On the fourth of November 1970, a woman and a young girl walked into a social services office in Temple City, California. The woman was nearly blind and had come to inquire about benefits. The girl was with her. Almost immediately, the social worker noticed that something was wrong.

The child appeared to be six or seven years old. She walked with a strange, shuffling gait, holding her hands out in front of her like claws. She could not speak. She was wearing a diaper.

She was thirteen years old. Her name was not Genie. That was a pseudonym, assigned later to protect her identity. But it was the name the world came to know her by.

Over the next few years, she would become one of the most studied children in the history of science. And the story of how that happened would raise a question that never disappeared: when a child is severely harmed, who truly cares for her? And whose interests come first? The names in this story are pseudonyms, including the family name Wiley.

Genie’s father was Clark Wiley. Her mother was Irene. By all accounts, Clark was a domineering and violent man. He did not want children, and he forbade noise in the house.

He and Irene spoke in low voices. The radio, when it was on, was kept at a very low volume. According to accounts from Genie’s mother, the couple’s first child died as an infant, and their second died shortly after birth. A third child, a boy named John, survived.

These details come largely from Irene’s own memories years later and were never fully independently confirmed. What is clear is that by the time Genie was born in April 1957, the Wiley household was already tense and closed off. In 1958, Clark’s mother was killed by a drunk driver. Clark had been close to her, and after her death, his control over the family became even more extreme.

He moved his wife and children into his late mother’s home and began enforcing stricter rules. It is tempting to find a psychological explanation for what Clark did next, but no one could diagnose him from a distance, and the sources do not record what he believed or why. What the sources confirm is what he did. When Genie was about twenty months old, she was moved to a small back bedroom and gradually locked in.

Over time, she was never allowed out again. According to Irene and the researchers who later studied the case, Genie spent her days tied to a child’s potty chair in a bare room with the curtains drawn. At night, she was placed in a crib covered with wire mesh, inside a sleeping bag her father had sewn that kept her arms pinned to her sides. She was punished if she made any noise.

Her father kept a stick in her room, and it was said he would roar and bark outside the door to frighten her into silence. She was fed baby food and cereal quickly and without any human contact. Her mother was told to stay away from her. Irene’s eyesight was failing, and she had been beaten by Clark in the past.

According to her later accounts, she was afraid of what he might do and was convinced there was no escape. For eleven years, Genie had almost no normal contact with the world. She heard almost no conversation. She saw almost nothing beyond the walls of a single room.

She was punished for making sounds, so she learned to make almost none. Then, in October 1970, Irene argued with Clark and said she was leaving to call her parents. For reasons that remain unclear, he allowed it. While Clark was out of the house, Irene took Genie, and the two went to stay with Irene’s parents.

A few weeks later, Irene went to the welfare office to apply for blind assistance. Genie was with her. That was the day the world discovered her story. Social workers notified the police.

Genie was admitted to Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. The doctors who examined her found a girl about 137 centimeters tall, weighing about 27 kilograms. She could not straighten her arms or legs. She could not chew solid food and had difficulty swallowing.

She was incontinent and could not stand fully upright. When she moved, she did so with a distinctive, halting gait that staff nicknamed the “rabbit walk. ” It is important to note how she was described in those first weeks, because some of the terms used then are no longer acceptable today. Some people who wrote about her described her as unsocialized, even primitive.

Those words should be understood as the impressions of adults who had never met a child like her. Genie was not less than human. She was a child whose body and behavior had been shaped by extraordinary circumstances, and she was now being asked to enter a world she had never seen. She was also unable to focus her eyes beyond a distance of about ten feet, the distance from the chair to the door.

And she was almost entirely silent. Even when she was in pain or afraid, she did not cry out. Clark Wiley was arrested and charged with child abuse. On November 20, 1970, one day before his scheduled court appearance, he shot himself.

He left a note. It said the world would never understand. His death ended any chance of a trial or of holding him accountable for his actions. He never faced the consequences of what he had done.

Genie, her brother John, and Irene were left to live with the aftermath. Genie was placed in the hands of strangers who would decide what she would become. And Genie, who had been the center of everything, now became the subject of something else. Among the doctors and researchers who gathered around her was a group of linguists, psychologists, and psychiatrists eager to learn from her.

They included a linguist from UCLA named Victoria Fromkin, a graduate student named Susan Curtiss, and psychologist David Rigler, who was among the team members who cared for her. Why were they so interested? Because of a question that had puzzled scientists for decades: is there a period in childhood during which a human being must be exposed to language in order to learn it properly? And if that window closes, can it ever be reopened?

Some linguists, including Eric Lenneberg, had proposed a critical period for language acquisition beginning around age two and ending at puberty. Researchers had never been able to test this directly. It would be monstrous to deliberately deprive a child of language. But Genie had been deprived of it, and she had missed nearly all of that presumed window between age two and thirteen.

For the first time, researchers had a chance to see what would happen if a child who had missed those years began to learn. That is why her case became known as the forbidden experiment, but the phrase is misleading. Genie was not a controlled experiment. She was an abused child in uncontrolled circumstances, and her deprivation was not only linguistic.

She had been deprived of touch, play, food, and movement. Any conclusion drawn from her case had to account for that. In the early months, Genie made progress that astonished those around her. She had an endless curiosity about the world.

She pointed at things and wanted to know their names. She began to imitate sounds in a strained, high-pitched, guttural voice, as if she were afraid of making any noise at all. It is worth distinguishing between things that are easy to confuse. Learning the names of objects is one thing.

