How old is genie wiley now

According to Curtiss, Butler told colleagues she wanted to be the next Annie Sullivan -- the so-called "miracle worker" who taught language to the blind and deaf Helen Keller.

Soon, team members were divided into combative camps, accusing one another of exploitation. Butler criticized the team members for overtesting the child and other infractions. Rigler eventually asked Butler to leave, according to Kent. In , Rigler and his wife, Marilyn, became Genie's legal foster parents. She learned sign language and continued to progress.

But by , NIMH officials -- citing poor organization and lack of results -- refused to renew the study grant. The Riglers, who had received compensation as foster parents, then ended their care.

ABC News was unable to find current contact information for Rigler, who is now 87 and reportedly in failing health. But in a NOVA documentary, the Riglers said they assumed the foster care arrangement was "temporary. Genie was sent to foster care homes for special needs children, including one that was particularly religious. She immediately regressed. She was readmitted to Children's Hospital in for two weeks and was able to describe in sign language how her foster parents had punished her for vomiting.

After that incident, Genie never regained her speech. Again, she was thrown into foster care, some of it abusive, according to Curtiss and UCLA's archival data on her case. When Genie turned 18 in , just after the study ended, Irene Wiley convinced the court to drop the abuse charges against her, claiming she had also been a victim, and Wiley took custody of Genie for a very short time.

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times, Wiley worked as a "domestic servant" and quickly found she could not tend to Genie's needs.

In , after cataract surgery, Wiley again petitioned for custody and obtained legal guardianship of her daughter, but by then Genie had been placed in an adult care home. No one has released the name of the facility, and the private foundation that supports her care would not give out the information.

In , Wiley filed a lawsuit against the hospital and her daughter's individual caregivers, alleging they used Genie for "prestige and profit. The suit was settled in , but the rancor deepened. Curtiss, who had continued to work with Genie on a volunteer basis, was banned from visiting her.

Meanwhile, the Riglers reconnected with Irene Wiley. Russ Rymer, author of the book "Genie: An Abused Child's Flight From Silence," acknowledged the arguments between researchers affected those who tried to tell her story.

That was also part of the breakdown that turned her treatment into such a tragedy. Harry Bromley-Davenport, whose self-described "sentimental film "Mockingbird Don't Sing" told the story from Curtiss' point of view, spent two years researching the case, including 40 hours of interviews with Curtiss.

That person, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that at that time, around the year , Genie was living in a privately run facility for six to eight mentally underdeveloped adults. But she was happy. Today, Genie lives in an adult foster care home somewhere in southern California.

Little is known about her present condition, although an anonymous individual hired a private investigator to track her down in and described her as happy. But this contrasts with other reports. Psychiatrist Jay Shurley visited her on her 27th and 29th birthdays and characterized her as largely silent, depressed , and chronically institutionalized.

If you want to do rigorous science, then Genie's interests are going to come second some of the time. If you only care about helping Genie, then you wouldn't do a lot of the scientific research. So, what are you going to do? To make matters worse, the two roles, scientist and therapist , were combined in one person, in her case. So, I think future generations are going to study Genie's case not only for what it can teach us about human development but also for what it can teach us about the rewards and the risks of conducting 'the forbidden experiment.

Ever wonder what your personality type means? Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Schoneberger T. Three myths from the language acquisition literature. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. American Psychological Association. Language acquisition device. Vanhove J. The critical period hypothesis in second language acquisition: A statistical critique and a reanalysis. PLoS One. The secret of the wild child [transcript]. Broadcasted Pines, M.

The civilizing of Genie. In: Kasper LF, ed. Teaching English Through the Disciplines: Psychology. Whittier; Rigler, David. Collection of research materials related to linguistic-psychological studies of Genie pseudonym. Online Archive of California. Updated June 21, Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page.

These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. Early Education. Language Acquisition. Progress Stalls. Continuing Care. Further Abuse.

Genie Today. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Rolls, G. Classic Case Studies in Psychology 2nd ed. Genie learned to play, chew, dress herself and enjoy music.

She expanded her vocabulary and sketched pictures to communicate what words could not. She performed well on intelligence tests. For many of us, our thoughts are verbally encoded. She could hold a set of pictures so they told a story. She could create all sorts of complex structures from sticks. She had other signs of intelligence. The lights were on. Curtiss, who was starting out as an academic at that time, formed a tight bond with Genie during walks and shopping trips mainly for plastic buckets, which Genie collected.

Her curiosity and spirit also enchanted hospital cooks, orderlies and other staff members. Genie showed that lexicon seemed to have no age limit. But grammar, forming words into sentences, proved beyond her, bolstering the view that beyond a certain age, it is simply too late. The window seems to close, said Curtiss, between five and Genie definitely engaged with the world. She could draw in ways you would know exactly what she was communicating.

Yet there was to be no Helen Keller-style breakthrough. On the contrary, by , feuding divided the carers and scientists. Each side accused the other of exploitation. Research funding dried up and Genie was moved to an inadequate foster home. Irene briefly regained custody only to find herself overwhelmed — so Genie went to another foster home, then a series of state institutions under the supervision of social workers who barred access to Curtiss and others.

Russ Rymer, a journalist who detailed the case in the s in two New Yorker articles and a book, Genie: a Scientific Tragedy , painted a bleak portrait of photographs from her 27th birthday party. Her dark hair has been hacked off raggedly at the top of her forehead, giving her the aspect of an asylum inmate.

Jay Shurley, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural science who was at that party, and her 29th, told Rymer she was miserable, stooped and seldom made eye contact. But a melancholy thread connects those she left behind. For the surviving scientists it is regret tinged with anguish. Curtiss, who wrote a book about Genie , and is one of the few researchers to emerge creditably from the saga, feels grief-stricken to this day.

They never let me have any contact with her. I long to see her. This took over my life, my worldview. A lot about this case left me shaken. Maybe this is cowardice — I was relieved to be able to turn away from the story. Because anytime I went into that room [where Genie grew up], it was unbearable. But Rymer discovered he could not turn away, not fully.

But I had to confront how much I identified with Genie.