[Music] tonight on Nova the shocking story of a girl who spent her childhood locked in a bedroom the girl reportedly was still wearing diapers when a social worker discovered the case 2 weeks ago raised in isolation jeie was a wild child uncivilized barely able to walk or talk the indications are that she was beaten for making noise with footage never before seen on television Nova follows the controversial efforts to unlock the secret of the Wild Child [Music] once in a great while civilized society comes across a wild child a child who has grown up in severe isolation with virtually no human contact this is the story of such a case The Story begins in Los Angeles on November 4th 1970 officials in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia have taken custody of a 13-year-old girl and they say was kept in such isolation by her parents that she never even learned to talk her elderly parents have been charged with child abuse this is the scene of the crime a child was locked in a room and tied to a potty chair for most of our her life completely restrained she was forced to sit alone day after day and often through the night she had little to look at and no one to talk to for more than 10 years the girl reportedly was uttering infantile noises and still wearing diapers when a social worker discovered the case two weeks ago but the authorities are hoping she still may have a normal learning capacity here was a 13-year-old who seemed like an infant a girl who would be known as Genie jeie was taken to Children's Hospital in Los Angeles where she immediately won the hearts of doctors and scientists she was fragile and beautiful almost haunting and so I was pulled I was very drawn to her even though I was nervous and had no idea in in many respects what to expect jeie was about to test an idea important to science and society that a nurturing environment could make up for even the most nightmarish of [Music] pasts if you make up a sentence in your head or you write it down and it has 10 12 words in it chances are you can listen for the rest of your life for someone else to say the sentence you can go to the here at UCLA Susan Curtis teaches students about a crucial human trait the ability to learn language library and chances are you will never come across that sentence what I want to do now the students begin their study through a famous case the case name is Genie this is not the person's real name but when we think about what a genie is a genie is a creature that comes out of a bottle or whatever but emerges into Human Society past childhood and we assume that it really isn't a creature that had a human childhood Susan Curtis has a special connection to the story she's telling story of a girl 20 years ago she was asked to join a team working to rehabilitate Genie she really I was literally at the right place at the right time I was a new graduate student interested in language ACC position unencumbered by family ties or responsibilities and they asked me if I would be interested when Curtis first joined the case Jeanie had a strange bunny walk and other almost inhuman characteristics Genie constantly spat she sniffed and clawed she barely spoke or made any noises the indications are that she was beaten from making noise and consequently had learned basically not to vocalize and she really didn't vocalize very much at all when I first met her she was silent most of the time jeie also received daily visits at Children's Hospital from James Kent her psychologist Kent recalls first meeting his new patient I was captivated by her uh I was not pH person to become captivated by her um the story as we began to to learn about it was sort of one of the things of course would reach out and grab you anyway um but she had a a personal quality that seemed to elicit rescue fantasies um and this in a group of people who were interested in taking care of kids and who specialized in early childhood who were going to be powered by rescue fantasies anyway um she reached out andrad lots of us one of Genie's most captivating qualities was the intense way she explored her new environment oddly even strangers who knew nothing about her story seemed to sense her need to do so one particularly striking memory of those early months was an absolutely wonderful man who was a butcher and he never asked her name he never asked anything about her they just connected and communicated somehow and every time we came in and I know this was so with others as well he would would slide open the little window and hand her something that wasn't wrapped a bone of some sort some meat fish whatever and he would allow her to do her thing with it and to do her thing what her thing was basically was to explore it tactically to put it up against her lips and feel it with her lips and touch it almost as if she were blind word of the Wild Child spread attracting scientists from all around the country one of them was Oklahoma psychiatrist J Shirley when introduced I extended my hand she reached out with her fingers and delicately touched my hand and then in a sense that was it she had she had made my acquaintance she was satisfied though for herself about me but my reaction was I had a thousand questions immediately who what how how does this come about why is this why do I see what I'm seeing Shirley was an expert in Social isolation Genie was the most extreme case he'd ever seen solitary confinement is diabolically the most severe punishment and in my experience really quite dramatic symptoms developed in as little as 15 minutes to an hour and certainly inside of two two or 3 days and try to expand this to 10 years boggles one's mind Shirley wanteded to assess how well jeie had survived her long years of isolation he directed