Genie (feral child)

Genie
Genie displaying her characteristic "bunny walk" shortly after she was rescued at the age of 13.
Born	1957 (age 66–67) Arcadia, California
Nationality	American
Known for	Victim of severe abuse

Genie is the pseudonym of a feral child who was the victim of one of the most severe cases of abuse and neglect ever documented. She spent most of her first thirteen years of life locked inside a bedroom, strapped to a child's toilet or bound inside a crib with her arms and legs immobilized. Genie's abuse came to the attention of Los Angeles child welfare authorities on November 4, 1970.

In the first several years after Genie's life and circumstances came to light, psychologists, linguists and other scientists focused a great deal of attention on Genie's case, seeing in her near-total social isolation an opportunity to study acquisition of language skills and linguistic development. Scrutiny of their new-found human subject enabled them to publish academic works testing theories and hypotheses identifying critical periods during which humans learn to understand and use language. During the course of their research, Genie gradually started to acquire and develop new language skills. When funding and research interest eventually waned and she was placed in new foster homes, those skills regressed.

She was originally cared for at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and her living arrangements later became the subject of rancorous debate and litigation. She was repeatedly uprooted, first moving to the homes of the researchers who studied her, then into foster care, her mother's house, and finally to a residence for adults with disabilities. As of 2008, she was in psychological confinement as a ward of the state of California; her real name and current residence remain undisclosed. Genie's case has been extensively compared with that of Victor of Aveyron, an eighteenth-century French child whose life similarly became a case study for research about delayed development and language acquisition.

Early history

Early life

Genie was the fourth and last child of parents living in Arcadia, California. Her father worked in a factory as a flight mechanic during World War II and got a job in the aviation industry after the war ended; her mother came to California as a teenager fleeing the Dust Bowl. As he was twenty years older than she, her mother's family opposed their marriage. The couple seemed happy to those who knew them, although he was seen as a something of a distant loner by others, and he began beating his wife with increasing frequency as time went on. Genie's mother began progressively losing her vision due to severe cataracts, a detached retina and neurological damage from a childhood accident, forcing her to become progressively more dependent on her husband. From the outset of their relationship, Genie's father was adamant about not wanting children. Nonetheless, after about five years of marriage a daughter was born. Despite the increasingly frequent beatings her mother endured during the late stages of her pregnancy—she had been in the hospital recovering from an especially severe beating when she went into labor—this daughter appeared to be healthy. Disturbed by her crying, her father placed the infant in the garage; she died of pneumonia at 10 weeks old. A second child, a boy diagnosed with Rh incompatibility, died at two days of age, allegedly from choking on his own mucus. Another son was born three years later, once again with Rh incompatibility. He was slow to develop, and late to walk and to talk. When he was four, his paternal grandmother grew concerned about her son's increasing instability and took over her grandson's care; he made good progress with her before eventually being returned to his parents. Around the time Genie was born, her father began to isolate himself and his family from those around them.

Soon after Genie's birth, she also showed signs of Rh incompatibility, requiring a blood transfusion. Otherwise she was born at a healthy weight and size. A medical appointment at three months showed that she was gaining weight normally, but that she had a congenital hip dislocation which required splinting for seven months. At subsequent appointments, up until the age of 11 months, she was noted as alert and to be sitting up alone, but falling behind on her weight gain; at birth she had been in the 50th percentile for weight, but by the time of that appointment had fallen to the 11th percentile. Her mother later recalled that Genie was not a cuddly baby and resisted eating solid food. When Genie was 14 months old, she came down with a fever and was examined by a pediatrician; he said that although he was unable to make any definitive diagnosis due to her illness, there was a possibility she might be mentally retarded. He also suggested the brain dysfunction kernicterus might be present, Rh incompatibility being a significant risk factor for kernicterus. Her father took the pediatrician's opinion to mean that Genie was severely retarded, using it as justification for isolating and abusing her. When Genie was 20 months old, her paternal grandmother was killed in a hit-and-run traffic accident with a truck. Genie's father had never been very close to his mother while growing up, having only had limited contact with her while spending much of his childhood in various orphanages. During most of his adult life they had argued constantly about her unsuccessful efforts to convince him to adopt a less rigid lifestyle; however, according to Genie's mother and brother, her father was deeply affected by his mother's death. He already had difficulty controlling his anger, and when the truck's driver received only a probationary sentence for both manslaughter and drunk driving he became nearly delusional with rage. After the sentencing, her father quit his job and further increased the family's isolation. They moved into his late mother's two-bedroom house, with her bedroom left untouched, as a shrine to her. Genie was increasingly confined to the second bedroom, while the rest of the family slept in the living room.

From the time Genie was born, her father displayed hostility toward her, discouraging his wife from paying any attention to her. Researchers speculated that his mother's death and the outcome of the subsequent trial made him feel as if the outside world had failed him, and convinced him to protect Genie from the outside world; in his nearly delusional state, he believed the best way to do this was to hide Genie's existence entirely. During the day, she was tied to a child's toilet in a makeshift harness designed like a straightjacket to keep her from moving her arms or legs, wearing nothing but diapers and only able to move her fingers. At night, when her father did not forget about her, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in a crib with a metal-screen cover, her arms and legs immobilized. Researchers concluded that Genie's father kept a large wooden plank in her room, and would beat her with it if she vocalized. To keep her quiet, he would bark and growl at her like a dog; the exact reason for this was never definitively discerned, but at least one of the scientists speculated that he viewed himself as a guard dog and acted out the role by behaving like one. This instilled an intense fear of cats and dogs in Genie that persisted long after she was freed. She was fed no solid food; instead, she was fed baby food, cereal, an occasional soft-boiled egg and liquids. Food was shoved into her mouth as quickly as possible, and if she choked or could not swallow it fast enough it would be rubbed into her face. Bowing to pressure to keep contact with his sister to a minimum, her brother, who was himself subjected to frequent beatings by their father, was often forced to feed Genie in this manner. Once, when Genie was suffering from constipation, her father forced her to drink an entire bottle of castor oil, almost killing her. The only stimulation she experienced from outside her home came by way of two windows, through which she could hear occasional traffic noises and see both the side of a neighboring house and a couple inches of sky, and years later her mother would claim that she could also hear birds and airplanes flying over the house. Even these stimuli would have been extremely limited, as the windows were almost entirely blacked out and the house was set a long way away from the street. On rare occasions, her father would also allow her to play with plastic food containers, old spools of thread, TV Guides with the illustrations cut out, and two plastic raincoats. He had an extremely low tolerance for noise, to the point of refusing to have a working television or radio in the house. He almost never allowed Genie's mother or brother to speak. They were particularly forbidden to speak to or around Genie, which prevented her from hearing any meaningful amount of language other than her father's occasional swearing. He rarely permitted anyone to leave the house, only allowing Genie's brother to go to school, and would frequently sit in the living room with a shotgun in his lap to discourage disobedience.

Genie's mother was almost completely blind by this time, and was essentially passive by nature to begin with. Her husband threatened to kill her if she attempted to contact her parents, close friends who lived nearby or the police. He also forced Genie's brother into silence, giving him instructions on how to keep his father's actions secret and beating him more often as he grew older. He was convinced that Genie would die by age 12 and promised that, if she survived past that age, he would allow his wife to seek outside assistance. When Genie turned 12 he reneged on that promise, and Genie's mother took no action for another year.

Rescue

The first picture of Genie after California authorities discovered her.

In late October 1970, after Genie's mother and father had a violent argument, Genie's mother left her husband to go live with her parents and took Genie with her; Genie's brother, by then 18, had already run away from home. Three weeks later on November 4th, seeking disability benefits on account of her near-blindness, she inadvertently entered the general social services office in Temple City, California, accompanied by Genie. The social worker who greeted them was shocked to learn that Genie's true age was 13, having estimated from her appearance that she was around half that age and possibly autistic. Genie's parents were arrested, and a court order was issued for Genie to be taken to Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Upon her admission David Rigler, a therapist and USC psychology professor who was the chief psychologist at the hospital, and Howard Hansen, then the head of the psychiatry division and an early expert on child abuse, took direct control of the case. The day after Genie's admission physician James Kent, another early advocate for child abuse awareness, examined her. He later stated this examination revealed by far the most severe case of child abuse he ever saw. In the house the family had been living in, police found several devices Genie's father used to restrain and hit Genie, and said the room Genie was confined in was almost pitch-black due to the coverings on the windows. They also discovered detailed notes written by Genie's father, chronicling both his mistreatment of his family and his efforts to conceal it; after reading through them, the lead officer on the investigation said "Hitler could have taken lessons from [Genie's father]". When the police interviewed several neighbors of Genie's parents they found none of them knew Genie's parents ever had another child, and their neighbors were stunned when police informed them of Genie's existence and of the abuse Genie's father had inflicted on his family. Rigler said the hospital could not get her developmental history, and relied largely on the police investigation to piece together what had happened.

Genie’s rescue reached major media outlets on November 17th, 1970, receiving a great deal of local and national media attention. That night, Walter Cronkite included a segment on Genie in the evening news. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story on Genie both that day and the next, and continued to run several prominent stories on Genie and her family for a week after the story initially broke; Children's Hospital staff said reporters regularly came to the hospital's lobby hoping to see Genie, making it very difficult for the hospital to maintain her anonymity as Rigler and Hansen had planned. Despite repeated questioning by news reporters, Genie's mother would not speak to the media about her family and Genie's father, acting at least partially on the advice of his attorney, refused to talk to the media at all. After the story broke, large crowds of people went to the house to try to get a look at Genie's father, which he reportedly found extremely distressing. On November 20th, just over two weeks after being arrested and on the morning before a scheduled court appearance on charges of child abuse, Genie's father committed suicide by gunshot; his son was standing with a friend outside the house, and had no knowledge of his father's intentions. He left two suicide notes, one for the police and one for his son. One contained the declaration, "The world will never understand." The Children's Hospital staff, especially Kent, wanted to keep Genie's mother involved in Genie's life because she was Genie's only association with her past. Hansen was an acquaintance of attorney John Miner, and to keep Genie's mother from going to jail convinced Miner to represent her in court. She told the court that beatings at the hands of her husband and her near-total blindness had left her unable to intervene on Genie's behalf. The charges against her were subsequently dropped, and she received counseling at Children's Hospital; Hansen was the direct supervisor of her therapist. The following year, with the consent of her and her psychologists, Miner was named Genie's legal guardian.

