1 00:00:00,560 --> 00:00:06,299 Tonight on NOVA, the shocking story of a girl who spent her childhood locked in a bedroom. 2 00:00:07,120 --> 00:00:11,880 The girl reportedly was still wearing diapers when a social worker discovered the case two weeks ago. 3 00:00:12,539 --> 00:00:17,940 Raised in isolation, Jeannie was a wild child, uncivilized, barely able to walk or talk. 4 00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:21,920 The indications are that she was beaten for making noise. 5 00:00:22,120 --> 00:00:29,079 With footage never before seen on television, NOVA follows the controversial efforts to unlock the secret of the wild child. 6 00:00:29,079 --> 00:00:53,170 once in a great while civilized society comes across a wild child a child who 7 00:00:53,170 --> 00:00:59,509 has grown up in severe isolation with virtually no human contact this is the 8 00:00:59,509 --> 00:01:08,799 story of such a case the story begins in Los Angeles on November 4th 1970 9 00:01:08,799 --> 00:01:12,980 officials in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia have taken custody of a 10 00:01:12,980 --> 00:01:17,400 thirteen-year-old girl and they say was kept in such isolation by her parents 11 00:01:17,400 --> 00:01:19,200 that she never even learned to talk. 12 00:01:20,159 --> 00:01:22,879 Her elderly parents have been charged with child abuse. 13 00:01:23,459 --> 00:01:25,000 This is the scene of the crime. 14 00:01:26,019 --> 00:01:27,640 A child was locked in a room 15 00:01:27,640 --> 00:01:30,280 and tied to a potty chair for most of her life. 16 00:01:33,689 --> 00:01:36,209 Completely restrained, she was forced to sit alone 17 00:01:36,209 --> 00:01:38,870 day after day and often through the night. 18 00:01:39,810 --> 00:01:42,930 She had little to look at and no one to talk to 19 00:01:42,930 --> 00:01:44,930 for more than ten years. 20 00:01:46,650 --> 00:01:49,109 The girl reportedly was uttering infantile noises 21 00:01:49,109 --> 00:01:53,170 and still wearing diapers when a social worker discovered the case two weeks ago. 22 00:01:53,170 --> 00:01:57,209 But the authorities are hoping she still may have a normal learning capacity. 23 00:01:57,930 --> 00:02:00,950 Here was a 13-year-old who seemed like an infant, 24 00:02:01,849 --> 00:02:03,909 a girl who would be known as Jeannie. 25 00:02:04,689 --> 00:02:14,659 Jeannie was taken to Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, 26 00:02:14,939 --> 00:02:18,300 where she immediately won the hearts of doctors and scientists. 27 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:24,379 She was fragile and beautiful, almost haunting. 28 00:02:24,379 --> 00:02:33,020 And so I was pulled, I was very drawn to her, even though I was nervous and had no idea, in many respects, what to expect. 29 00:02:34,939 --> 00:02:39,139 Jeanne was about to test an idea important to science and society, 30 00:02:39,780 --> 00:02:45,020 that a nurturing environment could make up for even the most nightmarish of pasts. 31 00:02:54,449 --> 00:03:00,870 If you make up a sentence in your head, or you write it down, and it has, say, 10, 12 words in it, 32 00:03:00,870 --> 00:03:06,849 And chances are, you can listen for the rest of your life for someone else to say the sentence. 33 00:03:07,210 --> 00:03:08,030 You can go to the library. 34 00:03:08,030 --> 00:03:15,150 Here at UCLA, Susan Curtis teaches students about a crucial human trait, the ability to learn language. 35 00:03:16,110 --> 00:03:19,370 And chances are, you will never come across that sentence. 36 00:03:20,729 --> 00:03:23,150 The students begin their study through a famous case. 37 00:03:23,370 --> 00:03:27,750 The case name is Jeannie. 38 00:03:27,750 --> 00:03:29,990 This is not the person's real name. 39 00:03:29,990 --> 00:03:43,870 But when we think about what a genie is, a genie is a creature that comes out of a bottle or whatever, but emerges into human society, past childhood, and we assume that it really isn't a creature that had a human childhood. 40 00:03:44,610 --> 00:03:47,669 Susan Curtis has a special connection to the story she's telling. 