-speech Audio

The last known picture of Genie Wiley.

The Bed and toilet Genie was strapped to.

Genie Wiley

The house where young Genie Wiley was abused and isolated.

Backstory and Context

Genie Wiley was born in 1957 and at 20 months her father Clark Wiley took her into his care keeping her from her partially blind mother and 6-year-old brother. Clark thought she was mentally disabled and locked her in a room with windows covered by aluminum foil and provided only food and water. With no human interaction or contact with the outside world, Genie spoke rarely and could only make unintelligible sounds when she was discovered. Clark Wiley beat his daughter with a one-by-three-foot board nearly every time she uttered a sound. Genie was also strapped to a child’s toilet chair and a crib with a chicken wire lid for multiple hours.

Genie was 13 when, on November 4th, 1970, her condition was discovered when her mother brought her daughter to a welfare office for help in Los Angeles. Genie could not speak, had the language and physical skills of a baby, and crawled on the floor like a baby. After inspections by the healthcare professionals, they concluded that she had the physical development of an 8-year-old and weighed only 59 pounds. Clark and her mother were charged with child abuse, but the day before court Clark committed suicide leaving a note saying, "the world will never understand." Charges against the mother were dropped because she did not know of the abuse.

In 1970 Genie, studied and the resulting case study is known as the “Developmental Consequence of Extreme Social Isolation.”  She was under the care of Dr. David Rigler at a children’s hospital in Los Angeles which is where she celebrated her 14th birthday. By 1974, resources for tests and donations for her care became less frequent, and she was placed with a series of foster parents. By age 18, Genie was able to communicate with sign language, and this is when much of the physical abuse that researchers suspected was confirmed. Genie’s mother regained custody of her when she turned 18 but like many others, she returned Genie to the care of the state. 

Additional Information

• Information on Child Abuse from Stanford University Medical Center

• Genie Wiley Walking In Freedom

Old News, Vintage Photos & Nostalgic Stories

Genie, the feral child that lived in isolation for 13 years.

One day, on November 4, 1970, a woman and a child entered the welfare office in Los Angeles.

The woman claimed that they both had been abused and tortured by her husband. Nobody expected more than another case of domestic violence, but it turned out to be one of the saddest stories anyone had heard.

Although at first look, the little girl named Genie seemed like no more than 7-year-old, it turned out that she was 13, underweight, with the physical abilities of a toddler, and unable to speak.

The first suspicion of the social workers was that the girl had autism, but they soon found out that Genie’s case was different.

She was born unhappy, in a family that in fact never even wanted children. Her father, Clark Wiley, was intolerant to any kind of noise and controlled his home through violence.

Under his orders, Genie was kept in a small room deprived of care, food, sunlight, human contact, learning, and love. No child deserves no chance, but Genie had none. If she made any noise, if she cried, her father would beat her. Sadly, that was all she knew for 13 years.

The case of the feral child who was kept strapped to a potty in a homemade straightjacket shook the entire American nation.

Soon the whole history came into light.

Clark Wiley was an aggressive and controlling man who married Irene Oglesby, a dust bowl migrant.

She was twenty years his junior and obedient to his dominant personality.

Wiley hated noise, any kind of buzz irritated him. Another thing that he hated more than noise were certainly children. And yet, he had several, although not all survived the cruelness of the life they were exposed to. Two died and two survived.

Genie had an older brother who later described his home as a “concentration camp.”

Apparently, he and his mother were never allowed to communicate with Genie, treat her, or talk about her. Wiley was charged with child abuse and shot himself, leaving a note “The world will never understand.”

Genie was taken to a pediatric hospital, and there were hundreds of psychologists, linguists, pediatricians, and other specialists interested in working with her.

The very last romantic words spoken.

Besides the fact that everyone wanted to help her, Genie was a unique case study, and everyone wanted to be part of researching it.

A team of specialists was formed to work with the child, and soon everyone was happy to learn that Genie was highly intelligent and curious about everything around her.

Although everyone was satisfied with her initial progress, sadly, it was clear that the trauma will remain for the rest of her life.

The doctors considered Genie as the most profoundly damaged child they had ever seen.

She stood mostly undemonstrative, holding her hands like a bunny, and spoke no more than twenty words such as  mother ,  go ,  blue,   orange ,  stop it,  and  no more. 