Characteristics and personality

Genie was severely undersized for her age, standing 4'6" and weighing only 59 pounds. Her gross motor skills were extremely weak; she could not stand up straight nor do anything requiring her to fully straighten her arms or legs. Kent was surprised to find her fine motor skills were at approximately the level of a two year old, as he thought they would be as weak as her gross motor abilities. She could not focus her eyes on anything more than 10 feet away, and her characteristic "bunny walk", in which she held her hands in front of her like claws, suggested an inability to integrate visual and tactile information; Victor of Aveyron had exhibited similar difficulties with integration. As she could not chew solid food, she would hold her food in her mouth until her saliva broke it down, and if the process took too long she would spit it out and use her fingers to mash it. She could barely swallow, and had almost two full sets of teeth in her mouth, requiring oral surgery. The restraining harness her father used to immobilize her had caused a thick callus and heavy black bruising on her buttocks, which took several weeks to heal. She was also completely incontinent. Like Victor of Aveyron, she seemed unaffected by certain strong sensations, especially extreme temperatures; even years after her rescue, when she was allowed to bathe and shower by herself, researchers observed that she would use very cold water. Researchers noticed from the outset that she had an extreme fear of cats and dogs, but its origin was not discerned until many years later.

After moving into Children's Hospital, Genie showed interest in many members of the hospital staff, often approaching complete strangers in the hospital and walking with them; James Kent said that even at the very beginning of her stay, she made very good eye contact. However, she showed no signs of attachment to anyone in particular, including members of her own family; at first, she seemed much more interested in the hospital staff than her family. When her mother and brother first came to visit her at the hospital, Kent and Genie were playing with some puppets she had taken a liking to; Kent said Genie walked up to her mother and gave her mother a brief, expressionless look before resuming her play, and despite her brother's greeting did not pay any attention to him acknowledge his presence. Kent said she did not seem to distinguish different individuals, and thought she seemed more interested in the room she was in than the people who were there with her. At first, Genie would not allow anyone to touch her, quickly shying away from any attempts at physical contact. Although she would sit on her mother's lap when requested, she would remain very tense and got up as quickly as possible; at least once, as soon as she got away from her mother she burst out into a silent tantrum. Hospital staff noted Genie's mother seemed entirely oblivious to Genie's reactions; at least once she commented on how happy she thought Genie had been after Genie was able to get away. Genie had no sense of personal property, frequently pointing to or taking something she wanted from someone else. Initially, she was almost entirely mute, understood only about 15-20 words, and had an active vocabulary of just two short phrases, "stop it" and "no more". Although she almost never vocalized, Genie continually sniffed, salivated, spat and clawed, and appeared very interested in exploring environmental stimuli. When upset she would spit and scratch and strike herself, never crying or making any noise; some accounts said that she was unable to cry at all. Doctors at the hospital knew her father's abuse had played some role in this, but did not find out until much later the extent to which he had forced her to repress her expressions of emotion. Nonetheless, hospital staff hoped to nurture her closer to normality.

Early on, Jay Shurley, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Oklahoma and a specialist in extreme social isolation, carried out a three-night sleep study each of the first three times he visited Genie. The scientists were unsure whether whether she had been born mentally retarded, had sustained irreversible brain damage which left her retarded due to her severe malnutrition, or had merely been rendered functionally retarded by her isolation and abuse. He concluded she had been retarded from birth, pointing to atypically high numbers of sleep spindles, a phenomenon typical of subjects born with severe retardation. However, doctors following the case remained divided on the issue. Much later, for example, Susan Curtiss pointed out that Genie had made a year's developmental progress per calendar year after her rescue, which would not be expected if her condition was congenital. Shurley, who had extensive knowledge of existing literature on cases of extreme isolation and abuse in children, also said that Genie's was the most severe case of isolation he had ever studied or heard of, and offered several suggestions about how to work with her based on his experience. When he first met Genie he was insistent that her transition to the outside world be very gradual, comparing it to slowly bringing someone with decompression sickness back up from underwater. David Rigler said that, despite their later disagreements, Shurley's recommendations were the only useful advice he ever received about handling Genie and he attempted to follow them as much as possible. Shurley thought Genie made for an excellent case study on many fronts, and in the early part of his involvement assisted with research. Over subsequent years, from his home in Oklahoma City Shurley remained in contact with many of the people around Genie, and periodically traveled back to California to visit with Genie, her mother, and the other scientists.

Hospital stay

After Genie's rescue, the doctors at Children's Hospital began teaching her to speak and socialize. The day after her admission, James Kent was assigned to be Genie's therapist and thought having a steady presence in her life would help Genie with learning to form relationships, so he made it a point to accompany her on walks and to appointments. When Kent first met with her he tried to discern her emotional and intellectual state, and found that she seemed afraid of a small puppet he had taken out. When she threw it on the floor Kent pretended to be concerned and said "We have to get him back", and was startled when she repeated the word "back" and nervously laughed. This quickly became her favorite play, and during the early part of her stay was one of the only times doctors could see her express any kind of emotion. Within a few days of arriving at Children's Hospital Genie started learning to dress herself and began voluntarily using the toilet, although incontinence continued to be a problem for her even years later, tending to resurface when she felt under duress. After two weeks, Kent decided to take Genie to play in the yard outside the hospital's rehabilitation center, hoping to give her a sense of freedom. Around this time, Kent and the other hospital staff began to see Genie as a potential case study, and David Rigler was able to get a small grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to do some preliminary studies on her.

Genie quickly developed a sense of possession, hoarding objects to which she took a liking. While in captivity, she was given very few toys or or other objects providing any stimulation; the majority of her time was spent in a dark room staring at a yellow plastic raincoat. What little she did have consisted mostly of old plastic food containers. Colorful plastic objects, whether they were toys or ordinary containers, quickly became her favorite things to collect and play with; she especially sought out and collected beach pails, maintaining an arrangement of exactly 23 pails near her bed. When she was first given small objects in the hospital's play area, doctors saw that she took great pleasure in either intentionally dropping or destroying them; instead of discouraging her, most of the hospital staff, and especially Kent, tried to use this to get her to outwardly express her anger. She very intensely explored her surroundings, showing a great desire to learn new words. Later during her stay at Children's Hospital, when Kent started taking her on trips outside the hospital, Genie's favorite places to go were stores with plastic toys. When they were out and she wanted to go shopping, she would point to buildings and ask "Store?" If someone in a toy store looked interesting to her or was carrying something she liked, she would walk right up to and attach herself to who or what had caught her attention. She also showed deep fascination with classical music played on the piano in front of her; Susan Curtiss said she acted like she was in a trance when she heard something she enjoyed, and that sometimes she looked as if she was hallucinating. If the song played was anything other than classical music, she would walk up to the piano and change the sheet music to a piece she knew she liked. In captivity, she could regularly hear a neighboring child practicing the piano; as this was one of the very few sensations available to her before her rescue, researchers thought it may have been the origin of her interest. Genie quickly developed remarkable nonverbal communication skills and soon learned to imitate other people, make consistent eye contact, to vocalize, and to express herself through gestures.

Within two months of her rescue, Genie's demeanor had considerably changed. The scientists were concerned that she almost never attempted to interact with other children—one psychiatrist who visited her in May 1971 said she seemed to view other children “as though for her they were no different from the walls and furniture in the room”— but after a month she started to become sociable with familiar adults, first with Kent and soon extending to other hospital staff. They noticed she was afraid of men who wore khaki pants, and saw she displayed a particular affinity for men with beards; they attributed the latter to her father having been clean-shaven, and her preference was so marked that when Jay Shurley planned to come for a visit in May 1971, Genie's special education teacher, Jean Butler, wrote him a letter in which she emphatically told him to keep his beard. One morning a few months after being admitted to Children's Hospital, when a minor earthquake struck Los Angeles, she ran frightened into the kitchen and began rapidly verbalizing to some of the cooks she had befriended; this was noted as the first time she had sought out comfort from another person and the first time she had verbalized so profusely. After the charges of child abuse were dropped against Genie's mother she began visiting Genie twice a week at the hospital, and Kent said both of them grew more comfortable with each other. As Genie grew better at forming relationships with hospital staff she began eagerly anticipating her mother's visits, and the doctors noticed she began more openly expressing her happiness when she knew her mother was coming. However, she still had a difficult time with large crowds, even after months at the Children's Hospital; at her birthday party, she became so anxious at all the guests present she had to go outside to calm down. Although her walk remained very distinctive, she steadily became more confident in her physical movements and started engaging in physical play with adults. Eventually, she began to enjoy giving and receiving hugs from people. After several months she began to direct some of her anger outwards, but she did not entirely stop harming herself. Six months after being admitted to Children's Hospital, in May 1971, psychologist David Elkind evaluated Genie and reported she showed signs of understanding object permanence. Around the same time, after Genie had heard a dog barking Elkind said she later attempted to imitate the sounds it made, the first time she had tried to reenact something after it happened; Elkind and the hospital psychologists saw both as major cognitive gains.