41 00:03:49,250 --> 00:03:53,729 Twenty years ago, she was asked to join a team working to rehabilitate genie. 42 00:03:53,729 --> 00:03:59,830 I was literally at the right place at the right time. I was a new graduate student interested in language acquisition. 43 00:03:59,990 --> 00:04:03,909 unencumbered by family ties or responsibilities, 44 00:04:04,449 --> 00:04:06,770 and they asked me if I would be interested. 45 00:04:07,349 --> 00:04:11,330 When Curtis first joined the case, 46 00:04:11,810 --> 00:04:13,770 Jeannie had a strange bunny walk 47 00:04:13,770 --> 00:04:16,470 and other almost inhuman characteristics. 48 00:04:17,930 --> 00:04:19,370 Jeannie constantly spat. 49 00:04:20,209 --> 00:04:21,649 She sniffed and clawed. 50 00:04:22,589 --> 00:04:24,870 She barely spoke or made any noises. 51 00:04:26,350 --> 00:04:30,310 The indications are that she was beaten for making noise, 52 00:04:30,310 --> 00:04:34,310 and consequently had learned basically not to vocalize, 53 00:04:34,529 --> 00:04:37,170 and she really didn't vocalize very much at all. 54 00:04:37,730 --> 00:04:41,829 When I first met her, she was silent most of the time. 55 00:04:43,569 --> 00:04:47,170 Jeannie also received daily visits at Children's Hospital 56 00:04:47,170 --> 00:04:49,350 from James Kent, her psychologist. 57 00:04:51,569 --> 00:04:53,990 Kent recalls first meeting his new patient. 58 00:04:55,129 --> 00:04:57,009 I was captivated by her. 59 00:04:57,009 --> 00:05:01,170 i was not the last person to become captivated by her 60 00:05:01,170 --> 00:05:08,449 the story as we began to to learn about it was sort of one of the things of course would reach 61 00:05:08,449 --> 00:05:16,689 out and grab you anyway but she had a personal quality that seemed to elicit rescue fantasies 62 00:05:16,689 --> 00:05:21,110 and this in a group of people who were interested in taking care of kids and 63 00:05:21,110 --> 00:05:26,089 who specialized in early childhood who were going to be sort of powered by rescue fantasies anyway 64 00:05:26,089 --> 00:05:33,509 she's reached out and grabbed lots of us one of genie's most captivating qualities was the intense 65 00:05:33,509 --> 00:05:39,269 way she explored her new environment oddly even strangers who knew nothing about her story 66 00:05:39,269 --> 00:05:45,649 seemed to sense her need to do so one particularly striking memory of those early months was an 67 00:05:45,649 --> 00:05:51,610 absolutely wonderful man who was a butcher and he never asked her name he never asked anything 68 00:05:51,610 --> 00:05:57,050 about her they just connected and communicated somehow and every time we came in and i know 69 00:05:57,050 --> 00:06:03,610 this was so with others as well he would slide open the little window and hand her something 70 00:06:03,610 --> 00:06:09,670 that wasn't wrapped a bone of some sort some meat fish whatever and he would allow her to do her 71 00:06:09,670 --> 00:06:15,250 thing with it and to do her thing what her thing was basically was to explore it tactilely to put 72 00:06:15,250 --> 00:06:20,170 it up against her lips and feel it with her lips and touch it almost as if she were blind 73 00:06:20,170 --> 00:06:26,689 word of the wild child spread attracting scientists from all around the country 74 00:06:26,689 --> 00:06:34,110 one of them was oklahoma psychiatrist jay shirley when introduced i extended my hand 75 00:06:34,110 --> 00:06:44,610 she reached out with her fingers and delicately touched my hand and then in a sense that was it 76 00:06:44,610 --> 00:06:46,889 She had made my acquaintance. 77 00:06:47,149 --> 00:06:51,149 She was satisfied for herself about me. 78 00:06:51,670 --> 00:06:55,110 But my reaction was I had a thousand questions immediately. 79 00:06:55,850 --> 00:06:57,310 Who, what, how? 80 00:06:57,470 --> 00:06:58,629 How does this come about? 81 00:06:58,629 --> 00:07:01,750 Why do I see what I'm seeing? 82 00:07:02,790 --> 00:07:05,829 Shirley was an expert in social isolation. 