After a while, Genie improved her physical movements, language skills, and her communication in general. She learned to laugh, to enjoy music, and also to paint, which she used as a method of communicating with others.

Even though the research project “Genie” was praised at first, later, when she was sent to live with foster parents, it became controversial.

She never remained in care but was tossed from one household to another, and there were cases when she was abused.

When she turned 18, Genie was sent to live with her mother in the same house where she spent more than 13 years tied to a chair, isolated from the world. But that didn’t work for long, and she was sent to a foster home again.

There is no information about where Genie spent the last few decades, where is she, or whether she is alive. However, many people who had the opportunity to meet her, hope that she learned to be happy.

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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.  

the girl 10 years later

A feral child was found starving, covered in her own filth, unable to walk or talk. a new family adopted the girl in 2007, called her dani, and tried to make up for years of neglect., listen to the story.

A follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning story | Nov. 29, 2017 Story by LANE DEGREGORY Photos by LARA CERRI Times Staff

MURFREESBORO, Tenn.

A t the far end of the room, beneath the wide window, the girl curled into the corner of the couch. Her bare feet were tucked beneath baggy sweat pants. Her honey hair hung across her eyes.

Housemates sprawled on armchairs, cheering college football on a big TV.

The girl, who just turned 19, twirled a strand of Mardi Gras beads around her wrists.

“There she is!” shouted a bearded man who came in carrying cupcakes. “Happy birthday, honey!”

Bernie Lierow set the dessert on a wide, wooden table and walked toward her, arms outstretched. For a second, she seemed not to notice.

But when he bent to hug her, she let him.

“Do you want to go shopping, sweetie?” asked Bernie, 58. The girl stared at him blankly. “You can pick out a present.”

In the 10 years since Bernie adopted Dani, this was the first time he hadn’t been with her on her actual birthday. He hadn’t seen her in more than a month. He had taken off this Saturday in September to surprise her, driven 90 minutes to her new home.

“How you doing?” he asked. “You want to go?”

Slowly, Dani stood. She’s 5-foot-10 now, four inches taller than him. And she outweighs him. At one point, she’d gotten to more than 200 pounds, because of the medications and because she still grabs for every bit of food.

“Come on, honey,” said a female aide, taking Dani by the elbow. “Let’s get you ready.”

Dani shuffled beside her, letting herself be led.

This is how it’s supposed to be, Bernie kept telling himself. Your kids grow up, and you have to let go.

He hopes she’s happy. It’s so hard to tell.

◆◆◆

Police got the call a dozen years ago — someone had glimpsed a young girl’s face in a broken window.

In the back of a run-down house in Plant City, officers found a skeletal child, curled on a moldy mattress, covered with maggots and flies. She had nothing on but a swollen diaper. Feces dribbled down her legs.

“What’s your name, honey?” asked Detective Mark Holste, bending over the girl. She didn’t react.

Roaches crunched under his feet. Lice crawled in her black hair.

It was the worst case of neglect Holste had ever seen.

He carried her out and had her rushed to the hospital.

Detectives determined that Danielle Crockett was almost 7. For years, she had been kept behind a closed door, in a space the size of a walk-in closet, alone in the dark.

The state’s Child Protection Team diagnosed Dani with “psychological deprivation, failure to thrive, medical and physical neglect and developmental delays.”

Police arrested her birth mother, Michelle Crockett. She told them she was a single mom, doing the best she could.

Later, she described a series of bad breaks that left her widowed, destitute and raising two teenage boys alone. Then, she said, she had a one-night stand and got pregnant. She thinks his name was Bob.

Dani was a healthy baby, who weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces.

But twice in 2002, when Dani was around 4, people called to report seeing a little girl naked and starving. Social workers confirmed: “Feces. Filth. Neglect.” Each time, they offered help, which Crockett declined, and left Dani in her custody.

In court, about three years later, Crockett waived her parental rights as part of a plea deal. She was sentenced to two years of house arrest, plus probation. She never went to jail.

“She should have gotten at least 20 years,” Holste said.

“She should burn in hell,” said Dani’s guardian ad litem, Tracy Sheehan.

Dani spent six weeks in the hospital. At first, she couldn’t eat solid foods and would only take a bottle. She weighed 46 pounds. She couldn’t walk or talk.