After five months of therapy, her speech was difficult to understand, but her vocabulary had steadily increased, she could spontaneously provide one-word answers, and she appeared to understand some of give-and-take of conversation. Hospital staff observed she would frequently say "No" but not actually mean it, which she continued to do for some time even after her vocabulary expanded. One day in May 1971 when she was with Jean Butler, Butler had asked another boy holding two balloons how many balloons he had; when the boy said "three", Butler said Genie appeared startled and handed him another balloon. This was seen as a significant step, as it demonstrated that she was listening to other people, she understood significantly more language than she was producing, and that she could count. By the time Curtiss met Genie, she was extremely eager to expand her vocabulary; Curtiss said Genie would frequently grab her hand and point it towards objects for which she wanted to know the word. If Curtiss could not figure out what Genie was looking for, Genie refused to let go until she learned at least one new word. Genie seemed particularly eager to learn the words for colors, expressing disappointment if Curtiss could not name the color she wanted to know. Her nonverbal communication skills became exceptional; everyone who saw her said she had an indescribable way of capturing people's emotions, and researchers noticed many instances where she seemed to be able to communicate her desires to people without saying a single word. When Curtiss and Kent went to toy stores with Genie, they frequently found that complete strangers had bought something for her because they sensed she wanted it, and both of them were amazed at how these gifts were always exactly the types of objects she most enjoyed. Once, Curtiss remembered she and Genie were waiting to cross a street when a woman who had stopped at an intersection emptied her plastic purse, then jumped out of her car to give it to Genie; Curtiss was stunned, as Genie had not said anything. Genie had also befriended a local butcher without ever having to speak to him, and whenever they visited him Curtiss said he would give Genie a small piece of unwrapped meat which she would study, smell, and rub on her lips before eating. During the brief time David Elkind worked with Genie, he took her on a walk through Griffith Park; he said she was fascinated by everything around her, and like Curtiss and Kent noted the intensity with which she explored her surroundings. On these trips outside the hospital, Curtiss would deliberately act silly to help Genie release some of her pent-up tension. Her doctors, at that time, predicted completely successful rehabilitation.

Interest as a case study

Victor of Aveyron c. 1800

Coincidentally, the François Truffaut film The Wild Child premiered in the United States only a week after Genie's rescue. The movie, chronicling the life of Victor of Aveyron and the efforts of physician and deaf-mute instructor Jean Marc Gaspard Itard to teach him language and integrate him into society, heightened public interest in cases of children subjected to extreme abuse or isolation. Hypotheses of Noam Chomsky and Eric Lenneberg about the innateness and acquisition of language were being widely discussed in lay as well as academic circles, but there had been no way to test their hypotheses. Though ancient texts made several references to language deprivation experiments, modern researchers labeled such ideas "The Forbidden Experiment", impossible to carry out for ethical reasons. Prompted by this coincidence of timing, a team of Children's Hospital scientists led by David Rigler sought and obtained a grant from the NIMH to study Genie in May 1971. Genie's teacher at Children's Hospital, Jean Butler, suggested that on the first day the team met they should screen The Wild Child as an inspiration for ideas; the scientists later said the film had a profound impact on them because they immediately saw the parallels with Genie's case. The primary focus of their research was to test Lenneberg's theory that humans have a critical age threshold for language acquisition, and linguistic evaluation would be headed by UCLA linguistics professor Victoria Fromkin. Lenneberg knew about Genie's case but declined to participate, saying the case was too clouded to draw definitive conclusions because there was no way to know how much trauma was associated with Genie's confinement and her father's beatings. The research team also planned to continue periodic evaluations of Genie's psychological development, which had begun shortly after her admission to Children's Hospital, in various aspects of her life. From the time Genie had been admitted to Children's Hospital, researchers had tried to keep her identity concealed and it was around the time of the grant proposal that the researchers adopted the pseudonym Genie for her. The name was a reference to parallels researchers saw between Genie's sudden emergence into society from captivity past childhood and a genie's sudden emergence from a bottle without having a human childhood.

The scientists later said there were many different ideas on what the focus of the proposed study would be, and pinning down the direction of the study was very difficult. A few said the environment grew increasingly hostile as the meetings went on and became less focused on doing what was best for Genie in the interest of research; Elkind said that despite his already existing personal friendship with Rigler he declined to become further involved, and Shurley claimed the atmosphere he witnessed at the meetings made him increasingly leery of the way researchers were handling Genie and caused him to remain on the periphery of the case. However, many others adamantly maintained there had neither been any animosity nor any notion that Genie's welfare was not their first priority. Instead, they said the difficulty was simply due to the exceptional nature of the case. Even Shurley said he fully understood how difficult the task of giving the study a coherent direction had been, and although he was surprised Rigler chose to carry out a study focused on language acquisition—he had pushed for more focus on her social and emotional development, and was only marginally aware of Fromkin's work with Genie prior to the decision—did not have any objection to it.

At around the same time Susan Curtiss began her work on Genie's case, as a graduate student in linguistics under Victoria Fromkin; Curtiss would go on to become one of the most influential figures in Genie's life over the coming years. Curtiss already knew of the case from the news reports when Genie's parents were arrested, and used video and transcripts from the hospital to piece together Genie's progress during the time before they met. Together with Fromkin, she tested Genie and tracked her language acquisition, writing numerous papers that covered various aspects of Genie's progress. When Curtiss first met Genie, she realized Genie's language abilities were not yet at a level that could be usefully tested, so she decided to devote the summer to simply getting to know Genie and gaining her friendship. By then, Kent had started taking Genie on trips outside the hospital, and Curtiss began to go along with them; she and Genie very quickly bonded with each other. During the summer of 1971, while Curtiss was still in the process of befriending Genie, she and Fromkin realized existing linguistic tests would not yield meaningful results, so they designed a set of 26 completely new tests from which they extrapolated most of their data. Curtiss also began recording every spontaneous utterance she heard Genie make, ultimately compiling a list of approximately a few thousand by the time she completed her dissertation in 1977.

Brain testing

The Salk Institute, where researchers analyzed the data from the first of two brain exams on Genie.

Beginning in 1971, scientists conducted a series of neurolinguistic tests on Genie. In early March 1971, Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima came from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to administer their own series of brain exams. They had suspected Genie's brain was extremely right-hemisphere dominant, but the tests went even further and showed the asymmetry was at a level of severity which had previously only been documented in patients with either split-brain or who had had their left hemispheres surgically removed. Despite being right-handed, her left hemisphere appeared to have undergone no specialization whatsoever. In most right-handed people the left ear, which is more strongly connected to the right hemisphere, tends to better process environmental and musical sounds, while the right ear is better able to pick up language; however, despite having typical hearing in both ears, on dichotic listening tests researchers found Genie identified language sounds with 100% accuracy in her left ear while answering at the level of chance when using her right ear. Her non-language dichotic listening tests came back normal, and she tested at 100% accuracy in both ears on monaural tests; this discrepancy was far larger than what is found in most people. This suggested the competition between her ears was only between her right ear ipsilateral and left ear contralateral pathways, which led researchers to conclude that she was processing both environmental and language sounds exclusively in her right hemisphere.

In addition to the listening tests, Genie was also given tachistoscopic and evoked response tests. These showed she performed most tasks primarily using her right hemisphere, such as perspective (something evident in many of Genie's drawings which by October 1971 depicted silhouettes and figures in profile, both of which require a relatively high degree of sophistication), holistic recall of unrelated objects, gestalt perception, and number perception, at a much higher level than those typically performed by the left hemisphere. Some abilities, such as her spatial awareness, were at or higher than the level of a typical adult, indicating her right hemisphere had undergone specialization; on spatial awareness tests, her scores were reportedly the highest ever recorded to that point. There were a few primarily right hemisphere tasks she did not perform well on, such as facial recognition tests and remembering designs. Curtiss' explanation was that these tasks normally require the use of both hemispheres, which would be very difficult for Genie since she almost exclusively used her already-specialized right hemisphere. Bellugi and Klima also noted that Genie seemed to understand a considerably larger number of words than she would spontaneously say, but were unsure exactly what cues she was using to respond to other peoples' speech. They recommended using tests and games to establish her comprehension, writing that these would more accurately pinpoint her linguistic abilities than relying solely on her spontaneous speech, and emphasized that any non-language cues such as tone of voice and facial expressions would have to be eliminated to yield the best possible results. A second set of exams conducted in the fall of 1971 at the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, under the direction of Curtiss, Victoria Fromkin, and Stephen Krashen—then also one of Fromkin's graduate students—confirmed these findings.

First foster home

Genie's teacher at Children's Hospital, Jean Butler, became very close to her; Jay Shurley especially praised Butler's work with Genie. In June 1971, Butler obtained permission to take Genie on day trips to her home in Country Club Park, Los Angeles. After one of these trips, Butler told the hospital that she (Butler) may have contracted rubella, to which Genie would have been exposed. The scientists were very skeptical of Butler's story, strongly suspecting she had concocted it as part of a bid for foster custody; nonetheless Genie was temporarily quarantined in Butler's home as an alternative to isolation at the hospital. Butler, who was unmarried and living alone at the time and childless, subsequently petitioned for foster custody of Genie, and despite the hospital's objections the stay was extended while authorities considered the matter.

Butler's observations

During Genie's stay in her home, Butler continued observing, writing about, and filming Genie. One behavior she documented was Genie's hoarding, first observed at Children's Hospital; in particular, Genie collected and kept dozens of containers of liquid in her room. The scientists did not know what caused this, although it is a common trait of children from abusive homes. On several occasions Butler went to the beach with Genie, who seemed fascinated with the water and waded in up to her ankles. Butler worked on Genie's ongoing problems with incontinence, which gradually eased and almost entirely went away by the end of her stay. Although Butler was unable to discern the reason for Genie's intense fear of cats and dogs, after witnessing it firsthand Butler tried to help Genie overcome her fear by watching episodes of the television series Lassie with her and giving her a battery-powered toy dog. Butler wrote that eventually Genie could tolerate fenced dogs, though there was no progress with cats. Butler, the scientists, and the NIMH evaluating committee all noted a marked improvement in Genie's demeanor during her stay with Butler, stating that she seemed more relaxed. They also noticed that soon after moving in, Genie started showing signs of reaching puberty; this both indicated a dramatic improvement in her overall health and definitively put her past the critical period in Lenneberg's hypothesis, although David Rigler said the onset of menstruation this entailed had complicated their efforts to deal with her incontinence.

