Susan Wiley "Genie: The Wild Child"

Why this article?

I had written on the David Pelzer article and from a mention there, I became curious to do an article about "Genie the Wild Child". Here is what I found out quickly and what you probably knew before you arrived here, which I summarize as:

"Genie" was a child who was kept virtually a prisoner, almost her entire life, by her parents somewhere in the Los Angeles area. Her parents isolated her, penned her up at night and tied her sometimes during the day, malnourished her stunting her growth, and never spoke to her. She never attended school, only being allowed outside rarely. She never learned to speak. She was found in 1970 age 13, her parents were charged, her father committed suicide. She was studied and helped to learn some language skills, her case was remarkable and exciting, as it could finally answer unanswered questions about language development. After four years the funding and the studies ended. She briefly went back under her mother's care, but then was placed in a series of foster homes, and is still living somewhere in Los Angeles in an assisted living home.

Like you, these details repeated over and over, on various websites, were not satisfying to me. I wanted to know more. What were her parent's names? Was her mother convicted? Did her father leave a suicide note? What about her grandparents, what did they know or do? Various postings online claim that her real name has been kept private. I had thought that was because documents were sealed, but as you see shortly, I was wrong. At the time she was found, all the details were reported widely, all across the country. And now I'm going to tell you.