“We did genetic tests, neurological scans. There was nothing wrong with her. But she wasn’t stimulated at all,” said Kathleen Armstrong of the University of South Florida. “I’d been a school psychologist for 20 years, but I’d never seen a child like Dani.”

Armstrong said Dani suffered from “environmental autism.” The neurological pathways in her brain hadn’t developed because she was so malnourished, because she had lived in silence and darkness, never been talked to or held. “How could a caregiver, much less a mother, just lock her child away like that?” asked Armstrong.

Foster care workers called Dani a feral child — the first they had encountered. She had never been to a doctor or school. Never felt sunshine on her skin. She had spent all those years in solitary confinement.

In 1970, in California, a girl that scientists called Genie had been found strapped to a potty chair at age 13. Doctors examined her, as others had the Wolf Boy, who, in 1800, had wandered naked out of the woods near Paris when he was about 12 years old. Neither ever learned to communicate or take care of themselves.

Those early years are critical. “During the first five years of life, 80 percent of brain development occurs,” Armstrong said.

With Dani, no one had any expectations, but there was hope: Maybe she had been found early enough.

The detective who discovered her just wanted her to live. The psychologist thought she would end up in a nursing home. The guardian ad litem wished she would be able to connect. The foster care worker prayed that she would be loved. The speech therapist longed to hear “yes” or “no.”

It was hard to imagine that Dani would be adopted.

By the time she was almost 9, she was still in diapers. She couldn’t speak or sleep through the night. She had terrible tantrums. Then she would shut down and fold into herself. To self-soothe, she sucked her fists and twirled Mardi Gras beads.

She wasn’t interested in peek-a-boo or bubbles. She wouldn’t even play with baby toys. She never cried. Or laughed.

Who would take a child with so many needs?

But Bernie fell in love with Dani’s pale face before he even met her. He and his wife, Diane, had five boys between them and wanted a daughter. They saw Dani’s photo at a Tampa adoption event sponsored by the Heart Gallery and were moved by her dark, empty eyes.

“She just looked like she needed us,” Bernie said.

Read the original story

I followed Dani’s journey — from rescue through her first year of adoption — for a story in the Tampa Bay Times. “The Girl in the Window” was read by more than 1.5 million people, translated into a dozen languages and won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2009.

Oprah Winfrey saw my story and invited Dani’s new parents onto her show. So did Anderson Cooper and The 700 Club. A Nashville author wrote a book.

Hundreds of strangers sent cards, prayers and donations, captivated by this abandoned child — and moved by the possibility that she could be saved.

Calls to child abuse hotlines soared after the story. Contributions to foster care agencies increased. In the first week alone, inquiries about adoption quadrupled. “I know of at least a dozen other children who were adopted because of her story,” Bernie said. “She will never know how many people she touched.”

In September, I went to Tennessee to visit Bernie — and celebrate Dani’s 19th birthday.

Dani now lives in a group home, in a town 40 minutes southeast of Nashville,"> Dani now lives in a group home, in a town 40 minutes southeast of Nashville, a modest rancher with a white picket fence. Potted ferns sway on the porch. She’s been there since the beginning of the year.

Her bedroom is at the back, overlooking a field filled with hay bales. Dani shares it with a woman about her age who also doesn’t speak, who spends her days slumped in a wheelchair, watching a TV that isn’t turned on. Six other residents, all older than Dani, live in the home with at least two staff.

“Want to wear your new outfit?” asked her aide, helping Dani into a lavender romper. “There. You look so pretty. Let’s brush your hair.”

Shannon Wilson is the only person Dani has ever let brush her hair. Wilson also shampoos her in the shower and convinced Dani to sit still long enough for a beautician to trim her thick hair into a chin-length bob. “She’s getting so much more tolerant,” Wilson said. “And she’s letting the other residents in more.”

Mostly, Dani still ignores everything around her. Instead of sucking her fists, she scratches her arms. She still squints sideways when someone talks to her. “That Popeye face,” Bernie calls it.

Workers at the group home have taught her to toss her laundry in the hamper. To make her own bed and put Snoopy on the pillow. Wilson said, “She even knows to wait to eat until grace is done.”

And what does she love doing most, the girl who spent her first seven years confined to a dark, miserable space? “Just being outside,” Wilson said. Sitting on the front porch, or rocking on the swing out back.

