Wild Child

 I have always been somewhat interested in first language acquisition in the area of linguistics, so I decided to look further into Genie's account. It seems that while there used to be a debate over the "critical period" of language acquisition, Genie showed researchers in the field that human beings are very resilient and can still learn after the once commonly accepted age limit. However, her learning did seem to cap at one point. She did not completely stop learning language, but there were certain grammatical concepts that she simply could not grasp. These complex grammatical concepts (i.e. active and passive verbs) are distinctly human. It is also interesting to note that while Genie did spend much of her time exploring and discovering the world around her, she did not ask questions like normal developing children do. This is something that researchers tried to work with her on, but got little results.

Genie's vocabulary was centered around the visual world, paying attention to colors, shapes, and sizes. When she began linking two words together, she focused on the "attributes of things: 'black shoe,' 'lot bread,'" whereas young children typically start speaking about people and actions. Researchers concluded that Genie was relying on the right side of her brain (even though she was right handed) for most things, including language, which could have something to do with her lack of development there. Studies have shown that at the "age of six, children's ability to hear the difference between sounds to which they have not been exposed in their own language is severely reduced. Feature detectors responsible for recognizing about a dozen consonant sounds have so far been inferred to exist in the human brain. They need to be triggered by the environment, however: if not, they appear to atrophy. [They questioned] 'Had something similar happened to Genie’s brain?'"

There were too many variables and in this "forbidden experiment" to draw many conclusions about her linguistic development, though I think it's important to note how much they did learn from Genie. The technology was not the greatest and the situation wasn't handled as delicately as it could have been. What a sad account.

Resource: Pines, Maya. "The Civilizing of Genie." Teaching of English Through Disciplines: Psychology, Loretta F. Kasper, Ed., Whittier, 1997.

In one of my early childhood classes this semester, we were required to read a chapter about language development in children, which ties in quite nicely to this topic. In our textbook, language is defined as the systematic arrangement of arbitrary symbols that has generalized meaning. The text and our professor for this class talked about the importance of social interaction in language development. This starts as early as when infants are being talked to by their parents. Infants often imitate what they see the other person doing, like sticking out their tongue for example. These early interactions help set the stage for turn taking in verbal conversations. We don’t really know if Genie had this type of social interaction as an infant, because they mainly focused on when she was tied to the potty chair probably around three years old.

Another part of language development in children is called fast mapping. Fast mapping usually occurs in children around 18 months of age. This is how children use context clues and the other words that they have learned to guess at what something could be called. Fast mapping allows children to develop language rapidly, rather than waiting to hear every single word from someone else. An example of fast mapping would occur when a child hears a four legged animal called a cow, and then generalizes that the next four legged animal they see, which is a horse, is called a cow as well. However, if children are corrected, they will accommodate these new words quickly, too. I could not quite tell if Genie was exhibiting characteristics of the fast mapping or not. I was thinking that perhaps she was fast mapping when she said the word “log,” without knowing what it was. And perhaps the instance where she asked her language therapist the different colors of spools of thread would be fast mapping as well. These instances might just be her ability to learn and remember things well, too, because she was older than an 18 month old.

The textbook for my Infants and Toddlers class also has a section specifically about the brain and language development. In the first few months of life, a child’s brain is neuroplastic, meaning it is very responsive and flexible. Similar to the video that we watched on brain development in class a couple of weeks ago, the brain also maps out the different phonemes (units of sound in a language) that are repeatedly heard by children. These neural pathways are then reinforced, and brain circuitry becomes less flexible. These pathways are most easily formed in the first 12 months of life. Again, I think it is hard for us to know what Genie was hearing when she was this young, because her parents probably still had to take care of her. The book continues to explain that as children acquire language, their brains get better and better at language. Also, experiences are very important for young children, both in that they are hearing words describing or during the experience, and then they themselves can try to describe the event as well. I think this is where Genie fell extremely short. When she was released from captivity, she had no language, which either means that her parents never talked to her, or punished her for talking. Genie also would have had no experiences to describe or talk about being contained to a room with walls every single day for ten years. I think one can see that Genie did become better at language after specialists worked with her, but she was never at the level of her same-age peers, probably because she had not been using language her whole life, and her brain had not had the language circuitry that other children her age did.

