Starved, tortured, forgotten: Genie, the feral child who left a mark on researchers

[Jilly_in_VA]

She hobbled into a Los Angeles county welfare office in October 1970, a stooped, withered waif with a curious way of holding up her hands, like a rabbit. She looked about six or seven. Her mother, stricken with cataracts, was seeking an office with services for the blind and had entered the wrong room.

But the girl transfixed welfare officers.

At first they assumed autism. Then they discovered she could not talk. She was incontinent and salivated and spat. She had two nearly complete sets of teeth - extra teeth in such cases are known as supernumeraries, a rare dental condition. She could barely chew or swallow, and could not fully focus her eyes or extend her limbs. She weighed just 59lb (26kg). And she was, it turned out, 13 years old.

Her name – the name given to protect her identity – was Genie. Her deranged father had strapped her into a handmade straitjacket and tied her to a chair in a silent room of a suburban house since she was a toddler. He had forbidden her to cry, speak or make noise and had beaten and growled at her, like a dog.

It made news as one of the US’s worst cases of child abuse. How, asked Walter Cronkite, could a quiet residential street, Golden West Avenue, in Temple City, a sleepy Californian town, produce a feral child – a child so bereft of human touch she evoked cases like the wolf child of Hesse in the 14th century, the bear child of Lithuania in 1661 and Victor of Aveyron, a boy reared in the forests of revolutionary France?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/14/genie-feral-child-los-angeles-researchers
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This one left a mark on me too. I remember it very well and often wondered what happened to Genie. I read both books when they came out and wondered how anyone could do this to a child, and then why people couldn't stop fighting over her. But as the mother of an ASD son, I saw the fighting about his education in microcosm, so I guess people just are never going to agree over "what's best" for anybody's child.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. This is such a sad story. Would that it could have been different. n/t

[abqtommy]

2. No wonder our country and the world is in such a mess when we can't even protect one child.

[ansible]

7. It probably happens more often than we'll ever know for sure

We only know about stories like these because someone talked. There's probably many many others who suffered and we'll never know because they were never caught.

[billh58]

3. Follow up

As of 2016, Genie is a ward of the state of California living in an undisclosed location in Los Angeles.[4][22] In two articles published in May 2008, ABC News reported that someone who spoke to them under condition of anonymity had hired a private investigator who located Genie in 2000. According to the investigator, she was living a simple lifestyle in a small private facility for mentally underdeveloped adults and appeared to be happy, and reportedly only spoke a few words but could still communicate fairly well in sign language.[4] The news stories also stated that Genie's mother died of natural causes at the age of 87, in 2003, and featured the only public interview that Genie's brother, who was then living in Ohio, gave about either his or Genie's lives; he told reporters that since leaving the Los Angeles area, he had visited Genie and their mother only once, in 1982, and had refused to watch or read anything about Genie's life until just prior to the interview, but said he had recently heard Genie was doing well.[4][12][17] A story by journalist Rory Carroll in The Guardian, published in July 2016, reported that Genie still lived in state care and that her brother died in 2011, and said that despite repeated efforts Susan Curtiss had been unable to renew contact with Genie.[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)#1978%E2%80%93present

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. Thanks for this update! It is welcome news, indeed. ♥

[canetoad]

5. Kick

"Doctors called her the most profoundly damaged child they had ever seen."

[PlanetBev]

6. I remember this so well

It was on the national news. Happened in Arcadia, a working class suburb about an hour east of me. I’ve followed the story over the years. I saw a picture of Genie taken about 10 years ago. She’d be 63 or 64 now. I’ve heard that the progress she made in speaking was completely lost. One of the most heartbreaking stories I’ve ever heard. Still bothers me.

On edit, it might have taken place in Temple City, which is near Arcadia.