“Okay, Boogie Bear. Put your shoes on,” Bernie called when Dani came out of her room. He grabbed a cupcake from the tray, left the rest for the other residents. He held out his arm, which Dani grabbed, and walked her to the car. “Let’s buckle you in,” he said, while she squirmed. “Okay, ready? Here we go.”

For 10 years, Bernie tried. He and his wife adopted Dani in October 2007 and moved her into their house in Fort Myers. There, Dani lived with their youngest son, Willie, who was just a few months older, who taught her to swim and chew ham.

The Lierows took Dani to the beach, where sunlight bleached her dark hair gold. They taught her to use the toilet. They enrolled her in public school, in special education classes, where she got private speech therapy five days a week. They took her to horseback riding therapy, occupational therapy, church and countless doctors.

Dani learned to fill a glass with water, sit still for a whole episode of Blues Clues, hold the dog’s leash. She stopped having tantrums. Started sleeping through the night.

The next summer, the Lierows moved to a farm in Tennessee, where Bernie rehabbed houses and raised goats. With the recession, and all of Dani’s needs, money was tight.

Bernie and Diane also took in foster kids — 15 teenagers in five years. They thought they could help those girls — and get help with Dani, who couldn’t ever be left alone. Plus, the money they received for being foster parents helped pay the bills.

Dani grew up with horses, chickens, alpacas and packs of Great Pyrenees puppies. She learned to slip on sneakers, climb into a tree house, fill the bathtub. But she raided the refrigerator regularly, smashing eggs and chugging ketchup.

“She’d eat her toothbrush. Eat her hairbrush. They wanted me to teach her sign language, but I gave up on that,” Bernie said. “She’d never sign back.”

He worked to keep her from tearing up the house or hurting herself.

“I told myself, this is the way it is. We adopted her. I’ll never give up on my baby,” Bernie said. “But after about three years, Diane was done. She figured Dani had gone about as far as she was going to get.”

Diane wanted to put Dani in a nursing home, Bernie said. But he refused. By his account, for the next few years, he took care of Dani mostly by himself. He worked while she was in school, then spent the rest of his time getting Dani showered, dressed, fed.

When she hit puberty, Bernie said, Dani began to regress. She’d pee on the sofa, pee in the car. He had to put her back in diapers. He had to padlock the fridge.

In 2015, after 18 years of marriage, he and Diane got divorced. He doesn’t blame it on Dani. But there was always so much stress, never any time they could be alone. No end in sight. And Bernie knows the statistic, which the USF psychologist confirmed: 90 percent of couples raising a child with special needs end up losing their marriage.

Diane, 53, runs an antique store in Carthage now, about an hour from Dani. She said her lawyer wouldn’t let her talk for this story, citing ongoing litigation and property disputes. When I asked her just to talk about Dani, she declined.

Willie, 19, still lives with Diane. She said he also couldn’t talk to me. He and his father haven’t spoken for more than a year.

“When I got Dani with just me, she really relaxed,” Bernie said. “But I couldn’t work at all during summers. And then there were those times with the cops. ...”

It’s one thing for a man to take his 9-year-old daughter to the men’s room. Or to carry a 12-year-old off from a carnival, screaming. But when she’s 17 and weighs 40 pounds more than her dad, and still needs help with her diaper, and won’t always walk to the car, things get murkier.

One night, about two years ago, as Bernie was driving, Dani started thrashing around in the backseat, banging on the windows. An officer pulled him over and asked what kind of drugs he had her on. Was he kidnapping her?

Another time, soon after, Dani planted her feet in the parking lot at a Sam’s Club and refused to move. Bernie pleaded, grabbed her wrist and tugged. A stranger called police.

“It got more difficult just to take her out,” he said. “I finally had to admit: God, this is a little too much for me.”

When Dani turned 18, she became eligible for Social Security and Medicaid. Someone from the state called Bernie last December: A small group home had an open bed for a girl.

Bernie agonized. Then he moved her in just after Christmas, with two trash bags full of clothes and toys. “Daddy can’t take care of you anymore,” he told her through tears. “You’ll have to stay here. But I’ll come visit.”

He said she stared at him, but didn’t react.

At Stones River National Battlefield, Bernie helped Dani out of the car and sat her at a picnic table. The sprawling park is just down the road from the group home, rimmed by a grove of sweet gum trees.

“Happy birthday, baby,” he said, unwrapping the sparkly cupcake. “Now don’t inhale it.” But she did. Frosting flecked her nose.