Finally, I wanted to mention a little bit about Noam Chomsky, because he was also named briefly in the DVD. I would have liked to hear more about him and what he finally decided about Genie’s case. One of his well-known theories was the language acquisition device. Chomsky believed that every person had a language acquisition device as a part of their brain. Basically, he believed that every person was wired for language, and that we did not learn language merely by imitation. No one to date has found this language acquisition device in the brain. In Genie’s case, it would seem that everyone is wired for language, since she was able to pick some up, even after so many years without it. This was also the case for Victor in France, who more than likely had heard less language used than Genie did. These sad cases show there is hope for children and learning, but that a lot more research does need to be done.

Resource: Eyer, Dianne & Gonzalez-Mena, Janet. “Infants, Toddlers, and Caregivers.” New York: McGraw Hill. (2007).

Last semester, I read an article about a girl named Danielle Crockett (I'll post the article below). This story is about a girl who was kept in isolation by her parents. Unlike Genie and Victor's cases, this happened within the past year. Danielle was 7 years old and weighed only 46 pounds when the police finally rescued her from her home. She was living in a house full of dirty diapers, human and animal feces, and cockroaches. She was so malnourished that she could not chew or swallow food, so she was fed with an IV and drank from a bottle. Danielle's caseworker concluded that she had never been to school or seen a doctor. She couldn't talk and didn't even know how to nod yes or no; all she did was grunt. The doctor called Danielle's case "environmental autism," resulting from being neglected for so long. This article is very interesting.

I found the diagnosis of "environmental autism" interesting. This demonstrates the importance of human relationships in the first few years of life. According to the article, nearly 85% of the brain is developed in the first five years of life. Because Danielle was neglected of social interaction and nutrition, her brain was unable to develop as rapidly as it was supposed to. Autism is defined as a brain development disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication. Most people who suffer from autism are born with it. However, Danielle's case demonstrates that severe neglect and social deprivation may lead to the development of behaviors that are similar to autism. This shows the importance of nurture in the nature vs. nurture argument. As we all know now, both nature and nuture play an important role in human development.

It amazes me that a parent could let this happen to his/her child right in front of their eyes. I don't understand how anyone could show such neglect for their own daughter. There was obviously no parent-child bond in this relationship. As a result of her actions, the mother is on probation until 2012. This is a pretty small consequence compared to the substantial impact she had on Danielle's life.

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece

I came across a case in Romania that started in the 1990's and is still happening today, where there are many children in orphanages being confined because of mental handicaps. Many of these children were abandoned by their parents because they were told their children were "biological garbage" for having cerebral palsy and the like. In one orphanage, there was a 17 year old girl that only weighed 22 pounds and looked like she was 5 years old, and children that were in full body restraints tied to beds and so malnourished that there was skin peeling off their bodies. The person that found them said 46 children were close to death.
Forty years ago the Romanian government outlawed birth control and abortion to raise the population. But, many Romanians could not afford to take care of that many children. Any children that were sick or disabled would be abandoned at an orphanage by their parents. These children basically lived in complete isolation, many refused to accept human contact for months after they were found. Cribs and beds would all be crammed into tiny rooms, but, since these children could not move, they had no interaction with each other. The people that discovered the conditions in some of these orphanages said the silence was very eerie with that many children in a room. The rooms are very cold and smell of feces.
But, what I found really interesting was that these people that visited the orphanages did not blame the nursing staff of these children at all. In fact, one sort of defended the staff saying they were simply overwhelmed with the number of children being dumped off. Instead, this person placed the blame squarely on the Romanian government for denying what is happening in these orphanages, not spending the money to reform the system (like hiring much more staff), and not taking care of the children. One nurse in an orphanage stated that "My heart has turned to stone" because she felt like there was nothing she could do when she's in charge of taking care of 62 babies with only 3 assistants. Very sad, but, even if all the children in these orphanages were giving the proper care right now, with all the special attention they need and being confined onto their backs for most of their lives, I doubt they'll ever be able to interact with the real world. Most would probably have to be taught to walk and even make some form of communication.