the team to gather information on her brain waves for four nights running they wired Genie to instruments that measured the electrical activity in her brain while she slept what they found was an unusually high number of so-called sleep spindles the dense bunching patterns that look like spindles on a spinning machine this was an abnormal brain wave pattern the sleep studies raised a question that would puzzle the genie team for years was Genie brain damaged from her years of abuse or had she been [ __ ] from birth when jeie was a baby her father apparently decided she was [ __ ] he insisted on keeping her isolated because of that authorities pieced together these few facts in the early weeks Jeanie's strange family circumstances made it hard to learn more Jeanie's mother weak and nearly blind claimed that she too had been a victim of her domineering husband Jeanie's father shortly after authorities discovered Genie shot and killed himself the suicide only added to the interest in Jeanie's case she was a prized patient and in the months to come the number of visiting scientists increased Genie's new celebrity status marked the beginning of a debate that would intensify over time how should her case be handled James Kent's plan was the first to be adopted he believed jeie could get better if she were allowed to form relationships and he was encouraged when she started to do so up until one particular day Genie didn't seem to respond uh in any any special way to my coming or going at the at the end of our sessions then one day when I left her expression changed from um happy to sad to indicate that there was some some sadness in the separation for her that was the first indication that I had that we were beginning to form relationship I thought as long as she had the capacity to form attachments she had the capacity to learn she had the capacity to get better by the end of May something had happened to add to the hopes for Genie's future it was a breakthrough that everyone had waited for you know what to do it was captured on videotape by Jean Butler Jeanie's special education teacher here in a classroom at Children's Hospital Butler is teaching jeie to tie her own Shoes Butler is about to tell jeie you do it then we can tell Dr Kent what you can do listen to Genie's reaction you do it do it do it then we we'll tell that do K Genie said the word doctor where right there it says that K it was one of more than a hundred words she knew by that spring listen to another re tired she was difficult to understand but jeie was repeating words jeie was beginning to talk I could tell as all others could just looking at her that there was a lot to Genie and that what we had to do was to make sure we gave her opportunities to express find a way to take what was latent and express it or somehow then you know acquire it because the potential just seemed so great for the first time in her life Genie seemed to be thriving her mental and physical growth since coming to Children's Hospital was obvious Jeanie's progress gave birth to a daring hope she might fully recover and science might learn how her doctors even publicly predicted success their confidence was an eerie echo of a moment from the past an echo of another case like Genies that preceded hers by nearly 200 years the case began in 1800 when citizens of this region in southern France discovered a remarkable creature who had crept out of the nearby Forest he was animal in Behavior human in form mute and naked he was a wild child he would be known as Victor and this statue would be erected to mark his entry into civilization citizens in the village where Victor was discovered guessed he was 12 years old his food preferences his lack of speech and the scars on his body indicated he had been in the wild for most of his life Victor's story intrigued historian and psychologist Haron Lane around the time doctors in Los Angeles were following Genie's case Lane was in France tracking Victor's story shortly after the boy was captured a biology Professor took a very careful look at him name of boner boner tells a story of um tremendous uh indifference to cold that Victor had one day he took him and took off all his clothes and the boy was thrilled to have his clothes taken off and he started leading him into the outdoors and it was surrounded by snow at that time and Victor far from protesting was filled with joy he gave out cries of joy and uh pulled Bonet out the doors and wanted to get out into the snow on other occasions he was actually out in the snow bare naked leaping about throwing the snow in the air eating snow Bon concludes and I think we have to conclude that our sensitivity to temperature is very much influenced by our life experiences word of the wildchild traveled North to Paris where the first anthropological Society had just formed it was the End of the Age of Enlightenment a time of enormous Discovery and debate Victor walked into the middle of a raging debate his timing was incredible the question was what makes us human what separates man from the beasts is it human appearance well anthropological Expeditions were returning with a wide variety of races and parisians were not so clear on human appearance is it walking upright butut tangs walked upright is it language first reports were that Victor had no language then again perhaps he could learn some in any case philosophers anatomists in their ilk were convinced that careful study of Victor could finally answer the question what is it that makes us human with Victor parisians had a chance to see human nature stripped of society and culture this was a situation no one would set out to create on purpose it was therefore referred to as the Forbidden experiment scientists in Paris quickly