83 00:07:07,310 --> 00:07:09,730 Jeannie was the most extreme case he'd ever seen. 84 00:07:09,730 --> 00:07:20,949 solitary confinement is diabolically the most severe punishment and in my experience really 85 00:07:20,949 --> 00:07:29,410 quite dramatic symptoms develop in as little as 15 minutes to an hour and certainly inside of two 86 00:07:29,410 --> 00:07:38,230 or three days and try to expand this to 10 years boggles one's mind shirley wanted to assess how 87 00:07:38,230 --> 00:07:43,470 well Jeannie had survived her long years of isolation. He directed the team to gather 88 00:07:43,470 --> 00:07:49,829 information on her brain waves. For four nights running, they wired Jeannie to instruments 89 00:07:49,829 --> 00:07:59,339 that measured the electrical activity in her brain while she slept. What they found was 90 00:07:59,339 --> 00:08:05,379 an unusually high number of so-called sleep spindles, the dense bunching patterns that 91 00:08:05,379 --> 00:08:10,720 look like spindles on a spinning machine. This was an abnormal brainwave pattern. 92 00:08:13,220 --> 00:08:17,860 The sleep studies raised a question that would puzzle the Jeannie team for years. 93 00:08:18,699 --> 00:08:24,019 Was Jeannie brain damaged from her years of abuse, or had she been retarded from birth? 94 00:08:25,139 --> 00:08:29,079 When Jeannie was a baby, her father apparently decided she was retarded. 95 00:08:29,879 --> 00:08:32,639 He insisted on keeping her isolated because of that. 96 00:08:32,639 --> 00:08:40,500 authorities pieced together these few facts in the early weeks genie's strange family circumstances 97 00:08:40,500 --> 00:08:48,080 made it hard to learn more genie's mother weak and nearly blind claimed that she too had been 98 00:08:48,080 --> 00:08:54,840 a victim of her domineering husband genie's father shortly after authorities discovered genie 99 00:08:54,840 --> 00:09:04,070 shot and killed himself the suicide only added to the interest in genie's case she was a prized 100 00:09:04,070 --> 00:09:08,870 patient and in the months to come the number of visiting scientists increased 101 00:09:08,870 --> 00:09:14,759 Jeannie's new celebrity status marked the beginning of a debate that would 102 00:09:14,759 --> 00:09:23,600 intensify over time how should her case be handled James Kent's plan was the 103 00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:27,960 first to be adopted he believed Jeannie could get better if she were allowed to 104 00:09:27,960 --> 00:09:34,700 form relationships and he was encouraged when she started to do so up until one 105 00:09:34,700 --> 00:09:40,039 particular day Jeannie didn't seem to respond in any any special way to my 106 00:09:40,039 --> 00:09:45,500 coming or going at the at the end of our session then one day when I left her 107 00:09:45,500 --> 00:09:53,120 expression changed from happy to sad indicate that there was some some 108 00:09:53,120 --> 00:09:58,039 sadness in the separation for her and it was the first indication that I had that 109 00:09:58,039 --> 00:10:02,460 we were beginning to form this relationship I thought if long she had 110 00:10:02,460 --> 00:10:05,799 the capacity to form attachments, she had the capacity to learn, she had the capacity 111 00:10:05,799 --> 00:10:09,730 to get better. 112 00:10:09,730 --> 00:10:13,710 By the end of May, something had happened to add to the hopes for Jeannie's future. 113 00:10:13,710 --> 00:10:19,049 It was a breakthrough that everyone had waited for. 114 00:10:19,049 --> 00:10:24,789 It was captured on videotape by Jeanne Butler, Jeannie's special education teacher. 115 00:10:24,789 --> 00:10:29,230 Here in a classroom at Children's Hospital, Butler is teaching Jeannie to tie her own 116 00:10:29,230 --> 00:10:30,610 shoes. 