Oops, sorry, forgot to put the link in for everybody. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Story?id=1941485&page=1

Sorry this is a bit of a repeat from Justin’s post, but I started half of it earlier today before I saw his post!

The Secret of a Wild Child video reminded me of an article entitled, “The Girl in the Window” (link below)which we discussed in a previous honors seminar . Dani was removed from her “family” on July 13, 2005 in Plant City, Florida at the age about 7 years. She weighed 46 pounds and was malnourished and anemic. Unlike the Wild Child documentary, the whole house and living conditions were completely unsanitary and unlivable. The police described the place as having broken windows stuffed with dirty mattresses, couches covered in trash, and everything covered with roaches (even the freezer!). Dani lived with her mother and two older brothers at the time. The police found her in a very tiny room, on a moldy mattress surrounded by an enormous amount of discarded dirty diapers. The mother’s only response was, “I’m doing the best I can.” Dani was taken to pediatric intensive care, where they found should could not talk, eat or drink and had to feed her through an IV or with a bottle. Doctors concluded that she would be disabled for the rest of her life due to severe neglect.

Some of Dani’s symptoms/characteristics were similar to Genie’s in the Secret of a Wild Child documentary. Dani also showed no reactions to hot and cold temperatures and in addition she showed no reaction to pain. Doctors did brain scans, vision, hearing, and genetics test, but found nothing wrong with her in these aspects. Though the specifics of Dani’s caretaking are not really known, it is likely that she was heavily isolated without much human contact or compassion as in Genie’s case. Dani also had problems learning language, and as of this article it doesn’t appear as though she will learn to speak full sentences. She usually doesn’t talk at all, only in times of intense emotion does she shout out certain one syllable words. However, like Genie she learned to understand certain commands and communicate some with nonverbal communication.

In contrast to Genie, it seems unsure whether some of her disability was inherited by nature and then made worse by isolation. Though the article states that genetic tests did not show any abnormalities, it is very unlikely that they sequenced her whole genome. They most likely checked a specific gene for autism and determined that wasn’t the problem. The article mentioned that her two older biological brothers didn’t learn certain normal abilities in childhood until much later (one brother didn’t talk until he was five). However, it could be argued that the brother’s were also somewhat neglected causing these problems. I would also argue, though this is only an inference, that there must be some lacking in mental capacity, because the mother didn’t seem to find anything wrong with the way Dani was being treated. It seems both nature and nurture played a role here, but the overriding factor that caused such an enormous discrepancy in Dani’s behavior was due to nurture. I also would agree that she missed this “critical period” in learning language and she will most likely not develop the ability to make well structured sentences as with Genie.

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/article750838.ece

I was interested in what happened to Genie after the incident with the many abusive foster homes, so I googled “Genie, the wild child now” and found some interesting information. The ABC news link that I went to: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4804490 basically contained the same information we saw in the documentary, but also has some interesting details that the film did not share.

Apparently, Genie’s mother was nearly blind, which may be a partial explanation for why she failed to intervene on Genie’s behalf. This article shares some more details of Genie’s escape; in contrast to the documentary, which only said that a social worker “discovered” Genie. Actually, Genie and her mother escaped from her abusive father and appeared at some welfare offices in L.A., which is where social workers encountered Genie. I really don’t understand Genie’s mother, though; Genie evidently had an older brother who was eighteen and the mother chose to escape with Genie and leave her older son behind. This article shares a quote from Genie’s older brother, who also claims to have been tortured by his father. Evidently, his torture was less severe and he acknowledges that he was in Genie’s “torture chamber” quite a bit. The researchers asked him why he didn’t tell his mother and his response was that, "Whether I liked what I seen or not, it wasn't like I was in a position to tell my mom. I was a captive audience and could do nothing about it." I am kind of confused about him being a captive audience when he was eighteen years old, but obviously his father was capable of some really horrific torture.