He wiped her face and hands, led her through the visitor center, across a wide battlefield. She followed with her head bowed. When he paused at the edge of a cemetery with matching headstones, she gazed into the cloudless sky — and kept holding his hand.

She’s so much more compliant now, Bernie said. When she lived with him, she used to run away. Maybe it’s maturity. Maybe it’s the medications that they’ve put her on at the group home, ones that are more powerful than what she had been taking. They give her Risperdal to curb aggression, Clonidine to keep her calm, Benzodiazepines to stop anxiety.

Even after all this time, Bernie wonders how much Dani understands – and how to reach her.

After a few minutes on the battlefield, she started hopping from foot to foot, twirling in circles. “You ready to go?” he asked, smoothing her bangs from her sweaty forehead. “Okay. Are you ready to pick out your present?”

On the way out, trying to drink from the water fountain, she soaked herself.

Everyone who encountered Dani after her rescue said they still think about her. Some kept in touch with Bernie over the years. Others just wondered.

When I first met Dani in Fort Myers, when she was 9, I marveled at her strong will, worried about her inner demons, and wanted, so much, for her new parents’ love to make up for her horrible past. I could feel her frustration at not being able to make her needs known. She seemed trapped inside.

Three years later, when I saw her again in Tennessee, I was encouraged. She had grown tall and appeared to connect with the horses and puppies on the farm. She could gesture for food, throw and catch a ball. She recognized classmates, who called her their friend.

This visit, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew she wouldn’t recognize me. But I was startled that she didn’t even seem to recognize Bernie. It was impossible to determine what she understood. This time, though, Dani let me hold her hand, walk her to the bathroom. She glanced at me, sideways, as if wondering who I was. Then she followed me back to Bernie and took his arm again.

Holste, the detective, checked in with Bernie at least once a year. He retired two years ago, after 29 years on the force. He said Dani showed him how important it is to interact with your children during the early years. “I’m a single dad. I retired when my son was 8.” The age Dani was when the Lierows took her in. “I wanted to be able to coach his baseball team, take him fishing and hunting. He needs me more than I need to be at work.”

Armstrong, the psychologist, is retiring at the end of this year, after 20 years of teaching medical students at USF. Because of Dani, she started a class to train parents at YMCAs. Next year, she plans to volunteer as a guardian ad litem to help other children in foster care. “Of all the cases I’ve ever dealt with, hers was the saddest.”

Sheehan, who was Dani’s guardian ad litem, went on to become a judge. She resigned in March, after 10 years on the bench, citing “personal and professional reasons.” Dani’s case, she said, still upsets her. Seeing photos of her now, learning about Dani’s life in the group home, Sheehan wiped her eyes. “It’s discomforting to think that love can’t conquer all.”

She paused for a moment, shook her head. “I just hope that somewhere behind those haunted eyes, there’s some recognition of all the love she’s had.”

The woman from the Heart Gallery who helped Dani find a family has kept up with Bernie regularly. All those years of hearing about his sacrifice, she said, made her a better mom. She treasures small moments more with her own daughters, who also are adopted. “I was hoping Dani could be independent one day, have her own family,” Carolyn Eastman said. “But I’m relieved she’s safe. There’s a person locked in there that we’ll never know.”

Certain children shape you, said Dani’s former speech therapist, Leslie Roth. “I was hoping she would at least be able to gesture or sign to make her needs known,” she said.

If only someone had saved her earlier.

Dani didn’t come as far as everyone had hoped. But she’s doing so much better than anyone really expected. She responds to her name, she sometimes notices her roommates, she’s stopped screaming.

Maybe she is still emerging from her cocoon.

“I’m thrilled to hear that she’s in a group home where she has social activities to keep her busy,” Roth said. “Every little step is a sign she’s still progressing.”

Like letting someone brush her hair.

At Goodwill, they let you play with the toys. Not like Walmart or Toys "R" Us, where everything is sealed in boxes. So after leaving the park, Bernie drove Dani to the thrift store to let her pick out a birthday gift.

“C’mon, baby. Let’s get you out. There, that’s a good girl,” he said, helping her out of the back seat. “Okay, let’s go see what you want.”

She let him guide her past racks of sweaters, crates of DVDs, tables filled with glass vases. At the back of the store, she pulled her hand from his and sprinted to the tall shelves lined with baby toys, where she stood, bouncing on her toes.