117 00:10:30,610 --> 00:10:36,169 is about to tell Jeannie, you do it, and we can tell Dr. Kent what you can do. Listen 118 00:10:36,169 --> 00:10:54,559 to Jeannie's reaction. Jeannie said the word doctor. It was one of more than a hundred 119 00:10:54,559 --> 00:11:02,899 words she knew by that spring. Listen to another. She was difficult to understand, but Jeannie 120 00:11:02,899 --> 00:11:10,799 was repeating words genie was beginning to talk i could tell as all of us could just looking at her 121 00:11:10,799 --> 00:11:18,100 that there was a lot to genie and that what we had to do was to make sure we gave her opportunities 122 00:11:18,100 --> 00:11:25,519 to express find a way to take what was latent and express it or somehow then you know acquire it 123 00:11:25,519 --> 00:11:27,759 because the potential just seemed so great 124 00:11:27,759 --> 00:11:36,009 for the first time in her life genie seemed to be thriving 125 00:11:36,009 --> 00:11:41,090 her mental and physical growth since coming to children's hospital was obvious 126 00:11:41,090 --> 00:11:50,690 genie's progress gave birth to a daring hope she might fully recover and science might learn how 127 00:11:50,690 --> 00:11:58,309 her doctors even publicly predicted success their confidence was an eerie echo of a moment 128 00:11:58,309 --> 00:12:04,649 from the past, an echo of another case, like Jeanne's, that preceded hers by nearly 200 129 00:12:04,649 --> 00:12:05,269 years. 130 00:12:06,129 --> 00:12:15,740 The case began in 1800, when citizens of this region in southern France discovered a remarkable 131 00:12:15,740 --> 00:12:18,200 creature who had crept out of the nearby forest. 132 00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:24,000 He was animal in behavior, human in form, mute and naked. 133 00:12:25,639 --> 00:12:27,259 He was a wild child. 134 00:12:27,759 --> 00:12:29,000 He would be known as Victor, 135 00:12:29,299 --> 00:12:32,840 and this statue would be erected to mark his entry into civilization. 136 00:12:34,700 --> 00:12:38,460 Citizens in the village where Victor was discovered guessed he was 12 years old. 137 00:12:39,539 --> 00:12:42,220 His food preferences, his lack of speech, 138 00:12:42,659 --> 00:12:47,100 and the scars on his body indicated he had been in the wild for most of his life. 139 00:12:50,720 --> 00:12:54,740 Victor's story intrigued historian and psychologist Harlan Lane. 140 00:12:54,740 --> 00:13:01,279 around the time doctors in los angeles were following genie's case lane was in france 141 00:13:01,279 --> 00:13:08,200 tracking victor's story shortly after the boy was captured a biology professor took a very careful 142 00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:14,639 look at him name of bonitaire bonitaire tells a story of tremendous indifference to cold that 143 00:13:14,639 --> 00:13:19,559 victor had one day he took him and took off all his clothes and the boy was thrilled to have his 144 00:13:19,559 --> 00:13:25,120 clothes taken off and he started leading him into the outdoors and it was surrounded by snow at that 145 00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:31,980 time and victor far from protesting was filled with joy he gave out cries of joy and uh pulled 146 00:13:31,980 --> 00:13:37,559 bonitaire out the doors and wanted to get out into the snow on other occasions he was actually out in 147 00:13:37,559 --> 00:13:43,700 the snow bare naked leaping about throwing the snow in the air eating snow bonitaire concludes 148 00:13:43,700 --> 00:13:47,440 and I think we have to conclude that our sensitivity to temperature 149 00:13:47,440 --> 00:13:50,860 is very much influenced by our life experiences. 150 00:13:52,120 --> 00:13:55,259 Word of the wild child traveled north to Paris, 151 00:13:55,539 --> 00:13:58,539 where the first anthropological society had just formed. 152 00:13:59,440 --> 00:14:02,019 It was the end of the Age of Enlightenment, 153 00:14:02,500 --> 00:14:05,179 a time of enormous discovery and debate. 154 00:14:06,320 --> 00:14:08,659 Victor walked into the middle of a raging debate. 155 00:14:08,759 --> 00:14:09,860 His timing was incredible. 156 00:14:10,559 --> 00:14:13,580 The question was, what makes us human? 157 00:14:13,700 --> 00:14:16,120 What separates man from the beasts? 158 00:14:16,940 --> 00:14:18,639 Is it human appearance? 159 00:14:19,940 --> 00:14:24,620 Well, anthropological expeditions were returning with a wide variety of races, 160 00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,059 and Parisians were not so clear on human appearance. 161 00:14:29,120 --> 00:14:31,440 Is it walking upright? 162 00:14:31,740 --> 00:14:33,320 But orangutans walked upright. 