As far as what happened to Genie and where she is now, this article only provides some basic information. Genie never regained speech after being abused for vomiting in that first foster home. She disappeared nearly twenty years ago and only a private investigator was capable of finding her. Around the year 2000, she was living in a private facility for mentally underdeveloped adults. This really saddened me because America has taken in thousands of refugees and claims to be a wonderful place where people can flee to escape horrific life situations, but, as a country, we failed one of our own citizens. Genie spent the first part of her life undergoing appalling tortures and inhumane treatment, and the best the U.S. could do for her was treat her like a research experiment and then turn her over to a mental health facility when she didn’t respond dramatically to treatment. I’m disappointed in most of her caregivers because I feel as though none of them really viewed her as a person who was valuable and meaningful, apart from her novelty and experimental possibility. Genie was not a lab rat, yet researchers only treated her in a slightly more humane way.

As a Spanish major, I have studied Genie in several of my classes pertaining to language acquisition. A little background info for you on her family: Genie's father, Clark, did not want children and when his wife, Irene, was pregnant with their first child, he beat her to the point of hospitalization where she stayed until the child was born. The baby was kept in the garage after she came home and it died of exposure after 2 1/2 months. Their second child died right after birth from Rh poisoning. However, their third child, Genie's brother, was born healthy. Clark's mother cared for him during most of his childhood until Genie was born. Genie also had Rh poisoning and was given a blood transfusion in the hospital. After a quick research of Rh poisoning, it doesn't seem to cause any major problems (like mental retardation) once the transfusion has taken place.

Clark's mother was visiting the family one afternoon when she crossed the street to visit the ice cream truck and was hit and killed by a drunk driver. The driver was not arrested but only given a "probationary sentence." This was the turning point for Clark, according to Irene, and after her death he believed the world to be a cruel place that nobody in his family should have to be a part of. For some reason, he determined Genie's brother to be the sole connection to the outside world for the family. He went to school and did all of the purchases necessary while the rest of the family stayed at home indefinitely. Genie, however, as we know, was tied to a potty chair and disciplined strictly for any sort of noise.

Linguists have classified two classes of language: open language and closed language. These types refer to the ability to create new words. Open language includes nouns, verbs, adjectives which are words that are created easily (Ex: "What's your last name? I'll facebook you.") Closed language includes connecting words like articles, conjunctions and prepositions which are rarely created. Genie was able to almost master the open class language aspects by learning vocabulary words and putting together simple sentences which communicated the meaning she wanted to get across, but she was never able to master the closed class. This shows evidence for the critical period in that children with no interaction with a first language are unable to ever master the closed class of language and therefore are unable to master grammar.

When reading articles about Genie, I can't help but feel worse and worse everytime. It seems every adds another element to the story that makes it even more revolting. Others have touched on it as well, but it's well worth noting...how can a parent treat their child in this way? From an evolutional standpoint this behavior just doesn't make any sense. Looking into the wild, we see countless examples where parents will care for their young no matter the circumstances. Mother ducks will warm the eggs of their young until they're ready to hatch, and when they finally do hatch the mom will not let her new babies out of her sight. Also, I witnessed a great example of this nurturing instinct this weekend. While helping my Dad on our farm back home, we had to move a hog who unexpectedly gave birth to piglets in our barn. Immediately when we walked into the barn, the mother growled at us and became restless. Her babies were feeding on her milk, and she was in no mood to move and obviously wanted to protect them. Long story short, she fought us pretty good, but once we got them all settled in their new location everything was back to normal. Obviously, it's an instinct we possess that essentially forces us to care for our young. Without this ingrained instinct, cases like Genie's would be all too common. What I find so interesting is how her parents (and her father in particular) could block this instinct and treat his own daughter so poorly. It truly is a horrific case that not only makes your stomach cringe, but also defies the common thoughts of human behavior.

