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Genie Wiley - TLC Documentary (2003)

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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 thought 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.
Title:
Genie Wiley - TLC Documentary (2003)
Description:

From the TLC documentary 'Wild Child :The Story Of Feral Children'. Susan (Genie) was not a wild child, she was an extremely abused child.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtgnjRY_Z7w
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4804490&page=1#.UYgsK0odfCp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmdycJQi4QA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3oy6vK7gsg
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/7847/Born-Genius--My-Brilliant-Brain

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Video Language:
English
Duration:
12:27

English subtitles

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