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[Reporter] Officials in the Los Angeles
suburb of Arcadia

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have taken custody of a 
13-year-old girl and they say

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was kept in such 
isolation by her parents

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that she never even 
learned to talk.

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The girl still wore diapers and
was uttering infantile noises

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when a social worker discovered
the case two weeks ago.

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But the authorities are
hoping she still

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may have a normal
learning capacity.

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[Narrator] Among the first to
see the child was

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Temple City Detective, 
Sergeant Frank Linley.

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[Linley] I already knew that
the child was 13 1/2 years old.

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And I took one look at her

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and she wasn't much 
bigger than my daughter,

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Beverly, who had just
turned seven

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about three months earlier.

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And I really had a hard
time conceiving of the idea

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that the child was the age
that she was.

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The child obviously
had been severely mistreated

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as she was still in diapers,
couldn't walk,

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she had no verbal skills
at all at that point.

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The last time I was
on this street was probably

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30 years ago.

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Yep, there it is.

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Hasn't changed much.

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The back yard looks the same.

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It's all weeds and dead grass.

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Looks the same
as it did in 1970.

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[Narrator] The house belonged
to Clark Wiley.

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A loner, Clark had turned
his back on the world

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after his mother had been killed
in a hit and run accident.

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After the accident,

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things in the Wiley house
would never be the same again.

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[Linley] The house was completely dark.

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All the blinds were drawn
and there were no toys,

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no clothes, nothing
that would ever indicate

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to you that a child
of any age lived there.

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The child's bedroom was 
back in this corner.

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That was the bedroom.

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The windows were covered to
about three inches from the top.

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Which were the only natural
light that had ever come in

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there in all the time
the child was in the bedroom.

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Entire furnishings of
the bedroom consists of a cage

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with a pull down
chicken wire lid and some type

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of piece of wire securing
it when they closed it down.

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There was a potty chair

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with some kind of
homemade strapping device.

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[Narrator] For 13 years, Genie had spent
her nights locked in bed.

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Her days, strapped
to a potty chair.

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During that time Clark had
ordered his son John

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and wife Irene, never
to talk to her.

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In her darkened room, she had led
a life of near total isolation.

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Even close neighbors were 
completely unaware of her presence.

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[Laicans] We came home from work
and the police was here

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and they came to question us.

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That's when we found out,
you know,

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what happened and, you know,
that they had a little girl.

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Nobody knew, nobody knew before.

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And when we found out

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what happened
and how she was treated,

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I mean, everybody was shocked
and just unbelievable.

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[Narrator] For their whole marriage,

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Clark had imposed
his will on Irene.

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And blind with cataracts,

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she had been too
scared to resist.

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But one day something broke.

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While Clark was
out buying groceries,

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she seized her chance and fled.

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It was the first glimpse

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the world would have of Clark
and Irene's dark secret.

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[Linley] I met Clark and Irene at
Temple City Sheriff's Station.

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They were both under arrest
at the time.

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When we interviewed Irene
she would make no mention

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of the family whatsoever,
particularly the children.

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I attempted along with
my partner to interview Clark.

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He refused to talk to us.
He wouldn't say a word.

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He never even acknowledged

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that he understood
what we were talking about.

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[Woman] Mr. Wiley?
[Wiley] Yes.

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[Woman] Why did you keep
your daughter in a room--

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[Man] Mr. Wiley has no comment.
[Wiley] No comment.

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[Man] We haven't had time
to discuss the charge

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and we haven't even seen them.

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[Narrator] Unable to face the truth,

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Clark took matters
into his own hands.

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[Reporter] This morning the authorities
reported that 70 year old Clark Wiley

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shot and killed himself just
before he was to go to court

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and be arraigned
for child abuse.

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[Narrator] After 13 years,
Genie was at last free.

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And for scientists,

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she was just the case
they had been waiting for.

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For 13 years Genie had lived
a life of complete isolation.

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Raised in a city bedroom,
Genie was as much

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a feral child as if she
had been brought up by wolves.

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At 13 she was the size
of a six year old.

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Worst of all she had never
been taught to speak.

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The question now,
could she ever learn?

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Genie's case was so
scientifically important

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that the government funded
a team of scientists

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to help answer the many
questions she posed.

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Two of the scientists who would
become especially important

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to Genie were
child psychologist James Kent

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and linguist Susan Curtiss.

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[Curtiss] It's so wonderful 
to see you. God.

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[Narrator] Neither had ever encountered
a case as extreme as Genie's.

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[Kent] We looked at her as a--

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as a newborn in a way.

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Even though we know she hadn't--

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she came with 13 years
of memories and experiences.

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Not all of them wonderful.
Most of them not, I think.

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And so we felt we needed

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to start to expose her to what
the world was going to be

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like for her outside 
the hospital bed.

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[Narrator] To Genie, everything 
was a new experience.

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[Kent] We did what you
would do with--

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with your own kids.

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If you were introducing 
them to the world.

