"Dad is shaking hands. Large wood. Genie cries… Dad. He hits a face. Dad is knocking, big wood. Dad angry. Dad hits Genie big wood. Dad takes wood, knocks. I'm crying. Dad makes me cry. Daddy is dead. "
These words, which do not stand syntactically, capture in the crudest way what Genie Wiley experienced. Her story is one of the extreme stories abuse next door, which shocked the world and became the subject of controversy within the scientific community, who saw the girl as a godsend gift for their research.
When her story came to light, 13-year-old Genie did not speak, she looked like a seven-year-old, she walked the typical hare jump and wore diapers. The American social services of the '50s accidentally noticed the situation of the little girl and so her story became a national affair.
Genie is not the girl's real name, but what the researchers who studied her chose to protect her anonymity.
Susan Wiley was born in April 1957 to Clark Wiley and his wife of many years Irene Oglesby. The little girl's father had grown up with his mother in prostitution, a childhood that stigmatized him until the end of his life. He never wanted children, he hated the noise and the stress they caused. The first girl he got left him in the garage to freeze to death, while the second died due to a congenital health problem.
Then came Genie and her brother John, who were about to receive an unprecedented violence and abuse (the boy to a much lesser extent than Genie).
The father's psychosynthesis was completely dissolved when he lost his mother in a car accident, which he had idealized, repelling his anger for her. The end of their confused relationship sparked even more violent outbursts and made him extremely psychotic with his daughter, in whom he exercised violence on a physical and psychological level.
Clark decided, without any medical advice, that his daughter was mentally retarded and useless in society. And he decided to cut her off from the world. No one came in contact with Genie, who spent most of her life locked in a room without light or in a cage her father had built. He used to handcuff her to her son when he was not sleeping - tied again - or with a makeshift scarf. He hit her with pieces of wood, grunted at her like a dog to frighten her, while some experts later ruled that she may have been sexually abused because of her subsequent indecent sexual behavior.
After 14 years of torture, Genie's mother, who had significant vision problems, decides to escape from the family tyrant with her child. She mistakenly enters the Welfare offices, believing that it was the service that would give her financial help for the problem with her eyes. Social workers are disturbed by the presence of Genie, who behaves strangely and walks like a hare. The girl was 14, but she looked like an 8-year-old. The Police are immediately notified as the case of child abuse is now more than obvious.
The case of shocking and extreme abuse is opened, the prosecutor accuses him of brutal neglect of a minor and is appointed to trial. On November 20, 1970, her day trial, the tyrant father shoots himself and leaves a note next to him that read: "People will not understand".
The story of Genie is making headlines in all the media. When the 14-year-old was taken to the Children's Hospital, she knew very little and was described by doctors as "the most devastated child they had ever seen"!
Genie's case immediately attracted the interest of scientists from various disciplines (pediatricians, neurologists, psychologists, developmental scientists, neuroscientists) funded to study the effects of inclusion and abuse on the girl's psychosocial development.
The "Genie Group", as it was named, was asked to study the teenager for four years and also to see if she could speak as she knew some words until then, but could not form sentences. This particular case, however, came to put under the microscope the ethics that govern the relationship of a subject with his student. Genie lived from time to time with many of the members of the group that watched her. And this not only caused a conflict of interest but turned it into one test animal as a result of which she experiences another abusive relationship in her life.
For linguists, the Genie was an empty space. One of the main tasks of the team was to determine what preceded it: abusing it or delaying its development. A clear answer was never given. Until the late 60s, linguists believed that children could not learn a language after adolescence. But Genie's thirst for learning and curiosity dispelled them. He started to communicate and produce one or two words, but it turned out that grammar is inexplicable to children who have no education between 5 and 10 years. But communication and language remain possible.
"Does language make us human?" Tough question, "said Susan Curtiss, one of the researchers. "One may know a few words, but have many human characteristics, such as loving and forming relationships with others. "Genie can definitely interact," he said.
In this effort of researchers to understand human nature, there was no shortage of criticism and tension. Personal ambitions and competition pushed the team to the limit. Curtiss broke up with the other members of the group (James Kent, David Ringler, Susan Curtiss) undermining their work so far.
Funding for the study by the National Institute of Mental Health froze, and Genie returned to her mother at the age of 18, who took restrictive action against the group, accusing them of experimenting against her daughter. It was then given to several foster families who abused her resulting in all the progress she had made to cease to exist and return to what she was like when she lived with her father.
Genie lost her mother in 2002, her brother John in 2011 and her only niece Pamela in 2012.
At 62, she lives in a home for "dysfunctional adults" in northern California. The woman is guarded by the State and communication with her is particularly difficult as there is a risk that her vulnerable psyche will be further disturbed.
"I'm sure she's alive as every time I get to the center they say she's fine," Curtiss said. "I was never allowed to speak to her. I failed every time I tried to visit her or write to her. "Our last contact was in the early 1980s," he added.