Butler's journal and films are the only data available on Genie's speech during this time, as Curtiss' dissertation contains nothing from this period. Butler claimed that since Genie had moved in with her, Genie had become far more verbal. Butler specifically said she had taught Genie to say "yes" to other people, to use negative forms of words, to help her stop hurting herself, and to express her anger through words or by hitting objects. Around a month into Genie's stay, Butler said Genie had argued with her over not wanting to come inside, which would have been the first time Genie had expressed her disagreement in language. In early August, Butler wrote to Jay Shurley that Genie had begun to regularly use two-word sentences, and sometimes two adjacent adjectives to describe nouns, as in e.g., "one black kitty". Butler said the man she was dating—who was himself a former professor at the University of Southern California and a respected psychologist—commented on Genie's progress, calling her "my little yakker". She also reported that a few days prior, when she asked Genie why she had thrown her new pet goldfish outside, Genie explained "bad orange fish—no eat—bad fish"—which would have been by far her longest utterance to that point.

Dispute

While Genie was living with her, Butler allowed Genie's mother, who had regained much of her eyesight through corrective cataract surgery arranged for her by her therapists, to come on weekly visits. After her surgery she reportedly reformed her opinion of several of the scientists, and when she was able to see Genie for the first time, she was shocked and concerned at how thin Genie was. However, Butler strenuously resisted visits by the scientists, whom she felt overtaxed Genie and to whom she began disparagingly referring in her journal as the "Genie Team", a name which stuck. Butler particularly disliked James Kent and Susan Curtiss, writing that Kent was too permissive towards Genie's behavior and Curtiss was overzealous in her efforts to get Genie to speak; during the latter part of Genie's stay at Butler's house, both of them were prevented from visiting. She frequently argued with the scientists about Genie's handling, especially with Rigler, although he maintained that these disputes were never as heated or personalized as Butler portrayed them. The scientists strongly contested Butler's claims of pushing Genie too hard, contending Genie enjoyed the tests and was allowed to take breaks at will. They viewed Butler as personally troubled, noting her longstanding reputation for combativeness among coworkers and superiors. Several of the scientists, especially Curtiss, recalled Butler openly stating that she hoped Genie would make her famous; Curtiss said she remembered Butler repeatedly proclaiming her intent to be "the next Anne Sullivan". She also demanded several times to be credited in the scientists' research publications; although Rigler initially acquiesced, the scientists eventually decided against it. During Genie's stay, Butler believed authorities would view her pending foster application more favorably if she could offer a two-parent home for Genie; to do this, Butler had the man she was dating move in with her. Butler wrote he and Genie got along very well, which Shurley later corroborated, and she and Rigler both said he sometimes attempted to mediate disputes between Butler and the scientists. The agency's case handler visited Butler's home several times and thought she was providing excellent care; however, despite the concurrence of the NIMH's evaluating committee, the case handler's superiors were very divided over whether Butler's home was adequate for Genie.

In mid-August, California authorities informed Butler they had rejected her application for foster custody. The extent, if any, to which Children's Hospital influenced that decision is unclear. Rigler maintained several times that despite the scientists' objections to Butler's application, there had not been any intervention by the hospital or its staff, and said he was surprised by the decision. In early August he had written a letter to Butler—copies of which he had sent to Kent, Howard Hansen, and the agency's case handler—in which he said that despite his frustration with her due to her lack of cooperation with the scientists, he thought her home was suitable for Genie and her application was likely to be accepted. The NOVA documentary on Genie, however, states the rejection of Ruch came partially on the recommendation of the hospital; there is evidence many hospital authorities felt Butler's ability to care for Genie was insufficient, and hospital policy forbade its staff members from becoming foster parents of its patients. Butler herself believed the hospital had opposed her application so Genie could be moved somewhere more conducive to research, and wrote that Genie was extremely upset upon being told of the decision and had said "No, no, no." She did not see Genie again for several years, though she stayed in contact with Genie's mother. Over the course of the next 15 years, she made repeated attacks on the scientists working with Genie in numerous forums.

Second foster home

After Genie was removed from Jean Butler's home, she was returned to Children's Hospital; on the same day, she was transferred to the home of David Rigler. The scientists had agreed they wanted Genie to have a home to live in, and after denying Butler custody the state had been unable to find anyone else. In early August, Hansen had suggested Rigler take custody of Genie if authorities rejected Butler, and although he initially balked at the idea decided to talk it over with his wife, Marilyn. They had three adolescent children of their own, and ultimately decided they would be willing to temporarily care for Genie until a new foster home became available if no one else would do so; Marilyn had graduate training as a social worker and had just completed a graduate degree in human development, and had experience working in both nursery schools and Head Start Programs. Despite the hospital's policy, the hospital and the state consented and the Riglers were made temporary foster parents; although they initially intended the arrangement to last for three months at most, Genie ultimately stayed with them for four years. While living with them Marilyn became Genie's new teacher and Susan Curtiss was allowed to visit almost every day, both to conduct her tests and to go on outings with Genie. Shortly after Genie moved in with them one of the Riglers' children went away to college, enabling Genie to have her own room and bathroom in the house. Much of Genie's development during this time was captured on film and David Rigler said she eventually learned how to operate the cameras herself.

Upon moving in with them, Genie's incontinence issues resurfaced, and Marilyn noticed her speech was much more halting and hesitant than Butler had described. Unless she saw a dog or something else which frightened her, Genie's speech and behavior exhibited a great deal of latency; often her responses were delayed by several minutes. The Riglers also found Genie frequently took things from their children and could be very destructive, requiring full-time supervision. She was captivated by books, especially National Geographic magazines—of which the Riglers had a very large collection—and David Rigler especially found it disconcerting that she did not hesitate to tear out a page or a picture she liked. Besides dealing with these problems, Marilyn also found the need to teach Genie unconventional lessons. Despite what Butler had said about stopping Genie's self-harming, Marilyn observed Genie would still act out her anger on herself; to counter this, Marilyn taught Genie to direct her frustrations outward by jumping, slamming doors, hitting objects, stomping her feet, and generally "having a fit." When Marilyn noticed Genie's eagerness to be complimented on her looks, to further discourage her from attacking herself, Marilyn began painting Genie's fingernails and telling her she did not look good when she scratched and cut her face. When Marilyn could see Genie getting upset, Marilyn would say to her, "You are upset. You are having a rough time." Genie gradually began to communicate her frustration in language by responding "rough time" when Marilyn said this, eventually only needing to hear "You are upset" before saying "rough time". Later during her stay, Genie could communicate different levels of frustration; depending on whether she was very angry or merely frustrated, she would either vigorously shake one finger or loosely wave her hand. Marylin also helped Genie to overcome her continuing difficulties with chewing by giving her progressively tougher foods and physically raising and lowering Genie's jaw—a process which ultimately took around four months—and after noticing her complete indifference to temperature, Marilyn worked to help Genie become more attuned to her body's sensations. Both David and Marilyn worked to reduce Genie's fear of dogs, using their own puppy to gradually acclimate her over several days when she first moved in. Although she eventually grew comfortable with the Riglers' cat and dog, she remained extremely afraid of unfamiliar cats and dogs.

As she settled into living with the Riglers, Genie's incontinence mostly disappeared and her demeanor improved. After a few months she was able to eat solid food, and about 10 months after she moved in, on an outing with Curtiss, she expressed her happiness in language to Curtiss for the first time. She began to outwardly exhibit more of her emotions; Curtiss said one of the major breakthroughs she observed was when she had arrived at the Rigler's house one morning when Genie was feeling sick, where she found Genie in tears because she had found out she would need to see a doctor. Over the course of several more months, her behavior improved to the point that she was able to start going to first a nursery school and then a public school for mentally retarded children. David Rigler wrote that eventually, she was able to ride the school bus with other people her age and could attend social functions at school. She learned how to do some simple chores around the house, such as ironing and sewing, and by the end of her stay was able to make simple meals for herself.

While Genie was living with the Riglers, her mother continued visiting with her, usually meeting once a week at a park or restaurant. Gradually, the bond between her and Genie grew stronger, and David Rigler said they encouraged Genie to go on increasingly frequent overnight visits to her mother's house. However, though the Riglers wanted to keep Genie's mother involved in Genie's life and never expressed any antipathy towards her, while Genie was living with them her mother only visited their house three times. The Riglers lived in Los Feliz, which required Genie's mother—who had moved back into the same house in Arcadia—to take a full day to visit, relying on public transportation both ways. Years later, Marilyn also said she felt uncomfortable with playing the role of a mother to Genie in her house in front of Genie's real mother, and thought meeting in a more neutral location would help diminish the awkwardness for both of them. Many other scientists on the research team did not welcome the presence of Genie's mother, saying their attitudes towards her stemmed from their distaste for her passive role in Genie's early life. Genie's mother got along considerably better with Jay Shurley, who had come from an isolated Texas ranch family similar to hers before she moved to California; he thought the other scientists did not treat her as an equal, though he acknowledged the amount of help many of the hospital staff—especially Kent and Howard Hansen—had given her. He also remembered Genie's mother saying she knew she would not have been able to pay for Genie's treatment, which he interpreted as a sign she was acutely aware of and felt self-conscious of the wide class difference between herself and the researchers. The scientists, in turn, speculated Genie's mother gave them a cool reception because they were a reminder of her inaction during Genie's childhood. They also thought she was in denial over both Genie's condition and the hand she had in it; David Rigler distinctly remembered one day when she saw Genie walking shortly after her eye surgery, and said she had asked him "What have you done to her that she walks this way?" Rigler said he regarded both as a positive step for Genie's mother, as it meant the therapy she was receiving was helping her to come to terms with what had happened to her and her children. Jean Butler—who had married shortly after Genie was removed from her house and was now using her married name, Ruch—gradually began to exert more influence over Genie's mother while Genie was living with the Riglers, trying to get her to see the scientists and their work in the most negative light possible. During the latter part of Genie's stay there, her mother increasingly started to feel the scientists were marginalizing her.