Combining words to express a desire is another. Understanding a sentence is entirely different from being able to construct one. And mastering grammar, the rules that tell us who did what to whom, is something else again. Genie advanced quickly in some of these areas and slowly in others.

This uneven pattern was part of what made her so interesting to researchers. By 1971, she was using single words. A year later, she was putting two words together. After that, she began producing short phrases of three or more words.

She learned to dress herself and to walk with more confidence. She learned to use gestures to express what she wanted. The people who cared for her described her as a lively, loving child. She was said to enjoy outings and to communicate a great deal without needing words.

She also had behaviors that her caregivers found puzzling. She collected plastic containers and hoarded them. Irene later said that while Genie was tied to the chair, she sometimes received an empty cheese container to play with. Genie was afraid of dogs, so much so that she once ran into traffic to avoid one.

Researchers connected this to her father’s growling, though that connection was only an inference. Her caretakers also noticed that she responded to instructions long after they were given. They could only guess why. She had a habit of wandering during mealtimes to take food from other children’s plates.

Observers interpreted this in different ways. No one knew for certain what it meant to her. But after a few years, her progress slowed. She had learned many words.

She could express her desires and tell her caretakers what she wanted. But the structure of language, the grammar that binds words together, never seemed to settle in her the way it does with most children. Researchers subjected her to careful tests. She could name objects and understand many sentences.

She could tell stories about her past in halting phrases. According to the researchers, she once said that her father hit her with a big stick. But she struggled with grammar, with word order, and with the small words that give a sentence its structure. Susan Curtiss and her colleagues designed tests to find out what Genie understood and what she could produce.

They recorded her speech and tracked her development over years. It was precise, valuable work in many respects, but it also meant that most of her day was spent in testing, and it is fair to ask how much of it served her and how much of it served the research. The researchers, led by Susan Curtiss, argued that her case supported the critical period theory. Because she had missed her early years, they said, she could not fully acquire the grammar of English, no matter how much instruction she received.

But this conclusion is questionable because Genie had suffered many kinds of deprivation, and because she may well have had developmental difficulties of her own. Her case alone cannot provide a clean test of any theory. Some researchers have also argued that Lenneberg’s position itself was more nuanced than it is often presented. What Genie’s case shows is that severe early deprivation can have lasting effects on language.

What it cannot show is exactly why. It would be easy to tell this part of the story as a tale of exploitation, with scientists hovering over a vulnerable child like vultures. It is not that simple. Many of the people who worked with Genie cared for her deeply.

Some reportedly took her into their homes, and their research added to what we know about language. But good intentions are not the same as good ethics. As the years passed, the question of who was responsible for Genie’s life became more complicated. After her time in the hospital, Genie lived for several months with her teacher, Jane Butler.

Then she moved in with David Rigler and his family, where she stayed for several years. The Riglers were both her caretakers and the leaders of the research effort. That dual role is one many would see as a conflict of interest. Researchers competed for access to her.

Disagreements broke out among different members of the team. Some felt the testing was too intense. Others felt she was being treated like a laboratory specimen. Reports in The Guardian describe a conflict between researchers and caregivers that grew increasingly bitter.

In 1974, the government grant that funded the research ran out. Shortly after, Genie’s life changed again. In 1975, when she was eighteen, she left the Rigler home. She moved in with her mother.

It did not last long. Irene, nearly blind and struggling with difficulties of her own, found it extremely hard to meet Genie’s needs. Within months, she turned to the state, and Genie was placed in a series of foster homes. This time, the homes bore no resemblance to the home she had known.

According to Curtiss and others, some of her placements were harsh. Genie was reportedly punished for making noise and mocked for the way she spoke. She became withdrawn and almost completely stopped talking. Much of the progress she had made began to fade.

In 1977, two years after leaving the Rigler home, Genie drew a picture. The labels were written by someone else, but they were dictated by Genie. She said, “I am I mama. ” She said, “Mama hand.

” She said, “Genie child. ” No one can say whether it was a memory or a wish, but it was a message from someone still able to reach out to the people who were supposed to care for her. What happened after that is known only in outline. After the funding stopped, the research ended, and the people who had been so interested in her left her life.

According to reports, Irene Wiley later entered into a legal dispute with the researchers and the hospital over how Genie had been treated. The details and outcome of that dispute remain contested. The writer Russ Rymer, whose book is one of the main sources for this period, described photographs of Genie in her late twenties. A psychiatrist who knew her told him she looked withdrawn, like someone who had spent years in an institution.

That is a journalist relaying the impression of a single person. A photograph can show how someone looked on one day, but it does not tell us how she felt or diagnose her condition. The public record largely ends there. In 2016, The Guardian reported that Genie appeared to still be in the care of the state of California, and that officials would not confirm her whereabouts or whether she was alive.

Her privacy is protected, and that is right. She was a child turned into a subject of study, and she deserves to be left in peace. So what do we take from her story? Genie was a thirteen-year-old girl deprived of almost everything a child needs, and she proved, for a time, capable of growth.

She learned to attach names to things in the world. She learned to laugh and to ask for what she wanted. She was loved by some of those around her, and she was, for a few years, the most valuable research subject in the world. The people who studied her case learned a great deal, but the institutions that were supposed to protect her did not put her interests first.

When the funding ended, the interest ended with it. And when the studies were over, there was no one with the power and commitment to ensure she had a stable life. Those who were fascinated by her mind had little to say about what should happen to the rest of her life. The question her story leaves us with is not only how a father could do what Clark Wiley did.

It is what we owe to people who have been harmed and who are, for others, also an opportunity. Genie was not a scientific experiment. She was a human being, and whatever happened to her afterward, she deserved to be treated as one from the very beginning.