One thing I particularly found interesting about Genie's story is that apparently there must be a critical time for when language is formed in the brain. Obviously Genie missed this crucial deadline, which caused the great difficulties in her learning of the English language. Although the researchers made considerable progress in educating her about nouns and how to describe things, they were unsuccessful in getting her to construct a meaningful sentence. She learned enough where she could build a sentence that allowed others to fill in the blanks, but it appears she never got to the point of complete grammatical competence. This anecdote is very interesting to me. The human brain has seemingly unlimited potential, however if the brain is deprived of education at certain critical times it will be setback quite a lot. This issue goes to the heart of the timeless nature v. nurture debate. The brain obviously has the capacity to learn language, and if it is educated adequately it's potential will be unlocked. However, if it is not nurtured, the natural capacity is essentially wasted and no matter how much education the individual receives they will not be able to catch up. So, its not nature OR nurture that determines our intelligence; it's really a combination of both that determine how we develop.

Today, apparently Genie is living in a privately run mental health facility with 6 or 8 others. Some of researchers who worked with her in the past have tried to locate her, but these attempts have largely been fruitless. Because of this, not much is known about her current condition, although one can guess she probably has not progressed much since the experiments were wrapped up. Overall, I feel this story is very sad. Genie was put in a terrible position, and although the doctors did a pretty good job with her (in my opinion), in the end they couldn't overcome her huge setbacks. It blows my mind how heartless some parents can be, and although these cases are extremely sad and almost unbelievable, I'm sure there will be more of them in the future.

Oxana Malaya was found in Ukrainian in 1991. She was 8 years old and had spent most of her life, since about age 3, living with dogs in a shed behind her house because her alcoholic parents wouldn't take care of her. She was raised by the dogs. The dogs provided the only kind of relationships she had. She acted more like a dog than human. She would run on all four, bark, sniff at her food, and crouch like a wild dog. She had a little bit of exposure to language since she would occasionally go into her parents house but she could hardly speak at all except for a few simple words.

She has made a lot of progress since this time. She has learned how to speak which is something most feral children don't learn how to do very well, such as in Genie's case. Doctors believe she was able to do this because she had at least some exposure to language while she was young. She also has made good progress at her behavioral issues. Although she has made good progress in learning to speak, she still only has verbal and non-verbal skills equivalent to about a 5 or 6 year old. It is still unclear if she will ever be able to form strong relationships with other humans. Doctors have determined that she will probably never be rehabilitated to the point where she could get along in normal society.

As of 2006 she lives in a home for the mentally handicap and she helps take care of cows on the farm at the home. She says that she is happiest when in the company of dogs.

This case seems to support that there is an age which people need to at least have had some exposure to language in order to be able to fully learn it. Oxana was able to learn basic language because she had some exposure to language while she was young. This exposure was very little though as was the amount of human interaction. The mental damage caused by this experience, while still very high, seems to be less than in the case of Genie because of the small amount of exposure she did have.

It is also interesting to note that even after all these years she still associates herself with dogs. Being exposed to dog behaviors and having dogs be her only friends for so long while she was still young seems to have had a lasting effect on her.

I've seen this video a couple of times before, and there's something I wish that they would talk about, which is the experiences that Genie did have, and not just those that she was deprived of. We know that lack of stimulation and isolation from stimuli caused her to miss some critical periods and not develop as she should. Some people even believe that she may have been mentally retarded from the beginning. But the element that is missing is the presence of abuse in her life. Although it is very important to understand how she was deprived and how that affected her development, it is also important to acknowledge the number of terrible stressors that Genie suffered.

Even in people of full mental capacity, persistent physical and emotional abuse is traumatic. From posttraumatic stress disorder to anxiety to any psychological effect, it remains that abuse changes a person, even a healthy one. I think that this is a tremendous part of the story of Genie. People are only meant to take so much stress, and at some point, it becomes damaging. In the case of Genie, I just think that it is a great part of her experience and a large part of who she is now. That is, if she had been touched lovingly and fed, but still kept in a room and isolated, she may be very different. She would have had the same deprivations, but who knows how she would have turned out.

Severe stress can have lasting effects on people. As I said, it can cause Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It can also cause heart problems that stem from hyper-arousal. And especially if the stress is persistent and there is no real way of coping with it, these effects could be even more drastic. What if they had screened Genie for PTSD? If she were able to understand the question, it may be that she found her time at home to be traumatic, and that she now has trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating, all of these sorts of things that are associated with PTSD. If she were diagnosed with that, wouldn't it change the way that her behaviors were viewed?