Language progress

Children typically begin to use two-word phrases when they have a vocabulary of about 50 words, however, Marilyn Rigler and Curtiss both noted that Genie only began to do so after she could use and understand about 200. Even then, when she first moved in with the Riglers, she remained mostly quiet. After she settled down in her new surroundings her speech, which although much like her general behavior still frequently exhibited a great deal of latency, began to improve. She soon began to use negative forms, albeit much more accurately and consistently with expressions using the word not (regardless of whether it was used in its full form or as part of a contraction) than with the prefix un. She had been able to comprehend simple negatives long before she started using them, and eventually she could understand more complex forms of negation. When Genie had first moved in with the Riglers, Genie usually did not listen to anyone unless Curtiss was playing classical music on the piano. Only two months later, in mid-October 1971, Curtiss noticed Genie had started listening to other people talking even when they were not speaking directly to or about her; sometimes, she would even start to contribute to an ongoing conversation conversation. The scientists also observed that, unlike most young children acquiring a first language, Genie always spoke with a great deal of specificity and never overgeneralized the meaning of words. In a review of Curtiss' dissertation, language psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow suggested this may have been due to differences between the mind of a young child versus an adolescent as opposed to the properties of early language acquisition. Furthermore, although Genie's two-word sentences showed many of the same syntactical properties as those of young children, she was much better able to label and describe the properties of emotions and concrete objects, especially colors, sizes, and qualities. Two of the adjectives she used early on were "funny" and "silly", not words usually in the lexicon of children in the early phases of language learning, and most of her earliest two-word sentences modified nouns, such as "yellow balloon" and "lot bread". This strongly indicated a focus on physical characteristics to a degree not normally found in children acquiring a first language, who are typically better able to describe relationships. Tests initially administered in October 1971 showed that while she did not utilize the plural forms of words, she clearly knew the difference between plural and singular forms and could understand numbers and quantitative descriptors such as "many" or "lots of". At the 1972 American Psychological Association conference, Victoria Fromkin said that by November 1971 Genie possessed grammar similar to that of a typical 18 to 20 month old.

In 1974, Curtiss and Fromkin published two of their earliest papers about Genie, writing with Stephen Krashen on the first and with Krashen and the Riglers on the second; these covered her progress during the summer and at the end of 1972, respectively. The first indicated that she was learning to combine words to form new sentences and that her speech was increasingly rule-governed, while the second indicated this trend had continued until the end of the year. The second paper also noted several specific instances of improvement since August 1971. Genie's two-word sentences were now almost always in either subject-verb or verb-object order, which they suggested meant Genie was grasping the subject–verb–object sentence structure typically used in English. She was able to follow other word-order rules as well, as evidenced in her verb-complement sentences. She could use increasingly complex noun phrases in ways that were clearly not imitative, and both understood and produced recursion. She was also able to correctly use the word on and could use the suffix -ing to describe events in the present progressive, both typically among the earliest skills acquired by children. By July of that year, she had mastered the use of regular plurals and was gaining the ability to utilize comparatives, some prepositions (especially next to, beside, and in), and past tense forms of verbs. She had also begun attempting to use possessives in November of 1971, in sentences such as "Marilyn bike"; after around six months, in May 1972, she began to use verbs in possessive sentences, i.e. "Miss Fromkin have blue car". In 1972, she began to form imperative sentences, which suggested not only progress in her language comprehension but an increasing level of self-confidence and self-concept. However, this view was tempered by the fact that despite her ability to use and comprehend imperatives, she very rarely would. Although she would respond if she was called she would almost never call someone to her and, despite repeated encouragement, she could not bring herself to tell a boy to stop annoying her at school. She also gradually became able to use language to describe fictional events, attempting on at least two occasions in the last two years of her stay with the Riglers to lie to Marilyn.

Near Christmas 1971, Genie and Curtiss were on a visit to Children's Hospital when a boy playing with a toy pistol frightened Genie. When Curtiss tried to reassure her, Genie responded with an abbreviated version of Curtiss' words, saying "Little bad boy. Bad gun." About two weeks later, Curtiss overheard Genie repeating the same words to herself, marking the first time she used language to refer to past events. Some months later, the Riglers overheard her saying "Father hit big stick. Father is angry." to herself, demonstrating that she was even able to talk about her life before language was a part of it; this gave researchers new insights into her life before being rescued and disproved the theory of 18th century philosopher Étienne Bonnot de Condillac that humans require language to form memories. During the rest of her stay with the Riglers, they said she would constantly repeat "Father hit" to herself. Eventually, Genie was able to provide progressively longer, more detailed memories of her past. The Riglers tried to get her to talk about her childhood as much as possible, both to get more information and to help provide her the best possible therapy. Sometimes, Marilyn would coach Genie by role-playing as Genie's real mother. Before the Riglers worked with Genie to understand the concept of death she would often ask them where her father was, afraid that he would come to get her. She gradually began to speak about her father, and could talk about his treatment of her.

"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."

However, despite her readily apparent desire for attention and socialization, she never learned to use automatic speech. She continued to have trouble with pronouns; by December 1972, she understood I but she interchangeably used you and me and did not have use of any other pronouns. Curtiss said Genie would often say "Mama love you" while pointing to herself, attributing this to Genie's inability to distinguish who she was from who someone else was. Although she clearly understood and appropriately responded to questions using interrogative words by February 1972, and while in a session with Curtiss was once able to form one by arranging cards with words written on them, she was never able to ask them in her speech. Two of her attempts to form this kind of question were "What red blue is in?" and "Where is stop spitting?" This inability was extremely unusual for a first-language learner, as interrogative questions are typically among the earliest types of two word sentences children form. Curtiss theorized Genie's difficulty with them was likely due to the linguistic movement they require. Genie's first negative sentences were utterances such as "No have toy", typical of young children, but while children usually quickly progress to saying "Not have toy" and then "Do not have toy" Genie did not reach the "Not have toy" stage for three years. Although she understood how to use intensifiers such as the word very, she only tenuously grasped superlatives, though she appeared to understand the suffix -est better than the word most. She also seemed to view non-specific adjectives describing size, such as little, as absolute rather than relative values unless superlative or comparative markers were present. Until 1972, she responded to the conjunctions and and or as if they both meant and, but even after recognizing there was a difference never fully grasped the meaning of or. She was unable to distinguish between the active and passive voice, never gaining any use of the latter, and her speech was entirely devoid of pro-forms or auxiliary verbs such as have or will. By early 1975, she had started including do-support in some of her sentences; for instance in June 1975 she said "I do not have a red pail". This was the only use of any auxiliary structure in her speech, but even this was often incorrectly used, as in sentences such as "I did not sad" (Curtiss said this had meant "I am not sad", and noted it was also from June 1975), and still frequently omitted. Although she evidently grasped some prepositions, others, such as behind and in front of, were less consistently understood. Curtiss and Fromkin's second paper also noted that by March 1973 Genie seemed unable to grasp on or under, but suggested this was likely due at least partially to logistical difficulties with having to speak while simultaneously handling and moving objects into different positions to demonstrate her understanding, which she was not required to do in later preposition tests. Genie could start and continue a conversation on a particular topic; however, even after Genie's vocabulary had expanded, she continued to rely on repeating words or short phrases she had said earlier to maintain the discussion. What grammar rules and syntax she did know were not consistently applied, and whereas most children remain at the two-word sentence stage for around four to six weeks, Genie did not progress beyond that point for five months. Her comprehension of complex sentence structures remained inconsistent.

Speech progress

When Genie first began speaking, her speech was very soft and completely monotonic. Her voice was extremely high-pitched—a trait which scientists had observed in earlier cases of feral children—and at first it was so high that the instruments researchers were using to acoustically analyze her speech were unable to pick it up. Over time, her voice gradually lowered in pitch and became somewhat louder and more varied in tone, but her pronunciation was still very high-pitched and breathy, marked by both consonant and vowel reduction, vowel neutralization, reduction of many consonant clusters, and final consonant deletion. Researchers suspected the reason Genie did not usually utilize plural forms, despite her apparent ability to both comprehend and use them, was her frequent final consonant deletion. In November 1971, Curtiss was singing to Genie and was very surprised when she started singing along, displaying an ability to change pitch that she had never demonstrated in her speech. Around a week later Curtiss saw Genie was nervous about having to go to an appointment at Children's Hospital, on the drive there Curtiss improvised a song with the word "hospital" in it to help calm Genie down; Curtiss was again taken by surprise when Genie again started singing along, and noticed she sang the word "hospital" far louder than she had ever spoken. Curtiss and Fromkin's second 1974 paper noted that by 1973, she seemed to be slowly improving her articulation and was capable of imitating more sounds than she used in spontaneous speech, suggesting that her difficulty was with realization as opposed to pronunciation. In the later years of Genie's stay with the Riglers, when she started trying to form sentences, she would typically only enunciate a few of them; for instance, "Monday Curtiss come" would sound more like "Munk". Curtiss attributed this to Genie trying to say the least she possibly could and still be understood, noting she would better articulate her speech when explicitly, firmly requested to. Upon observing this, linguists following the case began to call her the Great Abbreviator. Almost a year after moving in with the Riglers, while getting her ear examined by David Rigler, she uttered the only recorded scream of her lifetime.

Even while speaking, Genie continued to use supplementary nonverbal gestures to improve her intelligibility. When she was first removed from captivity she would only draw pictures if asked, but during her stay with the Riglers, if she could not express herself in language she began to use drawings to communicate. She would also act out events, and when she was not understood right away she would persist until her message was communicated. In addition to her own drawings, she would frequently use pictures from magazines to relate to daily experiences. She especially collected pictures of things that frightened her; after being scared of a helmeted diver, she reportedly did not relax until she showed Curtiss a picture she had found of another diver in a National Geographic issue. One picture she found of a wolf in a magazine sent her into a terror, and after seeing her reaction the Riglers were able to piece together the underlying reason for her fear of dogs. The Riglers and Curtiss saw how frequently and effectively Genie was able to use her nonverbal skills, with Curtiss noting in particular how quickly Genie was able to organize complex stories in her drawings. She still seemed to be able to connect with complete strangers without speaking; David Rigler vividly remembered an occasion when he and Genie passed a father and a young boy carrying a toy firetruck without speaking to each other, and said the boy suddenly turned around and gave the firetruck to Genie. Although the scientists tried to get her to use words as much as possible, they knew one of the major flaws with Jean Marc Gaspard Itard's work with Victor of Aveyron was his insistence that Victor learn one method of communication—in his case writing—to the exclusion of others. They wanted to take full advantage of her ability to use gestures, so in 1974 the Riglers arranged for her to learn American Sign Language.

