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Genie Wiley was found in California in 1970, a feral child subjected to 13 years of horrors at the hands of her father -- and her tragic story blurs the line between research and true crime. It's part psychology, part biology, part linguistics... and all a chapter in the dark history of science.
Genie presented an incredible opportunity to study the limits of and potential for language acquisition at a time when Noam Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures" dominated linguistic debates. But was it even possible to help an abused girl and study her at the same time? That depends on who you ask -- but the result was limited scientific knowledge and a broken life.
FURTHER READING / VIEWING:
"Genie: A Scientific Tragedy" by Russ Rymer
NOVA: "Genie, The Secret of the Wild Child" (1994)
#psychology #weirdhistory #truecrimestories