I'm not sure what I'm thinking is translating to the page very well. I guess all I want to say is that people focus on the fact that she wasn't spoken to, and how that plays in to her speech. They focus on how she didn't play with anyone, and how that plays into her actions. But the videos that I've seen don't really touch on the stress that she suffered and how that may have factored into her behavior. I think it's a part of her experience and a part of the phenomena that can't be forgotten.

I found it interesting how deeply Genie was conditioned to act in the manner in which she was first discovered, that being extremely quiet and timid. Throughout her life, Genie was physically abused when she made noise…eventually leading her to behave quietly. The physical abuse was a punishment for Genie exhibiting behavior her father deemed undesirable. One question I have in regards to his administration of this punishment is whether it was continuous or intermittent. I would venture to say that it was more continuous punishment rather than intermittent. When Genie was sent to live with foster parents, the first time she was punished for something she regressed to her quiet, timid behavior. Being that it had been years since she had been punished for such a thing, the fact that she regressed so quickly and severely supports the fact that the conditioning was deeply ingrained through continuous punishment for certain behaviors (like noise-making). Genie’s ability to have her behaviors shaped through conditioning briefly mentioned in the video near the end, when the lawyers discussed her being subjected to too many tests in too short a time period. Genie’s learning and intelligence was not being measured through these tests, necessarily, but her familiarity with them was. She was conditioned with reinforcement to choose certain answers at certain times or to certain questions, which may have appeared as learning, especially to those with a confirmation bias. However, one cannot say whether the results demonstrated actual learning and language acquisition, or whether they simply demonstrated her learning of the test and of the right answers through conditioning and familiarity. Genie’s case was extraordinary, but it also left many questions unanswered; however, this is for the best, for it means that other children do not have to suffer as Genie did.

I chose to look at what has happened to Genie since the place where the documentary left off. It seem that her exact location is kept pretty secret, probably to protect her from the media etc...The sources I could find said that she is in a stable adult care facility/home in Southern California. The home is described as unique because they take all of the residents to many events and hold many social functions for them. One source I found mentioned that she even gets to go to Las Vegas, I have no idea if that is actually true though. Her language skills have been going downhill, and especially her signing- because she doesn't have anyone to sign with. The team members that worked with her are still forbidden to see her, so information comes from Genie's social worker to the team. There are many rumors surrounding Genie's current condition so even her team doesn't really know exactly what she is doing. It seems to all be kept pretty tightly under wraps.There were even rumors that she died of cancer, although the team doesn't really think that this is true.All of this information came from a letter from Susan Curtiss, one of the team members. Most all of the information about Genie's current condition comes from interviews with the team members , and they readily admit that they don't really know much, but they all say that she has the same "zest for life" and she is happy. Hopefully they are right.

It has long been thought that there was some sort of connection between autism and feral children. Many accounts of feral children clearly describe patterns of behaviour that we would now associate with autism. The question that researchers face is whether the children were autistic to begin with and then abandonded because of this or if their autism was brought on by their abandonment and isolation. Knowing that autism is largely due to genetics causes me to believe that feral children present autism like symptoms but do not, in fact, have autism caused by severe neglect. If, in some cases the child actually has autism, I believe it had to have been there from birth.
It is easy to see why people naturally draw parallels between the behavior of autistic children and that of feral children. Characteristics of autism include: poor social interaction skills, attention to details, failure to understand abstract concepts, lack of empathy, severe reaction to change, and sensory problems. Feral children who were either raised by animals or who were socially isolated all their lives would present several of these characteristics simply because of their lacking exposure to the outside world. For instance, how can a child who has never interacted with anyone excpet for their abusive parents display empathy? They must focus entirely on themselves in order to survive in such horrific conditions with little food, clothing, or stimulation. Also, of course children who have only seen four walls and a potty chair are going to be interested in every little detail once they are exposed to the real world. They are immersing themselves in a culture that they have been deprived of for years.
Overall I think it is difficult to draw any real conclusion on a link between feral children and autism, however, for the time being I think they are two copmletely different things. The symptoms of feral children are there because of nurture (or lack thereof) and the symptoms of autism are there because of nature.

