Genie
- William Tell
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
She was born in 1957. She had a brother, five years older.
The story really has to begin with her father.
His life was a series of severe personal traumas, that he never resolved. He externalized his woundedness in brutality against his wife and children.
In the years in question, he forbade any of them from ever having contact with the outside world, with the specific exception of allowing the son to attend school — and then, every day when the boy came home from school, he would give him a hard time at the door before letting him in. No visitors were allowed. He would sit for hours at a time in a chair just inside the front door, cradling a shotgun in his lap.
He subjected them to brutal beatings. He kept a diary of his abusiveness.
As to Genie, given an awkwardness of her gait, he concluded that she was mentally retarded, and so had to be hidden away from the world. He put her in a 10 foot × 10 foot room and chained her to a potty chair — and kept her just like that, through all waking hours. He forbade anyone from talking or playing with her. The room was kept dark, and the windows closed, except one being left open an inch or so from the bottom.
That allowed the child to hear, from time to time, someone playing the piano next door.
He would, from time to time, pretend to be a dog, in order to frighten her. Growling noises, barking, facial expressions. He let his fingernails grow long so that he could claw at her.
He kept a wooden plank in the room, with which to beat her.
They spoon fed her baby food. That was all. Thus she never learned how to chew. Whether they fed her enough is a question. When authorities discovered her at age 13½, she was 4 feet 6 inches tall, and weighed 59 pounds.
Her mother was legally blind. On November 4, 1970, she took Genie with her and went to the local social services office to apply for disability benefits for herself. Given her impaired vision, she wandered into the wrong office; and when the staff there saw Genie's condition, they contacted authorities at once. Genie was taken away from her and made a ward of the state. She could not speak or walk.
The matter drew some media attention, and her father could not tolerate the resulting commotion around the house. On November 17, he turned the shotgun on himself.
Genie would be housed at the local county hospital until mid-May 1971. In general, now and throughout the rest of this story, her mother was allowed to visit her twice a week. Quite a number of scientists, who became a team of about six, took an interest in her case, wanting to study her and see to her care. They wanted first of all to determine whether she was autistic, or brain damaged, or mentally retarded, or all of those things or none. They were also especially interested in whether or not she could or would "acquire language," that is, the ability to understand and use language. The foremost theory of the time was that there is a window during which human being may acquire language; it opens at birth, and closes at puberty. So, it might be that Genie would acquire language before then; or after.
Throughout the time of this story, she was regularly evaluated as to developmental progress. Most often, the scores she returned would be typical of a three-to-five year old as to some traits, and a normal adult as to others.
In mid-May 1971, a staff member at the hospital took Genie into her home, and applied to become her foster parent. The application was denied. This lasted six weeks.
The idea came up of allowing Genie to live with David Rigler, one of the scientists who was following her, and his wife; who would care for her alongside their own three children. This was initially supposed to last three months. It became four years. She made her greatest advancements in this time.
Sequelae of her years in confinement:
She refused any food that had to be chewed.
Given the times of her father's pretending to be a dog, she had a phobia of dogs and cats. Mrs. Rigler engaged her in a desensitization exercise, through which she overcame her phobia of dogs. She never healed from her phobia of cats.
She enjoyed listening to people playing classical music on the piano; but it had to be classical, and it had to be live.
She did not grasp that her father was dead. She often verbalized fears that he would come back and take her away. An extended verbalization: "Father hit arm. Big wood. Genie cry ... Not spit. Father. Hit face—spit. Father hit big stick. Father is angry. Father hit Genie big stick. Father take piece wood hit. Cry. Father make me cry. Father is dead"
Given her limited speech, she invented a sign language, in which she became highly articulate. Brain scans found that most of this activity occurred in her right hemisphere, whereas most normal language activity occurs in Brocaw's Area, in the left hemisphere. But Genie's left hemisphere was largely undeveloped. This suggests that sign language employs a different mechanism than spoken language.
When out and about in town, complete strangers would spontaneously give her presents, normally things she liked.
The time with the Riglers came to an end. Sharp disagreements rose among the scientists who had been following her; and her mother, of course, had her own agenda.
Her mother asked, and was granted, permission to take Genie into her home and care for her herself. But it was not long before she found this task overwhelming, and asked the state to take her back. A series of untoward foster home placements followed; and the child regressed.
At that point, she more or less vanished into the system. At last report, she was housed in an unnamed, state-run residential facility for developmentally disabled adults.
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