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You'd take them out and 
hold them up and show them.

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Sort of judge from how they reacted

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to whether this was too much

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or not enough and you could
move on and do the next thing.

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[Narrator] Genie was making
amazing progress.

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As the experts looked on,

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they realized that she might
be the answer to the question

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that had troubled science
for so long.

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[Curtiss] So we seized
this wonderful opportunity

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that she provided us
in as loving a way

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as we could but using it
to finally get our chance

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to address head-on 
specific hypotheses

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and notions about human language
and the human mind.

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[Narrator] These hypotheses were based
on the latest ideas

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about how children's
brains developed.

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According to the theory,

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young children could only learn
certain things at certain times,

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called critical periods.

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Language was one of
these critical periods

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and according to the theory,

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Genie who was now a teenager,
had missed her chance forever.

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But incredibly, Genie seemed
to be proving the theory wrong.

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As this footage shows,
Genie was blossoming.

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Not only was she delighted 
by the world around her

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but she was learning the words

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for the new things
she was seeing.

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[Curtiss] She was extremely 
interested in everything around her.

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She wanted to know the word
for everything around her.

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She wanted to engage 
people all around her.

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She was not mentally deficient.

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Her lights were on and everyone

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who worked with her from
teachers to therapists to me,

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knew that she was not retarded.

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It was clear as day.

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And as she began to learn more
and more words,

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hundreds of words, much more
rapidly than I ever imagined.

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And string them together, I began
to think maybe I will be wrong.

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Maybe she will be the one

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that will prove that
this hypothesis is incorrect.

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[Narrator] But Genie could not
escape the effects

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of her past so easily.

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She was still haunted
by her traumatic upbringing.

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Trapped by the memories of
the awful fate she had suffered.

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And linguistically, she
had stopped making progress.

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[Curtiss] She learned 
tons of words.

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She has an enormous vocabulary.
But language is not words.

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Language is grammar.
Language is sentences.

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How do you make a sentence?
What can be a sentence?

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What is a sentence?

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How do you automatically
know something's a sentence?

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So it wasn't because she
was cognitively deficient

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in other respects, it was because
she was cognitively deficient

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in this island of human mind.

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The mental faculty
that we call grammar.

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[Narrator] At the time Genie was found,

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brain science was in its infancy.

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But today we have a much clearer picture

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of what actually happens in cases

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of extreme neglect, like Genie's.

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[Perry] In Genie's brain,
the left part of her brain,

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her cortex, that has those 
neural systems responsible

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for speech and language.

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Because she never
heard any words

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and because she
was never taught--

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spoken to very often.

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They didn't get stimulated.

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And because they
weren't stimulated,

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they got smaller
and less functional

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and disconnected and ultimately

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that part of the brain
literally physically changes.

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[Narrator] Today with modern
imaging technology,

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we can actually see what happens
in the brains of feral children.

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And the effects are shocking.

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Without normal stimulation,

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their brains are smaller and malformed.

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And the earlier this neglect begins
and the longer it carries on,

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the worse the damage will be.

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Starved of stimulation,

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Genie's brain had simply not developed

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the capacity for language.

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And now that she was a teenager,

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she would never be able to learn.

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Despite this, Genie continued
to be a close part of everyone's life.

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But, there was more trouble ahead.

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[Kent] Children have to belong
to somebody when they grow up

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and she was still a child.

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And she needed a family to belong to.

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So that's what we would have liked,

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a family that she could belong to.

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And that's not what happened unfortunately.

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What did happen is about the worst outcome

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I think we would have envisioned.

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[Narrator] On her 18th birthday,

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Genie moved back with her 
mother, Irene, into the house

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in which she had been so terribly abused.

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But after only a few weeks,

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it was clear that Irene couldn't cope.

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From here, 
Genie was moved into state care

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with terrible consequences.

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[Curtiss] I was a student and 
people wouldn't listen to me.

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People who needed to intervene
did not listen to me.

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And so I spent lots and lots
of time on the phone pleading

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with people to intervene and save this person,

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who had had the worst experience

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of deprivation and isolation
in all recorded medical history.

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[Narrator] Genie moved from home to home.

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Sometimes with the very people
who served as her therapists.

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This potential conflict of 
interest raised tensions

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among the many people involved in her life.

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And a tug of war erupted over the child.

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As Genie's condition deteriorated,

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Irene decided that Susan Curtiss

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and the other academics had
become too close to Genie.

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A lawsuit followed.

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[Curtiss] I went from being asked
to be her guardian, to one week

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later being prevented from 
seeing her or phoning her.

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And ever since then
I've been prevented

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from having any contact at all.

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So although I have lots of,
you know, I'm still a scientist,

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I'm still interested in knowing
things about her language now.

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And all kinds of interesting things

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I would like to pursue academically,

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primarily, I would just like to see her.

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[Narrator] Now a ward of the court,

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Genie lives in an adult 
care home somewhere

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in Los Angeles, prevented
from seeing the people

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who once meant so much to her.