Loss of funding and research interest

Despite Genie's progress, after three years the National Institute of Mental Health, which had been funding the research, grew concerned about the lack of scientific data generated and the disorganized state of project records. There was a huge amount of data collected, but apart from the linguistics data Curtiss and Fromkin produced much of it was of very limited use; most of what non-linguistic data was useful went towards one paper David and Marilyn Rigler in 1972, Attenuation of Severe Phobia in a Historic Case of Extreme Psychosocial Deprivation, which detailed the steps they took to help Genie grow more comfortable with their pet dog. In 1973, Rigler asked for and received a one year extension on the grant, but the NIMH said it wanted more hard data; Rigler said he tried to comply, but found the case was not conducive to producing the raw statistics requested of him. Jean Butler Ruch, who had continually attacked the scientists since her application to become Genie's foster parent was rejected, obtained David Rigler's proposal for extension of their NIMH grant—before the proposal had been presented to the NIMH—and began lobbying for its rejection, disputing the progress Genie had made with Curtiss and the Riglers. Among Ruch's accusations was that Rigler had intentionally added more people to the initial grant request than were ever actually involved in the case; when Rigler reviewed it, he reportedly found one psychologist whose name he did not remember but who he had included in the application. In 1974, the NIMH's grants committee met to consider Rigler's proposal for an additional three-year extension. They concluded that although the research was considerably and demonstrably beneficial to Genie and had no chance of causing active harm to her, there had been minimal overall progress and "the research goals projected probably will not be realized". Funding for the study was cut off and the following year the Riglers—who had been compensated by the grant money while caring for Genie and had indicated in the proposal that continued compensation would be necessary to sustain their guardianship—decided to end their foster parenting. Despite the grant ending, Curtiss continued to spend time with Genie, and in 1977 she and Fromkin were able to obtain grants from the National Science Foundation to continue their work.

Now 18, Genie still spoke only in phrases such as "Ball belong hospital". Her progress remained considerably slower than had initially been expected, and she never displayed the rapid grammar and syntax acquisition seen in most children after the two-word-sentence stage. Her comprehension, however, was well ahead of her speech—a similar dichotomy, albeit usually not quite as wide as hers, is typically found in young children—and she would occasionally produce longer sentences if her initial utterance was misunderstood. Evaluation was further complicated by Genie's psychological and emotional difficulties. In particular, scientists noted the negative associations with vocalizing from her childhood would have had a profound effect on her speech, making it very difficult to properly assess.

Early adulthood

In 1975, Genie turned 18 and her mother wished to care for her, so Genie moved back in with her mother at her childhood home. Before Genie left the Riglers, they offered to assist her mother in any way they could. They signed Genie up for a summer school program, but when it ended she expressed a desire to stay at home with her mother instead of going to a summer day camp, to which the Riglers and her mother acquiesced. After a few months, Genie's mother found that taking care of Genie was both physically and financially too difficult for her, and without notifying the scientists contacted the California Department of Health to find care for Genie. Genie was then transferred to the first of a succession of six different foster homes, where she ended up staying for a year and a half.

When Genie first moved into her new foster home, social workers observed that the house was an extremely rigid environment, in particular noting that Genie was never allowed to play with the plastic containers she had brought with her. During her stay there, due to her treatment Genie experienced a severe regression. She again began experiencing issues with both incontinence and constipation, and quickly returned to her coping mechanism of silence. Not long after she moved in, she was beaten for vomiting and told that if she did it again she would never be allowed to see her mother, causing her to become extremely afraid of opening her mouth for fear of vomiting and facing more punishment. Even when she was hungry she was barely able to eat, only opening her mouth just long enough to put food in; it was later described as looking similar to a crocodile eating. Her fear also made her afraid to speak, rendering her almost completely silent; however, she still wanted to communicate with people she knew, so she began almost exclusively using the sign language she had learned while with the Riglers. Her mother, who she desperately missed, was almost never permitted to visit her, causing Genie to become extremely withdrawn. At one point while she was living there, she refused to talk for five months.

"I want live back Marilyn house."

—Genie speaking to Susan Curtiss, November 1975

Except for Curtiss, all of the scientists, including the Riglers and James Kent, were completely cut off from Genie during her stay in this foster home. Curtiss continued to meet with Genie once a week to continue her research, witnessed some of the abuse Genie received, and saw her rapid behavioral regression. On several occasions Genie told Curtiss she wanted to see her mother and wanted to move back in with the Riglers. Early on during her stay, when Curtiss first heard this, she started petitioning to have Genie removed. Curtiss said because she was only a graduate student, it took a long time to get authorities to take her seriously. Once she got in contact with the department of social services, both they and Curtiss had a very difficult time finding and contacting John Miner, who was still her legal guardian, only succeeding after repeated attempts over several months. Once they were able to get his attention, he went to see Genie at a party; when he saw how badly she had regressed, especially how withdrawn she was and how laborious eating had become for her due to her fear of opening her mouth, he worked with David Rigler to get her taken out of the home. Upon leaving in January 1977, due to her treatment she required a two-week stay at Children's Hospital. She was able to see her mother and the Riglers during this time, and her condition moderately improved. In some of the subsequent homes she was physically abused and harassed and her development further regressed. She was often forbidden from seeing her mother for long periods of time in these homes and except for Curtiss was completely cut off from most of the scientists. Genie frequently drew pictures to express her desire to see her mother and told Curtiss she missed her mother, and many of these utterances and drawings were included in Curtiss' dissertation.

Lawsuit

In 1977, Curtiss finished her dissertation, Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day "Wild Child", and it was published later that same year by Academic Press; it received reviews from several prominent scientists. After Genie's mother saw a copy after its publication, despite having thought of Curtiss and Genie as friends, she reportedly took great offense to the title and some of the contents. Privately, she disputed some of the specific details, primarily regarding her husband's treatment of herself and Genie and the family's situation during Genie's childhood; however, her official complaint did not. Instead, she argued that Curtiss could only have obtained these details from her therapists or their supervisors, which would have been a breach of patient confidentiality. She decided to file a lawsuit against her therapists, their supervisors, and several of the researchers, both over the book and over allegations of excessive and outrageous testing, claiming the researchers gave testing priority over Genie's welfare, invaded Genie's privacy by constantly filming her, and pushed Genie beyond the limits of her endurance, sometimes testing her between 60 and 70 hours per week.

Members of the Genie team, most of whom had not heard about Genie in years, were caught completely by surprise when they found out they were being sued. One of the scientists later described it as a bombshell. They maintained their earlier contentions that Genie mostly found the testing enjoyable, emphasizing that the tests were always conducted in private, one on one settings and that both she and the people testing her viewed the tests as a bonding experience. Both Curtiss and David Rigler said Genie was always rewarded at the end, either emotionally or with an item she liked. Rigler said the scientists all knew forcing her into taking the tests would have produced invalid results, and pointed out that although the tests were challenging for Genie, when she finished she always exhibited a sense of triumph. He also maintained several times that Genie never showed any signs that she had a problem with being filmed, later pointing out that Genie would frequently start the cameras on her own, and said if she had indicated she was bothered they would have immediately stopped. They further stated her mother was grossly exaggerating the lengths of time Genie was being tested. Curtiss was adamant that she never conducted tests more than 45 minutes on any day, that Genie was allowed to take a break whenever she wanted to, that the tests were always conducted in a one-on-one setting, and said that sometimes Genie herself would initiate the tests. After the test sessions, Curtiss said they would spend the rest of their time together "just being friends". Curtiss and Fromkin also categorically denied any breach of confidentiality, asserting that the details on Genie's family in Curtiss' dissertation were already publicly available and had previously been referenced without objection by Howard Hansen at the 1972 American Psychological Conference.

Given Genie's mother's otherwise passive nature, the scientists being sued strongly suspected from the beginning that she was not the driving force behind the lawsuit. While David Rigler was giving his deposition, he discovered that Jean Butler Ruch had goaded her into suing and had, without them knowing, gradually turned her against the scientists. Rigler later wrote that although Genie's mother filed the suit, Ruch had gotten the lawyers for her and provided all the necessary funding. Throughout the legal proceedings Ruch was constantly trying to influence Genie's mother, something the lawyers representing her at the beginning of the case later acknowledged. They agreed with the scientists that Genie's mother almost certainly would never have attempted to sue without Ruch's intervention, saying Ruch had been the one who convinced her Curtiss' dissertation was an invasion of her privacy. One of the lawyers said in an interview that Ruch "was a sort of Svengali for [Genie's mother]", and both said talking with Genie's mother after she had been speaking to Ruch was like talking to an entirely different person.

At the outset, the lawyers for Genie's mother thought there were serious problems with the scientists' testing and thought they could win a judgment against them, arguing that the NIMH's decision not to extend the grant should have been a sign of the flaws in their research methods. However, as the lawsuit went forward, they increasingly felt their case against the scientists was extremely tenuous at best. When they found Curtiss' intention from the start was to give all the royalties from her dissertation to Genie, and had set up a trust fund in Genie's name, they advised Genie's mother to take this money and withdraw the lawsuit. However, Ruch convinced Genie's mother to persist and her lawyers withdrew from the case, leaving her to represent herself in court. According to ABC News and Russ Rymer, the suit was settled in 1984. However, in a 1993 letter to The New York Times responding to a review of Rymer's book, David Rigler wrote, "[T]he case never came to trial. It was dismissed by the Superior Court of the State of California 'with prejudice,' meaning that because it was without substance it can never again be refiled."

