Twenty months
after Genie’s birth, in 1957, her father was under the belief that she was
‘mentally retarded’, and locked her away.
Claiming to be
protecting her, he separated her from Irene, her mother, and her brother John,
who was six at the time.
The room Genie was
kept in was ‘at the back of the house with the window covered,’ and described
as ‘bare… through a cracked-open window in her room, Genie may have heard
airplanes overhead or ‘faint piano music drifting from a neighbour’s house.’
The most she would
have been able to see from inside were: ‘two inches of sky and the side of a
neighbour’s house’.
The house was
‘completely dark, all the blinds were drawn and there were no toys, no clothes,
nothing to indicate that a child of any age had lived there.
The furnishings of
the bedroom consisted of a cage with a chicken-wire lid, and a potty chair with
some kind of home-made strapping device.’ It was this potty that Genie was
chained to for ten years.
Although her parents
had never potty trained her, she even slept, chained to it. Attached to it, she
would only have been able to move her hands and feet.
Genie was
spoon-fed, by her father, a limited selection of food, including: baby food,
cereals and soft-boiled eggs.
Wiley fed her
‘mostly in barks and growls’, and ‘beat her with a wooden paddle every time she
uttered a sound’.
Nearly blind with
cataracts, Genie’s mother was too afraid to disobey Clark.
Genie’s brother John
admitted having been in the room where Genie was held, but explains his
reluctance to intervene, as:
“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”.
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