summoned Victor from the south of France although Victor could hear they brought him to this school the National Institute for the de okay we're at the National Institute for the death and it happened right here the gardener from rodez brings the wild boy right through here into the courtyard and I guess they were expected and the director the ab seal comes out and come on they would meet about here see Cal comes out and what does he see not a nice little Bourgeois deaf kid in the school uniform his new pupil but a uh raging spitting snarling filthy Savage uh defecating where he is urinating where is biting covered with scars long hair waded yellow teeth long fingernails a Savage she never seen anything like that in his life so he backs off what's he going to do uh idea he's just hired a young physician from the military Hospital up the street followed by the name of Jean Mar so he calls Jean marar was a 26-year-old medical student who was ready to make his Mark he saw the wife Wild Boy as an opportunity wellard was an interesting man wasn't he how is he going to make a name for himself a place for himself in medicine and in the intellectual excitement of the time because he was a brilliant fellow and he read philosophy astutely studied medicine well the answer was uh that here was a chance that would make or break him if he could actually civilize a wild child the first person in history to do so why uh he would be a figure down through history even in the 20th century people might be discussing him ard's Ambitions would pay off Not only would people in the 20th century still be discussing him but the famous French director Francois trufo would play itard in a movie about the case the movie illustrates the risk itard took more experienced doctors concluded Victor was profoundly [ __ ] from birth and unable to learn itard though believed that Victor had become [ __ ] because of his years of living in the wild he believed he could civilize Victor ard's Diary of his work with Victor makes this one of the most documented cases of wild children throughout history in fact the diary served as the basis for tru's movie called The Wild Child [Music] in Los Angeles truo movie premiered at the Los felis theater in Hollywood one of the strangest chapters of this story is the timing of the premiere for truo movie about history's most famous Wild Child opened exactly one week after Genie was discovered in True Hollywood fashion the genie team took it advantage of this coincidence they arranged their own private screening in charge of this event was Hospital chief of Psychiatry Howard Hansen well that afternoon at 4:30 we left children's hospital and we we paraded up the street we had an Entourage up the street to the Las VES theater it was all inspiring to it because here was the first case that had been documented in any scientific way and here we were having an opportunity to see a film portrayal of that here was history's stamp of approval for daring to rehabilitate a wild child itar inspired everyone at the screening afterwards everybody was shocked and stunned they just sat in silence for a bit because the film was so powerful in itself and then the analogy with Genie began to hit it was like here history was repeating itself and everybody there thought here is an opportunity to learn something the screening was part of a special conference for which the genie team invited Consultants from all over the country a government agency the National Institute of Mental Health had agreed to fund a scientific project on Genie now it was time to focus the direction of research it soon became clear though that participants were unlikely to agree on one course of action oh we were off in a million directions I mean uh each expert each person in their own discipline thought oh wow I can do this I can do this I can do that we were flooded flooded with our own associations and with the Pursuits that each of us might have thought wow look what we can do uh look what we might learn from this uh a girl who has appeared out of nowhere to bring all the proposed plans for Genie into Focus there was another player on the team Dave David Rigler a psychologist at Children's Hospital Rigler too was hooked on Genie's case I think everybody who came in contact with her was attracted to her she had a quality of somehow connecting with people which developed more and more but was present really from the start uh she had a way of reaching out without saying anything but just somehow by the kind of look in her eyes and people wanted to do things for her ller decided how to focus the research around the time of Jeanie's first birthday at Children's Hospital Jeanie was now 14 years old the timing was fitting because Ridler wanted to know could the clock be turned back for genie in particular could a teenagers still learned to talk this had already been the subject of much debate by the time Genie was discovered it all began with gome chamski a young linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chsky declared that we acquire language not just because we are taught it but because we are born with the principles of language they're in our genes we have language Shamsky said because of nature not just nurture then Along came a neuros pychology to add his own twist to the theory Eric linenberg agreed we're born with the principles of language but claimed there is a deadline for applying them if a first language isn't acquired by by puberty he said it may be too late Chomsky and lindenberg rocked the field they were hot Linguistics was in it was a perfect time to test the new ideas recalls linguist Alysa newort what lenberg proposed is What's called the critical period hypothesis and what he suggested is that there's a