“A Silent Childhood”, 1992-04-13 ():
Annals Of Science about a case of child abuse in which a child named Genie was kept isolated from the world, locked in a restraining harness in a silent bedroom in her parent’s house in Temple City, California. She was either harnessed to an infant’s potty chair, unable to move anything except her fingers and hands, feet and toes, she was left to sit, tied-up, hour after hour, often into the night, day after day, month after month, year after year. At night, when Genie was not forgotten, she was placed into another restraining garment—a sleeping bag which her father had fashioned to hold Genie’s arms stationary. In effect, it was a straitjacket. Describes her environment, and the “toys” she was given to “play” with. Because of two plastic raincoats that were sometimes hung in the room, she had an inordinate fondness for anything plastic. She was incarcerated by her father for 11 1⁄2 of the first 13 years of her life in a silent room. She could not speak when she was rescued, and only learned to talk when she reached the hospital.
Tells about the fallout, both in human terms and legally, surrounding the research into her linguistic abilities. Investigations of Genie’s brain unveiled the utter dominance of her “spatial” right hemisphere over her “linguistic” left…This may have been why she was unable to grasp grammar—because she was using the wrong equipment…From the misfortunes of brain-damaged people, it is clear that language tasks are dispersed within their left-hemisphere home. Someone whose brain is injured above the left ear will still be able to speak, but there will be no idea behind the word strings
…Tells about a suit her mother, Irene, brought against the hospital when her therapy sessions with hospital staff were included in research results by Susan Curtiss, a graduate student studying Genie. The results of Curtiss’s doctorate study seemed to both confirm and deny linguist Noam Chomsky’s theory about language acquisition. Genie was shuttled from foster home to foster home after the scientists at the hospital (including the head of research, David Rigler, who adopted her for four years) ran out of grant money.
She is currently institutionalized in an adult home for the mentally retarded, and in the words of one scientist, Jay Shurley, filled with a soul-sickness, and sinking into an apparent replica of an organic dementia.
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