She pulled cords, flipped levers, pushed buttons. A Fisher-Price farmer talked. A Leap Frog caterpillar made music. Simba roared. For the first time all day, Dani lit up.

When she pressed something and nothing happened, she scowled and slammed the toy back onto the shelf.

“Does it work? Let me see. It needs batteries,” Bernie said, inspecting a snowman that wouldn’t sing. “Here, you want this one?” he asked, handing her a plastic helicopter. “Look, it blinks and talks.”

The toy had blue blades and a flashing headlight. She smacked the bright keys. “The bird flies up, up in the sky!” it said. Dani smiled.

Over the next 20 minutes, she tried out another two dozen toys. But she kept coming back to the helicopter. “You’re stuck on that, huh?” Bernie asked. “Okay, is that good?”

Dani slid onto the floor, cross-legged, holding the helicopter close to her heart. “Up, up like a kite!”

Each time she pushed a button and the toy talked, she looked surprised that she had unleashed that voice.

If Bernie had known, back then, what he knows now.

If someone had told him his beautiful daughter would never be able to write her name, drive or dress herself …

“I’d still do it,” he said, quickly. “It makes me so glad we could give her a home and a family to grow up in.”

Bernie made sure Dani was never ignored or hungry. He showed her how to eat spaghetti with a fork. He gave her a soft bed with Hello Kitty sheets, a stuffed Gloworm to ward off the dark, a wide window to look out on the world. He taught her to let herself be hugged and, sometimes, to hug back. “The biggest things I gave her,” he said, “were love and respect.”

The Plant City house where Dani lived with her birth mother is gone. The city tore it down a couple of years ago. Michelle Crockett lives in a trailer nearby. She didn’t want to talk about Dani for this story. When I went to see her, she threatened to call police.

Her son Grant, 32, said he knew Dani had just had her birthday. And that she was 19. “So you think about her?” I asked. He shut the door.

For a while, Bernie said, after he watched one of his sons get to raise an inquisitive, interactive daughter, he mourned what he would never have with Dani. “Then that was it,” Bernie said. “I had to look for all the good times, all the times she’s brought me so much joy. She’s like a 2-year-old in a 19-year-old body. She’ll always be my little girl.”

He doesn’t feel like a hero. “I just did what I had to do,” he said. “And I’m not the only one. So many other parents of disabled children sacrifice their lives.”

Bernie said he tries to see Dani every month. He’s been her only visitor. He’s not nearly as exhausted now, he said. Despite the gray in his beard, he looks 10 years younger. But he misses Dani pulling him around while he feeds the goats, leaning on his shoulder while they watch Alvin and the Chipmunks.

“I took care of her as long as I could, because that was my job. The Lord gave her to me,” Bernie said. “But just as I was wishing he would come down here and help me out a bit, he found this place for her. For us.”

Bernie pulled up outside the group home just after 4 p.m. Before he even set the parking brake on his old, gold Chevy, Dani opened the back door and bolted, barefoot, across the grass.

All day she had been so passive, following him around, standing still when she was told. But as soon as she saw her house, she left Bernie behind and ran toward it, holding her helicopter.

Through the back door, past the kitchen, across the dining room. She didn’t greet the aide setting the table. Didn’t seem to see the guys who were still watching football. She just dove onto the couch in the corner, beneath the window, and held her helicopter above her head. “The balloon floats up, up in the air!”

Her housemates looked up, then back to the TV. A woman in pink pajamas waved, “Hi, Dani.”

“She’s way better than she was when we first got her,” said Omar Bishop, who has worked at the group home for four years. “She’s pretty relaxed for the most part. She watches the other residents, their facial movements and gestures. There are plenty of opportunities for her to learn here.”

Every weekday, Dani rides a bus to a nearby high school, where she can continue special education classes until she’s 22. Every weekend, workers at the group home take the residents to church or a carnival, yard sales or the Dollar Tree. They have game night, movie night, music therapy and ice cream sundae bars.

That evening, Bishop helped Dani crush tortilla chips into her taco salad. Even after a decade of not being hungry, Dani still eats everything in sight.

At the group home, she uses a small, red spoon to limit her portions. She’s dropped 40 pounds since she arrived.

When she finished dinner, long before the other residents, one of her housemates handed her his fruit cup. “She’s learned not to steal other people’s food,” Wilson said. “She’s even started taking her plate to the kitchen.”