particular period in the life of humans when they're ripe for learning languages what this hypothesis was looking for was some more direct evidence but of course you don't do these experiments one never wishes to deprive somebody of language um during the critical period to see what happens it happened that at that time when that would have been the right thing for Leber's hypothesis Genie was discovered stove stove this is why Susan Curtis joined the genie team she was a graduate student in linguistics is she would put the critical period hypothesis to its first real test spoon is four this is one of the first videotapes of Curtis's work with Genie a sharp Square she wanted it seemed to me almost desperately to recode her world with verbal labs and sometimes we would just stand at a window and she would take my hand and point out the window at a Panorama before us and I wouldn't really know exactly what it was she wanted to know the word for but she would persist until she at least got a new word while Curtis tracked Jeanie's speech James Kent continued work on her emotional development Kent was concerned that with the growing number of people involved in her case jeie wouldn't be able to form single Dependable relationships so he set out to be her surrogate parent wanted to be part of her sort of ordinary life so I would frequently be there in the morning when she had breakfast um and be there in the evening when she went to bed read her a story kiss her good night turn off the lights go and then do things during the day uh when she be when she had sort of important things that she had to go through like physical exams or things like that it I would come along with her as though she were my child she was very special to me did did you feel you loved her well doctors aren't supposed to love their patients but if you could find a word that meant the same thing yes yeah I was very attached to [Music] her first time she saw a helium balloon she couldn't believe him the fact that she could let them go up and pull them back down again she had you know this kind of laugh that some people have and it's just a full out chuckle it's so contagious everybody around them starts to laugh well they made her laugh like [Music] that one of my memories was that we would go to a place say Woolworth's where there would be a stand of spools of thread and spools where each color thread would incrementally change from the spool next to it and she wanted a word for every different Hue and I didn't know I mean I had a box of 64 Crayola cram as a child and I remembered you know burnt sienna and all these colors that I tried to extract from my memory but I don't English doesn't have words for all of these different Hues and she was very frustrated when I would say very dark blue and very very dark blue for jeie every new object every field trip was a visit to a Magic Kingdom the previous fall the world had discovered Genie now Genie could discover the world there was a time that she passed a father and a little boy who were coming out of a shop and the little boy was carrying a toy fire engine and they just passed and then they turned around and came back and the boy without a word handed the fire engine to Genie she never asked for it she never said a word she did this kind of thing somehow to people could I imagine what that was like could I see things through her eyes I don't believe so I don't believe I really could sometimes I could understand and guess pretty well what she was going to do but that was familiarity and not an ability I think to empathize with understand the way she saw the world the summer after her Discovery was a time of Firsts for Genie water can get a glass of water you can the most significant happened here in the home of Jean Butler her teacher at Children's Hospital do you want to get some water and take it to the table jeie moved in you can you can get water get a glass of water it was a new step for Genie her first trial run in a fost home is that what you want this is July 11th Mrs Butler's house this is lunchtime she just took the milk and the chocolate milk into the bedroom here Butler videotapes Genie's passion for hoarding things especially containers of liquid although there is no obvious explanation this has been reported in other cases of children raised in [Music] isolation Genie began living here after Butler said said she had exposed Genie to German Measles it began as a temporary quarantine Butler wanted to make it [Music] permanent Butler shown here with Genie and James Kent wanted to be Jeanie's official foster parent and she wanted to see changes in the handling of Genie's case Butler thought frequent visits by team members Kent and Susan Curtis were exhausting Genie that was the summer when we were then both disallowed into Jee Butler's house so um you know we didn't we didn't have such a fun summer it was a summer that included weeks of of uh concern and anxiety and you know anger and all kinds of things because he and I were kicked out of Jan's house why why she was crazy and she didn't want the other attachments I mean she wanted she you mean she used to walk around saying I'm I am going to be the next Dany Sullivan this girl is going to make me famous and we used to sort of joke about it because she was so overt about it and we thought God why doesn't you know even if she has the desire why isn't she so willing to tell the rest of us but she certainly found a way to con she concocted this story the whole thing is untrue she didn't have German Measles she had a rash oh the bickering continued for more than a month according to journals left behind by Jean Butler who died in 1988 exam oh Butler wrote She feared jeie was being experimented with too much are you going to