After watching this documentary, I decided I wanted to follow up and see how Genie, the wild child who was raised in complete isolation for 13 years, was doing. Genie had physical, emotional, and mental detriments after being found, as well as many other problems. She had difficulty walking and communicating—she hadn’t been introduced to language at all! After her rescue, she was under the intense care of specialists at Children's Hospital at UCLA. Genie progressed, but only mildly—funding was cut, and the care she had been provided was taken away. According to an ABC news article published in May 2008, she regressed after the observations and care was taken away.
Today Genie is almost 52 years old. She is again in psychological confinement, but this time, as a ward of the state. This is her sixth foster home, and she is apparently speechless again. Genie’s psychologist, James Kent, told ABC news that “We fumbled the ball. We had the opportunity to allow more of her potential. It was as much out of ignorance as disagreements.”
Her brother, John Wiley, who is now 56, said he had often been in the room where Genie was tortured, saying "Whether I liked what I seen or not, it wasn't like I was in a position to tell my mom. I was a captive audience and could do nothing about it."
In another article I found, readers were told that her privacy is now guarded by her mother, who is her legal guardian. She has no contact with any of the scientist who worked with her and come to love her. This article also said that Dr. Jay Shurley, one of the group who had studied her, went to her 27th birthday party and saw her again when she was 29, noting that “she still looked miserable. She looked like a chronically institutionalized person. It was heartbreaking… She looks demented". However, David Rigler, the chief psychologist at the hospital where Genie was treated, and Genie's temporary foster parent, said in a 1993 letter to the New York Times:

"As I write this, Genie is again living in a board-and-care home, this time under happier circumstances. Genie visits her mother regularly. My wife and I were invited to visit her in the company of her mother. Although we had not seen her for more than 15 years, we all of us cried as she greeted us by name. Genie is in an adult care facility described as "atypical" in that it offers exceptional exposure to events and activities. Each year Genie travels with her group to Las Vegas to play slot machines and explore. They also go on regular outings and have "social functions" at the care home. However, unfortunately, Genie's language skills have deteriorated as has her ability to sign (she really has no one with whom she can "practice" signing).”

Although I have no way of validating any of these statements, it is what was reported in the articles/websites I found. I am attaching the links to the websites I used as my references.

http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=genie
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4804490&page=1

Even though this isn't related to wild children, I wanted to comment on the bubble boy documentary we watched the last day in class. I dug a little more into it and found a different picture than what the video portrayed. But, in the video, it seemed like David didn't know what he was missing until he was told what he was missing. David did know what he was missing already, he supposedly could see out the window from his bubbles in the children's hospital. But, either way, I understand why he was afraid of the outside world even from his space suit, he lived his entire life in his safe bubble and was told anything outside of the bubble was dangerous. It portrayed David as being happy up until that point. I can see why the doctors would try to convince him of the outside world being dangerous when David was popping holes in his isolator, but was it really necessary to scare the living daylights out of him, making him hate the chance to walk around outside of it?
This website I found paints a different picture of David, there's not much warm fuzzies associated with it. Psychologist Mary Murphy, who worked extensively with David said he was well aware that his life was lonely and would be short. He was angry because other people decided what he would do and that there was no point for him to learn to read. He was even well aware that he was angry a lot, and asked Murphy why he was angry all the time. Murphy said he grew even more frustrated at not being allowed to show his anger. She said David, being very young, developed a polite facade, which she says most young children cannot do. While this is just a small insight for now, I think it shows how children are much more aware of what's going on around them than we think. I wonder how David felt not having friends his age and he was socialized with rubber gloves. I wonder how he would've reacted to the real touch of his mom's hand if he wasn't so sick? Would he have shied away from it because it's unfamiliar, or welcomed it because there's that natural instinct to touch?
Check out http://www.houstonpress.com/1997-04-10/news/bursting-the-bubble/1
It's very interesting to read and like I mentioned before, it paints a completely different picture of David than what the producers of the documentary wanted us to see.