Bernie grinned and shook his head. He could never even get her to give up her plate. “Good job!” he told her.

On the way to the kitchen, Dani leaned into him, an almost hug, and let him kiss her forehead. Then she ran to the sofa with her helicopter and withdrew back into her own world. “Be a good girl,” Bernie said, tickling her until she smiled. “I love you.”

He hugged her again and turned to go. He was almost to the door when he heard the helicopter. “The bird flies up, up to the sky!”

Dani started to laugh. She rolled onto her back and let loose a belly laugh that just kept coming. She laughed so hard she could barely catch her breath.

Bernie beamed.

“She never got to do that when she was 2.”

Still chuckling, Dani held her helicopter high. “Up, up to the sky!”

Help a child

• If you think a child is being neglected or abused, call the anonymous, toll-free hotline at 1-800-962-2873.
• If you need help taking care of your child, call the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay at (813) 234-1234.
• For information on adoption in Hillsborough County, call (813) 229-2884 or go to www.heartgallerytampa.org.
• In Pinellas/Pasco counties call (727) 456-0637 or go to www.heartgallerykids.org.
• If you can’t adopt, but want to help foster children in Hillsborough, call (813) 651-3150 or go to www.sylviathomascenter.org.
• In Pinellas or Pasco, call (727) 461-2990 or go to www.eckerd.org.

About the story

Tampa Bay Times reporter Lane DeGregory and Times photographer Lara Cerri met Dani and her dad, Bernie Lierow, at her new group home in Tennessee in September. All of the scenes from that day were witnessed by the journalists. Bernie also was interviewed separately.

Scenes from Dani’s rescue were reconstructed from interviews with neighbors, the detective, her guardian ad litem, foster care worker and psychologist. Additional information came from hundreds of pages of police reports, medical records and court documents.

Michelle Crockett and her son were approached at their mobile home in Plant City. Diane and William Lierow were contacted via Facebook.

About the reporters

Additional credits.

• Editor Maria Carrillo
• Photo editor Patty Yablonski
• Video editor Danese Kenon
• Story design Lyra Solochek, Martin Frobisher and Lauren Flannery
• Research Caryn Baird

Read more about Dani

The original story.

Danielle Crockett was found curled up in a filthy room and taken away from her birth mother by a detective who’d never seen a worse case of neglect.

Dani, three years later

Her story started in solitude and unimaginable squalor. Three years later, she has a home, a family and puppies to play with.

What is a feral child?

The term comes from historic accounts of children raised by animals and not exposed to human nurturing.

Photos, videos and more

Watch and listen, including a before-and-after photo gallery, audio of interviews, and videos about Dani’s life.

“The Girl in the Window” at your fingertips

Read “The Girl in the Window” wherever you go. Download the ebook at bit.ly/gitw_ebook .

Want the scoop behind the story? Listen to WriteLane.

Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter Lane DeGregory discusses her stories and answers your questions in a weekly podcast.

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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Genie was a feral child whose father kept her immobilized in a locked room from 20 months old to 13 years old. She was provided with almost no stimulation of any kind, and was kept severely malnourished. Due to not being exposed to speech as a child, she did not acquire language skills.

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Hyderabad, Sep 8 (PTI) A 18-year-old girl student, who was locked in a hotel room here for 20 days, allegedly an engineering student, who had befriended her online, was rescued by the “SHE Teams”– a wing of Hyderabad Police.

The girl was rescued on Saturday and the 19-year-old accused was arrested and a case was registered against him under relevant sections of the BNS at Narayanaguda Police Station, they said.

The parents of the girl student from Bhainsa town lodged a complaint with “SHE Teams” Hyderabad, stating that their daughter had called them and informed that she had been trapped by an online friend through a social media platform, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Crimes & Women Safety-Hyderabad) D Kavitha said.

The victim had said the accused threatened and forced her to come to Hyderabad and she had been locked in a hotel room for 20 days by him, police said, adding she shared her current location to her parents via an instant messaging app.

The SHE Teams tracked and located the girl in a locked hotel room at Narayanaguda, and rescued her and handed over to her parents, police said.

The accused was also subsequently arrested.

The “SHE Teams”, is a wing of Telangana Police, tasked with cracking down on eve-teasers and stalkers and providing safety and security to women and girls. PTI VVK SS

This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.

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