Post-lawsuit

After the conclusion of the legal proceedings, despite several requests from David Rigler, Genie's mother refused to allow him or other members of the Genie team to see her. Susan Curtiss had been entirely prevented from seeing Genie in January 1978, and Genie's mother did not reestablish contact with her. With the exception of Jay Shurley, she broke off all contact with the scientists, and moved in 1987 without leaving a forwarding address. Genie's mother began taking Genie with her on her visits to Ruch's house, but despite the fact Ruch was again allowed to see Genie she did not cease her attacks on the scientists. She started spreading negative rumors about Genie's condition, hoping to convince as many people as possible that Curtiss' dissertation had largely been based on fabrications. Although she continued attacking many of the scientists she especially targeted Curtiss, who had become a linguistics professor at UCLA, repeatedly calling her at her house and frequently attending Curtiss' lectures to bombard her with hostile questions. While the lawsuit was being filed Ruch had convinced Shurley, who had remained friendly with her and had offered to testify against many of the other scientists, to work with her on a book detailing how the scientists had handled Genie; he described himself as being "bent on revelation". In 1984, she received further encouragement from a colleague of Eric Lenneberg who had been marginally involved in the May 1971 NIMH grant. However, after Shurley co-wrote one paper with Ruch on the subject in 1985, he backed out after they delivered the paper together at a conference, saying he was shocked at how vicious and personal her attacks on the Genie team were. Although he remained very cynical about many aspects of Genie's handling, he was willing to acknowledge the scientists were in a completely unprecedented situation and thought Ruch's attacks were so malicious as to be sadistic. His decision to abandon the project earned the animosity of Ruch, who continued her campaign against the scientists until 1986, when a stroke left her with aphasia. She died in 1988 following another stroke. In the late 1980s, Genie's mother was meeting with Shurley when an unidentified major news network offered ten thousand dollars to tell her and Genie's story. Despite the fact that she was living in abject poverty at the time, Shurley said she immediately turned the request down; he commended the decision, and said he thought it demonstrated Genie's mother had learned to stand up for herself.

Shurley saw Genie at her 27th birthday party and again two years later, and she reportedly looked as if she had regressed. In an interview he said on both visits she appeared very depressed and made very little eye contact, commenting that she looked almost as if she was demented. When Russ Rymer interviewed Shurley for his book on Genie, Shurley showed him two photographs he had taken of her from these visits. Rymer wrote that it took him several seconds to realize the person in the photos was Genie, and was only able to to recognize her at all because her dresses had a familiar pattern. In 1991 Susan Curtiss said that since she had last seen Genie she only had two updates on her condition, both of which indicated she barely spoke and was depressed and withdrawn. In February 1993, when Rymer published two magazine articles and a book on Genie, he wrote she was living in a large state institution for mentally retarded adults, and said she was only permitted to see her mother one weekend every month. By mid-1993, the Riglers had reestablished contact with Genie and had seen her for the first time in 15 years. David Rigler wrote in July 1993 that, "my wife and I have resumed our (now infrequent) visits with Genie and her mother". In response to a review of Rymer's book, which repeated what Rymer had said about Genie's living arrangements and alleged Genie was being inadequately cared for and isolated from everyone she knew, he wrote that Genie was living in a small, private board and care facility and that her mother was regularly able to visit her. When they visited Genie for the first time, he said she seemed to be happier and had immediately recognized and greeted him and Marilyn by name, but did not comment further on her mental state.

Debate

The extent of Genie's linguistic abilities has been the subject of some debate. Curtiss' earlier writings, up to and including her 1977 dissertation, appear very optimistic. As early as 1972, she indicated that although Genie was progressing more slowly than most young children acquiring language, there was strong evidence she was very gradually incorporating more basic grammar into her speech and that she was building on those skills she already possessed. In her dissertation, she argued that Genie's "language performance often does not reflect her underlying linguistic ability"; although she rarely used grammatical rules such as pluralization, it was clear that she understood and had the ability to use them. The first papers Curtiss wrote on the subject after her dissertation noted a severe regression in Genie's speech after 1975, but she argued that her speech had remained "grammatically uninflected and telegraphic" even prior to this time, claiming that several of Genie's utterances were completely incomprehensible (in subsequent papers, the word telegraphic was replaced in favor of agrammatic). One of Curtiss' writings from 1982 and her second 1988 paper on Genie acknowledged that she clearly understood word order, was able to appropriately use most verbs within their normal subcategorization constraints (for instance, she had said "Genie throw ball" but never "Genie throw"), showed some signs of feature specification, and could accurately use what bound morphemes she knew. However, Curtiss' post-1977 papers all had a more negative evaluation of Genie's speech, arguing that while Genie's vocabulary had broadened, she had never acquired any meaningful amount of grammar or syntax after all. In an interview with Russ Rymer in 1992, she said that Genie's progress had very quickly plateaued and it had taken her several years to realize it. An independent 2006 review of Genie's case concluded that Curtiss' dissertation was excessively optimistic about Genie's progress and prognosis, arguing that even by the time it was completed Genie was showing clear signs of regression from her treatment in her first foster home after living with her mother.

However, a 1995 analysis by Peter Jones, a linguistics professor at Sheffield Hallam University, claimed that earlier accounts of Genie's speech, especially of her progress during the period between 1970 and 1975, from both Curtiss' dissertation and her collaborations with Victoria Fromkin were more accurate than those produced after 1977. This analysis argued that Curtiss used only small samples of Genie's speech to prove her points, when a more representative look at her speech appeared to contradict Curtiss' arguments. The review also argued that some of the utterances Curtiss deemed completely ungrammatical and unintelligible in her later papers were, while not representative of a typical adult speaker, both comprehensible and showing some signs of incorporating grammar and syntax rules. While Jones acknowledged Genie's regression from the trauma she suffered after entering her first foster home in 1975, he argued that Curtiss did not release enough information about Genie's speech between 1975 and 1977 and that there was no data from any time after January 1978, rendering it impossible to draw definitive conclusions regarding how far she regressed and what, if any, grammatical and syntactical skills she had lost. Finally, it pointed out that despite what Curtiss had said to Rymer, she did not write anything to this effect in her dissertation, and neither suggested she was reevaluating her earlier arguments nor attempted to disavow the conclusions of her previous works in any of her later writings. These factors, Jones concluded, demonstrated that "the post-(1977) account [of Genie's speech] is not so much based on reanalysis or reinterpretation of the data but on a highly selective and misleading misrepresentation of the earlier findings."[emphasis as in the original] This, in turn, left an unresolved tension between Curtiss' pre- and post-1977 analyses which he said meant "a definitive judgment on the character and extent of Genie's linguistic development still cannot be given." These arguments have since been cited by others discussing Genie's case.

Impact

Genie's is one of the best-known cases of language acquisition in a child with delayed development. Since Curtiss published her findings, the vast majority of linguistic books have used Genie as a case study, frequently citing it as proof of Chomsky's theory of innate language and a modified version of Lenneberg's theory. In her writings, Curtiss argued for a weaker version of the critical period theory; that normal language acquisition cannot occur beyond puberty. She wrote that despite the innate ability of humans to acquire language, Genie demonstrated the necessity of early language stimulation to start, drawing a comparison to a baby who upon being born does not breathe until stimulated by a midwife. Furthermore, she stated that only language, not any other cognitive stimulation, could provide the necessary spark. Without the required stimulation, a person would be rendered incapable of processing language from the left hemisphere of the brain and would be forced to only use the right hemisphere, which is typically only used to process non-speech sounds. This did not mean the person would never be capable of producing any language, but that language would never progress into normal-sounding speech. Her arguments have become widely accepted in the field of linguistics, and were the impetus for several additional studies.

In particular, analysis of Genie's data showed a sharp contrast between a linguistic versus a grammatical component in language. Although Genie was able to acquire vocabulary well above the level of her estimated mental age, she was never able to master phonology or a substantial amount of grammar. It was already known that adults who underwent a left hemispherectomy were better at regaining and maintaining vocabulary than grammar and syntax, similar to Genie; both the observations by Curtiss and the tests conducted on Genie's brain further bolstered the theory that the two processes underwent separate development. Scientists also noted the similarities between Genie's acquisition of language and that of deaf children who invent their own gesture system. While these systems contain certain aspects of language, such as vocabulary, recursion, and word order, other grammatical components such as auxiliary structures are never present. The auxiliary component of language had been known to be one of the few acquired at different rates by children depending on the amount of language they heard. Genie's inability to master these structures supported the idea that the development of auxiliary and other similar syntactical systems is more sensitive than vocabulary, requiring a more conducive language environment to properly develop with a more specific critical period. This also suggested there was a separation of cognition and language rules, a new concept at the time. Genie's spatial and nonverbal skills were exceptionally good, which demonstrated that even nonverbal communication was fundamentally separate from actual language.

Related studies

Jeni Yamada, a graduate student who assisted Curtiss with compiling data about Genie and advocating for her welfare after leaving the Riglers, began a study in the late 1970s of a girl with linguistic problems that were the opposite of Genie's. This subject, at first referred to by the pseudonym Marta and later by her real first name, Laura, had no history of abuse and had never incurred any serious injuries; however, she was developmentally delayed and was known to have a testable IQ in the low 40s. After several inaccurate childhood diagnoses, doctors described her as "borderline psychotic" and, when she was 16, were able to diagnose her with mental retardation and schizophrenia, attributing her abnormal behavior primarily to her retardation. She spoke with perfect syntax, but her words frequently conveyed no meaningful information. Yamada compared Laura's speech to the game Mad Libs, as she would temporarily latch onto seemingly random words and use them to form a grammatically correct sentence. For instance, one day when she had become fascinated with the word after she said, "My uncle who used aftershave died after a heart attack after tennis", even though her uncle was alive and never played tennis. In stark contrast to Genie, who was often able to convey her emotions without speaking, Laura could talk about her feelings but showed very few outward signs of emotional attachment to anyone or anything. It was difficult even for people who knew her to get a read on her mood. Yamada remembered Laura saying that she was sad after John Lennon was killed, but said Laura's demeanor did not match her words at all. She also displayed extreme difficulty with spatial awareness, one of Genie's strongest areas, almost completely unable to copy even simple lines on paper. Taken together, these studies helped to confirm ideas first suggested after studying Genie alone: that language and cognition are controlled by different processes, and that there is a fundamental difference between understanding and producing language.

