Tag: 1970

Genie
The name given to a feral child who spent the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom. She spent most of that time strapped to a potty chair and if she was lucky, she would get wrapped up in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib.

Her father would beat her and torture her. He also barked and growled at her like a dog in-order to scare her. By the time she was discovered by L.A authorities on November 4, 1970 , she was mostly mute. She had a vocabulary of about 20 words, most of which were negative (such as “stop it” and “no more.”) Documentary [x]

This girl, named just “Genie", was a famous case of feral child syndrome and child abuse. She was strapped in a poorly lit, gray room to a toilet seat from when she was an infant until she was a pre-teen. When finally rescued by police, she was unable to speak or do anything properly, having been forced to sit in a chair with no human interaction for her entire life.

Genie is the pseudonym for a feral child who spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom strapped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation ever documented. Genie was discovered by Los Angeles authorities on November 4, 1970.

During the day, she was tied to a child’s toilet in diapers; some nights, when she had not been completely forgotten, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib with a cover made of metal screening. Indications are that Genie’s father beat her with a large stick if she vocalized, and he barked and growled at her like a dog in order to keep her quiet. He also rarely allowed his wife and son to leave the house or even to speak, and he expressly forbade them to speak to Genie. By the age of 13, Genie was almost entirely mute, commanding a vocabulary of about 20 words and a few short phrases (nearly all negative, such as “stop it” and “no more”).