do that again whether this was Butler's true motivation in keeping away other team members cannot be known but it raised again the issue of how Genie should be treated could she be a scientific subject and still be a patient on the morning of August 13th social workers arrived at Butler's house with a decision on her application to be Genie's foster parent partly on advice from Children's Hospital it was rejected we were not satisfied with the quality of the Care uh that jeie was able what had at Jean Butler's so that had to be interrupted and again it was up to up to management IE us to interrupt that jeie returned to Children's Hospital for only a couple of hours a new foster parent came to take her home it was David Rigler Rigler decided to take charge of the case he decided to take over Kent's role as therapist and also be Genie's foster parent and the principal investigator ordinarily mental health people are not involved in these kinds of multiple roles but I have to stress how desperate we were to find a place that was appropriate and I remember making the commitment in my mind for a 3month period which obviously got extended much longer because how long was she she she was with us approximately 4 years Jeanie's new home was in a neighborhood near Children's Hospital she lived here with David wler his wife Marilyn and the Rigler children we really didn't know what to expect except that we knew that Genie needed a great deal of help and on the other hand it was very exciting to feel that perhaps we could help her and perhaps she could be rehabilit at Marilyn a graduate student in human development was Jeanie's new teacher she soon found herself giving jeie unconventional lessons jeie would erupt in silent storms of Rage tugging and tearing her own body to turn Jeanie's self-destructive anger outward Marilyn taught her how to have a fit How to slam doors and stamp her feet eventually Marilyn encouraged Genie to turn her her pain and anger into words and there came a time when she could say rough time and sometimes she could tell you the degree of how upset she was by waving one finger which meant she was very upset or kind of waving her hand which meant she was upset but it wasn't going to be a big deal I I jump yeah you slipy you jump good can you jump some more one of Marilyn's first tasks was to awaken in Genie a sense of her connection to the physical world March Mar March tell me what I'm doing like her historic counterpart Victor jeie seemed disconnected from certain bodily Sensations right I would allow her to run her own bath water or her own shower water and when I would touch it I would realize it was icy cold cold and I would say oh this is so cold you're going to freeze and it was as though it didn't make any difference in their new role as Jeanie's foster parents the ridlers were suddenly responsible for a child who needed full-time [Music] supervision they also took responsibility for Genie's therapy attempts to help her grapple with the horror of her childhood okay baby open your mouth house in this primitive role playing exercise Marilyn pretends to be Genie's mother hurry up hurry up because there isn't any time father is going to be angry Marilyn tries to elicit memories of Genie's past I wonder what you're thinking [Music] you want to see your father father is not [Music] living you remember what was like when you lived at home what were you sitting on when you ate the [Applause] cereal in the PO [Music] chair where did you stay when you live it home where did you live where did you sleep you slept in the potty chair while this videotape shows how distressed Genie was by her childhood it also reveals a developmental breakthrough jeie was using language to describe past events Genie was talking about things that happened before words were a part of her world for a child who barely spoke just a short time ago jeie was doing remarkably well with language Susan Curtis continued to track her progress [Applause] [Music] monke Genie could read simple words her vocabulary was growing here she is about to say I like log let me see the log you found a picture of log I didn't even know you knew what a log was where where do you see a log I was struck with how different the words that she knew were from the vocabulary words that young children would know when they're acquiring a first language she had words for emotions angry sad excited happy she had words color words shape words Square rectangle I cir you like Circle jeie seemed to be pulling off a Linguistics coup she had passed the critical age of puberty but she seemed to be learning a first language Curtis began doubting the notion that there was a deadline for doing so my early ideas were that the sky might be the [Applause] limit I couldn't help thinking that she might in fact just be able be able to show that people really were wrong Jeanie was at last settled into her new life she even went to a nursery school hopes grew that unlike other cases of children isolated from society Genies could have a happy ending at the Paris Institute for the DEA Genie's historic counterpart also seemed to flourish when reunited with civilization they shown in Tru movie Victor responded successfully to methods used to teach the deaf yeah Victor's teacher created his own methods as well itar used cutout letters for lessons that are still used in kindergartens all over the world he had a knack for gradually increasing the complexity of Victor's tasks is teaching Victor to read uh simple phrases like to throw a key so he writes throw key in French and then flings a key then expects Victor to do the same Victor's doing well he's reading the sentences performing the actions but itar doesn't trusted it could be by sheer memory he's seen