In the 1980s, Curtiss studied an adult in her mid-30s who, despite having average intelligence and no history of physical or emotional trauma, had not yet acquired a language. This subject, known by the pseudonym Chelsea, had a severe hearing impairment that was not treated until she was 32, preventing her from acquiring language through listening. Although her mother had realized Chelsea was almost completely deaf when she was very young, doctors had erroneously attributed her inability to learn to speak to mental retardation, keeping her from attending schools for deaf children. Because her parents could not afford to hire a private tutor, she did not have the opportunity to study sign language. It was not until she was 32 years old that a doctor recognized her hearing impairment; at that age she was given bilateral hearing aids, after which she underwent over a decade of intensive language and sign language instruction. She learned to use prepositions and determiners more successfully than Genie, eventually becoming able to make free use of them, and was able to acquire vocabulary similar to the way Genie had. However, Chelsea was completely unable to master even basic syntactical skills such as word order and recursion, both of which Genie had learned within two years, frequently rendering her speech almost entirely incomprehensible. Two fairly typical examples of her sentences were "They are is car in the Tim" and "I Wanda be drive come". Researchers noted that Chelsea had a very likeable personality, similar to Genie, and when her brain was tested they found her right hemisphere was dominant to the same degree Genie's had been. Chelsea's case lent further credence to Curtiss' conclusions about age and language acquisition, and led to the theory of a "sensitive period" in linguistic development. During this period, it was not possible to acquire more sensitive structures of language, but basic grammar rules could be learned.

Genie's case has also been used in theorizing about whether the critical period hypothesis can be applied to the acquisition of a second language, a topic which remains the subject of considerable debate.

Media

After the Fritzl case came to light in February 2008, ABC News ran two articles in early May of that year comparing the Fritzl case to Genie's. Their stories, which ran almost two weeks apart, reported that Genie had been located in 2000 by someone who hired a private investigator. She was reportedly living in a small private facility for mentally underdeveloped adults and appeared to be happy in her surroundings. Although she only spoke a few words, she was still able to communicate fairly well in sign language. Their first story also noted David Rigler was reportedly in declining health and that, despite desperately missing Genie and repeated efforts to find her, Susan Curtiss had not seen Genie since January 1978 and was still unable to locate her. In addition to interviews with James Kent and Susan Curtiss, the first story featured an interview with a British graduate student in special education who was doing her dissertation on Genie's case and had established a rapport with most of the people central to it. Their second story contained an interview with the police officer who arrested Genie's parents, who said he vividly remembered the case and described the conditions he found inside their house. Genie's brother was also interviewed for both stories, which was his first public statement on either his or Genie's life. In the interviews, he spoke about the abuse he saw his father inflict on Genie and about how their father forced him to keep silent, describing in detail how his father treated him as well. He said he had not seen Genie since 1982 and had only recently heard any news about her, though he was glad she was reportedly happy where she was living, and had reportedly only just found out their mother had died of natural causes in 2003. He also talked about his life after escaping his parents' home; he said after several years of combating alcohol abuse he had settled down as a house painter in Ohio, and mentioned he was divorced and had a daughter and two grandchildren who lived nearby but with whom he had mostly lost contact. He did not say in either story whether his daughter or grandchildren had ever visited or seen Genie, nor did he mention whether his ex-wife ever met her during their marriage. Finally, he indicated he was still struggling to cope with the trauma of his and Genie's upbringing and blocked it out of his memory as much as possible, though he kept a small collection of photographs of their family from his childhood.

Books

Several books about feral children devote chapters to Genie's case. Russ Rymer wrote a two-part magazine article in The New Yorker entitled Genie: A Silent Childhood in 1992, and the next year wrote his first book called Genie: A Scientific Tragedy. The works cover Genie's life up until the time of publication as well as the scientific team who studied her. With the exception of Curtiss, who he acknowledges was working primarily out of compassion, Rymer posits that the other scientists pursued the study chiefly for the advancement of their own careers and egos, constantly fighting for control over the direction of the study and credit for the work and research being done. He interviewed many of the scientists central to the case study, including Curtiss, James Kent, the Riglers, and Jay Shurley, as well as Ursula Bellugi, who had conducted the first of Genie's brain exams, Howard Hansen, and other scientists who were more peripherally involved. At the suggestion of David Rigler, Rymer also interviewed the lawyers who had represented Genie's mother when she attempted to sue the scientists, and was given access to some correspondence between them and to Jean Butler Ruch's personal journal. He did not speak to Genie, her mother, or her brother, and did not indicate in the magazine articles or the book whether he had attempted to contact or locate any of them. Rymer wrote in the book that many of the scientists on the Genie team only very reluctantly spoke about the case, especially noting how tense David Rigler seemed to be when being interviewed, and claimed they had mostly lost contact with each other. In a 2008 interview, Rymer said he was still scarred from covering the case, and said there had been a rift between some of the scientists which made the book extremely difficult to put together.

Rymer's New Yorker magazine articles were met with good reviews. The book was one of the finalists for the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Awards, in the category of general non-fiction. It received several prominent reviews, including an overall positive reception in the Los Angeles Times from author Nancy Mairs and in the New York Times from scientific reporter Natalie Angier; Angier's review, published in late April 1993, took an extremely negative view of the scientists. This review garnered very harsh criticism from Susan Curtiss and James Kent, who strongly disagreed with both the review and the book, and prompted David Rigler to make his first public statement on the case. In a letter to the New York Times published in June 1993 Rigler wrote that Angier's review was unfairly critical of the scientists, and pointed to what he said were several major inaccuracies with her review of both the book and the entire case. While he readily acknowledged the scientists on the Genie team did have several different views about how to proceed with the research, with the exception of Butler/Ruch (whose intransigence he agreed Rymer's book had accurately portrayed), there was not and had never been any infighting between the scientists at the center of the case. Rather, he said they had worked together as best they could and tried to put Genie's best interests first, never making her progress with language acquisition a requirement for receiving love and attention as had been alleged in the review and in several interviews in the book. In particular, he argued that he and Marilyn taking Genie in for four years would only have happened if he truly cared about her as a human being as opposed to merely an experimental subject. While he acknowledged there were many unusual actions taken during the study, such as making Rigler both a scientist studying the case and temporary foster parent, he said this was because they were dealing with a case for which there was no good precedent. The review also claimed that during the time Genie's mother was attempting to sue the scientists, they made numerous public accusations and filed multiple lawsuits against each other. Rigler wrote none of them made any public statements at all during that time and denied any of the scientists had ever been involved in litigation against each other. Rigler made a few short comments on the book itself as well; besides responding to Rymer's claim the lawsuit had been settled, he also said the book, unlike Angier's review, had accurately documented the reasons and series of events leading up to Genie's initial admission to Children's Hospital.

Film and television

In 1994, NOVA made a documentary on Genie titled Secret of the Wild Child. It was aired by PBS in the United States and by the BBC in the United Kingdom. Narrated by Stacy Keach, the documentary covered Genie's life up until the time the lawsuit was filed, mentioning Genie's then-current living arrangements at the end. It featured pictures and film of Genie, both by herself and working with various people on the research team, and showed interviews with many of the scientists involved in Genie's case and both of the lawyers initially representing Genie's mother in 1977. The documentary was at least partially inspired by Rymer's book. When NOVA went to select footage of Genie to use in the episode, they found the film quality had significantly deteriorated and required extensive restoration. Upon broadcast, the episode received positive reviews. The documentary won Emmy Awards for news and documentary programming in the category of informational or cultural programming in both 1994 and 1995.

In 2002, an episode of the television series Body Shock on feral children entitled Wild Child included a segment on Genie. The episode was aired by Channel 4 in the UK and on TLC in the United States. It discussed Genie's life until the time of the lawsuit, and at the end briefly mentioned that she was still a ward of the state in California. The segment on Genie featured film of her, both by herself and with Susan Curtiss, and showed photographs of Genie's family and news footage of her parents shortly after they were arrested. It also showed an interview with the police officer who arrested Genie's parents, a neighbor of Genie's parents, Curtiss, and James Kent, and showed Curtiss and Kent meeting with each other. The interview with the police officer was shot outside of Genie's childhood house; he said it was the first time he had visited the area since the arrests and subsequent search of the house, and pointed out one of the windows to the room Genie had been confined in. The episode received a positive review in The Guardian.

The independent film Mockingbird Don't Sing, released in 2001, is based on Genie's case. Written by Daryl Haney and directed by Harry Bromley Davenport, it followed Genie's life until sometime before the lawsuit was filed by her mother, at which point messages flash across the screen informing viewers of what happened after the film's timeline ended. The film was written primarily from the perspective of Susan Curtiss, who had worked with Genie and was the only person who had worked directly with Genie to be involved in the film's making. The DVD extras contain an interview with Curtiss. Bromley Davenport said he was very sentimental about the movie and spent two years researching Genie's case for it, in the process gathering around 40 hours of interviews with Curtiss; in an interview he said he agreed with Curtiss' negative assessment of Rymer's writings on Genie, calling them "highly inaccurate" and "self-serving", and thought very highly of Curtiss' work with Genie. For legal reasons, all of the names in the movie were changed. The movie tied for first place as the best screenplay at the 2001 Rhode Island International Film Festival.

See also

• A Man Without Words
• Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja
• Marie-Angélique Memmie Le Blanc
• Oxana Malaya

References

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• Curtiss, Susan (1988), "Abnormal language acquisition and the modularity of language", in Newmeyer, Frederick J. (ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey: Volume 2, Linguistic Theory: Extensions and Implications, vol. 2, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 96–116, doi:10.1016/0013-4694(86)90177-X, ISBN 978-0511621055, OCLC 18836853 {{citation}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |isbn2= ignored (help).
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• Reynolds, Cecil R.; Fletcher-Janzen, Elaine, eds. (2004), Concise Encyclopedia of Special Education : A Reference for the Education of the Handicapped and Other Exceptional Children and Adults (2 ed.), Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, pp. 428–429, ISBN 978-0-471-65251-9, OCLC 46975017 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |isbn2= ignored (help).
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• Yamada, Jeni Ellen (1990), Laura: A Case for the Modularity of Language, Boston, MA: A Bradford Book, ISBN 978-0-262-24030-7, OCLC 21760166 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |isbn2= ignored (help).