itar do it so he decides to scramble the nouns and verbs and get some weird combinations like to tear a stone to cut a cup to eat a broom presents tear a stone to to Victor and he shows some Ingenuity he goes off he gets a hammer and he smashes the stone cut a cup picks up the cup and hurls it on the floor and it shatters eat a broom this time he changes the noun goes off and gets a piece of bread and devours it this was itar constantly analyzing upping the anti pushing the kid toward civilization toward the skills that we have and Victor generally rising to the challenge each time taking the small step this was the kind of struggle they engaged in together for six years indeed for a while teacher and pupil were joined in a shared mission of Awakening yeah and this is as far as film director truo takes his version of the story many people have asked me well what do you think of the truo film The Wild Child L sage and what I think of it was that it was a pretty uh solid job of uh following ard's reports but I do have one exception and that is at the end of the film The Child climbs the stairs when the idea is that he's walking off into a a future of Endless Possibilities in which he may even write his autobiography and that's simply [Music] false in reality the history book show that Victor's progress slowed down itard reported while Victor knew how to read simple words he he never really learned how to talk itar recommended that the Forbidden experiment be stopped you know well we attributed to itar this motive of wanting to use Victor to build his own career and I think that was true when the point came that he was no longer serving Victor nor serving science uh he was no longer serving his career he abandoned him he let him go t gave up he asked Madame Gan the housekeeper to take the boy in down the street from the deaf School and there they lived a rather gray sad forlorn existence the two of them so the story is not as romantic as uh truo would have us believe Victor lived his last days at this very spot in Paris he died in his 40s in 1828 Victor's story did not end well in Los Angeles more than a century later lat Genie's caregivers were working to ensure that their pupil fared better when will you see your mama in the house when when jeie used gestures a lot to communicate the rers arranged for her to learn sign language I will see Mama Saturday right critics fault the teacher in Victor's case for emphasizing spoken speech the wrigglers tried to avoid this mistake all finished the weeks turned into months the months into years and David Rigler the man who would be scientist therapist and foster parent to Genie seemed to find a way to juggle all those roles in reality the juggling act had started to fall apart this is the paper that's unfolded for years wler had trouble managing the research part of the case Curtis's language studies proceeded but rler had been getting government money to do more indeed he gathered hundreds of videos he supervised countless tests but he never clearly defined his own research show me the shoe that's untied unti to add to the murkiness of the study was an unresolved question which would make it difficult to draw firm scientific conclusions was Genie brain damaged from birth team members disagreed my impression was clearly that Genie was mentally [ __ ] from birth uh based on uh for example my sleep study which showed these extreme spindles which are fairly characteristic of severe mental retardation jeie although functionally [ __ ] because she had hardly lived and experienced the world around her um was not mentally deficient in any sense in which we typically think of as ment m al deficient for example on psychological tests at measure mental age every year after she had been found her mental age increased one year this is just not something that happens in a personis with a child or um an adult who's mentally [ __ ] the government agency that was funding the research project grew uneasy with the scientific ambiguities of Genie's case what color box is this the National Institute of Mental Health was looking for payback for the years of money it poured into the study and it wasn't finding any after repeated warnings in the fall of 74 n imh stopped funding the genie project citing a failure to collect data in a scientifically meaningful way nobody knew exactly how to deal with this we were doing our best we got the best kind of count the best kind of advice we had to sort that out and take that as it came but we did the very best we knew how and we believe that nobody knew any better in the year following the loss of their research Grant the wrigglers decided to end their foster care of Genie children their decision caused concern among their colleagues it's not that it can as a surprise to to us or shouldn't have we had uh a lot of consultants and a lot of people coming in and one of the questions we were asked uh Often by more than one person is uh what's going to happen here when the hospital goes away when you know if the research Grant goes away if all of the sort of interest in how this youngster is developing when the researchers full their tents and go away who's going to stay behind with Genie this was something that I was certainly concerned about the fact that should we not take Genie because we did not plan to have her forever um and it was something that we we talked about very actively and we finally decided that if we could give her a good home with much love and Rehabilitation within that home um nurturing caretaking and and good things that that would give her the ability to cope at some later time so that she would have a good foundation in a stable home and that was our reasoning what is on the red box for linguist Susan Curtis it was time to sum up her years of work with jeie a clear picture was emerging in her data but for jeie that picture was not promising here when asked to make a question Genie comes up with what red blue is in what red blue is in does that make sense is that a silly question Genie didn't seem to be able to put words together in a normal grammatical way this seemed to support the idea of a critical period for acquiring language in Genie's case the vocabulary was what she was good at conveying messages is what she was good at but if you look at a sentence that she would utter it wouldn't be grammatical so she might say things like spot chew glove um applesauce by Store where the message was clear you know the dog named Spot chewed the glove or um we need applesauce we need to buy applesauce at the store um but in both of these cases you can see they're not sentences of English we wouldn't say applesauce by store we would say we need to buy applesauce at the store or apple sauce is what we want from the store or something that is an actual sentence of English much of the language research on Genie was completed by 1975 a pivotal year for her that summer she returned here to her childhood home to live with her mother Jeanie's mother had been acquitted of child abuse charges she wanted to resume care of her daughter but she soon found it too difficult thus began another sad chapter in Jeanie's life a a series of placements in foster homes Genie was subjected to abuse to punishment to harassment to the extreme in some of these homes then she would be moved again to another home and another home and meanwhile we knew nothing about it until the bombshell hit the bombshell a lawsuit a lawsuit against Hansen Rigler Kent Curtis and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles like Victor's Genie's case had not ended well and now there was a modern American twist to her story a lawsuit good the lawsuit filed by Genie's mother charged the genie team with excessive and outrageous testing we're going to be finished soon soon should put all those cards in boxes we're going to be all finished the lawsuit claimed the researchers gave testing priority over Genie's welfare pushing her beyond the limits of her endurance look carefully it's dark yes which box does that belong in no the lawyers suing Children's Hospital were Louise Monaco and Samuel PW they should have had clu that they were going at things wrongly because they were getting visits from n imh the National Institute of Mental Health telling them well see yeah you got all these videos but they're not indexed they're not catalog they're all thrown in a drawer um you're doing tests that have no scientific purpose you're doing tests that you made up and they were doing tests repetitively which lose their validity over over with the repetitiveness yeah I mean there's certain tests if you administer them within a year you can't tell whether you're measuring anything or not you're just measuring how familiar the subject is with the test okay I'll try it again here you do it put them in the B I want you to work fast come on let's work fast it was our job to measure her progress to determine what changes were taking place indeed if we had not done as much as we did we would have really not fulfilled the purposes of our grant but in addition to that the test thing that she underwent was by and large fun experiences for her depositions were taken experts were summoned and while the suit was eventually settled it raised an important question the decision did the team go as far as it could go in treating Genie or did the research get in the way we did everything we could not to exploit the case um in a way that would impinge on her privacy um or impact on her psychologically or emotionally and that wasn't difficult because of the feelings we had for her I don't think they started out with a notion of let's exploit her for all the money we can get um I think maybe everybody started out with a notion um one they wanted to help her but two this was like the biggest thing that had had town in quite a number of years it was right on the heels of Tru fo's movie The Wild Child hence the name that was given to her I mean when they had seminars at Children's Hospital they showed the movie um as part of the seminar um and so I mean this was like a worldwide attraction so I think it was really easy to get sidetracked despite all she'd been through Genie's troubles were not over in her first foster home Jeanie was severely punished for vomiting a long time ago the experience was so traumatizing jeie ended up back in children's hospital where the rig offered assistance you couldn't help it so now you're keeping your mouth closed so you won't vomit jeie was afraid to open her mouth she regressed to the only way she knew how to be under siege completely silent this would be one of the last times times the wers videotape gen jeie now lives in an adult care foster home in Southern California it's at least the sixth home she has lived in since the research project ended what do we take away from this really sad story look there's an ethical dilemma in this kind of research if you want to do rigorous science then Genie's interests are going to come second some of the time if you only care about helping genie then you wouldn't do a lot of this scientific research so what are you going to do to make matters worse the two roles scientist and therapist were combined in one person in her case so I think future Generations are going to study Genie's case as we've been studying Victors not only for what it can teach us about human development but also for what it can teach us about the rewards and the risks of conducting The Forbidden experiment for a production of WGBH Boston