163 00:14:34,379 --> 00:14:35,320 Is it language? 164 00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:39,440 First reports were that Victor had no language. 165 00:14:39,940 --> 00:14:42,460 Then again, perhaps he could learn some. 166 00:14:43,419 --> 00:14:46,259 In any case, philosophers, anatomists, and their ilk 167 00:14:46,259 --> 00:14:48,539 were convinced that careful study of Victor 168 00:14:48,539 --> 00:14:50,919 could finally answer the question, 169 00:14:51,179 --> 00:14:52,659 what is it that makes us human? 170 00:14:54,240 --> 00:14:57,919 With Victor, Parisians had a chance to see human nature 171 00:14:57,919 --> 00:15:00,059 stripped of society and culture. 172 00:15:00,779 --> 00:15:03,600 This was a situation no one would set out to create on purpose. 173 00:15:04,340 --> 00:15:07,460 It was therefore referred to as the forbidden experiment. 174 00:15:07,460 --> 00:15:15,309 Scientists in Paris quickly summoned Victor from the south of France 175 00:15:15,309 --> 00:15:18,950 Although Victor could hear, they brought him to this school 176 00:15:18,950 --> 00:15:21,470 The National Institute for the Deaf 177 00:15:21,470 --> 00:15:24,389 Okay, we're at the National Institute for the Deaf 178 00:15:24,389 --> 00:15:25,710 And it happened right here 179 00:15:25,710 --> 00:15:29,090 The gardener from Rodez brings the wild boy right through here 180 00:15:29,090 --> 00:15:30,889 Into the courtyard 181 00:15:30,889 --> 00:15:34,210 And I guess they were expected 182 00:15:34,210 --> 00:15:37,190 And the director, the Abbe Sikar, comes out 183 00:15:37,190 --> 00:15:42,190 And, come on, they would meet about here. 184 00:15:42,190 --> 00:15:45,190 Sika comes out, and what does he see? 185 00:15:45,190 --> 00:15:50,190 Not a nice little bourgeois deaf kid in the school uniform, his new pupil, 186 00:15:50,190 --> 00:15:56,190 but a raging, spitting, snarling, filthy savage, 187 00:15:56,190 --> 00:15:59,190 defecating where he is, urinating where he is, 188 00:15:59,190 --> 00:16:01,190 biting, covered with scars, 189 00:16:01,190 --> 00:16:05,190 long hair, wadded, yellow teeth, long fingernails, 190 00:16:05,190 --> 00:16:10,730 a savage. Sicard never seen anything like that in his life. So he backs off. What's he going to do? 191 00:16:11,629 --> 00:16:16,549 Idea. He's just hired a young physician from the military hospital up the street, 192 00:16:17,009 --> 00:16:24,970 followed by the name of Jean-Marc Itard. So he calls, Itard, Itard. Jean-Marc Itard was a 26-year-old 193 00:16:24,970 --> 00:16:31,070 medical student who was ready to make his mark. He saw the wild boy as an opportunity. Well, 194 00:16:31,070 --> 00:16:36,070 Tard was an interesting man, wasn't he? How is he going to make a name for himself, a place for 195 00:16:36,070 --> 00:16:41,470 himself in medicine and in the intellectual excitement of the time? Because he was a 196 00:16:41,470 --> 00:16:48,629 brilliant fellow and he read philosophy astutely, studied medicine. Well, the answer was that here 197 00:16:48,629 --> 00:16:54,850 was a chance that would make or break him. If he could actually civilize a wild child, the first 198 00:16:54,850 --> 00:17:01,370 person in history to do so. Why? He would be a figure down through history. Even in the 20th 199 00:17:01,370 --> 00:17:07,630 century, people might be discussing him. Itard's ambitions would pay off. Not only would people in 200 00:17:07,630 --> 00:17:12,829 the 20th century still be discussing him, but the famous French director Francois Truffaut 201 00:17:12,829 --> 00:17:20,210 would play Itard in a movie about the case. The movie illustrates the risk Itard took. 202 00:17:21,190 --> 00:17:22,950 More experienced doctors concluded 203 00:17:22,950 --> 00:17:25,349 Victor was profoundly retarded from birth 204 00:17:25,349 --> 00:17:27,750 and unable to learn. 205 00:17:30,539 --> 00:17:33,539 Itard, though, believed that Victor had become retarded 206 00:17:33,539 --> 00:17:35,500 because of his years of living in the wild. 207 00:17:36,259 --> 00:17:38,079 He believed he could civilize Victor. 208 00:17:43,799 --> 00:17:45,660 Itard's diary of his work with Victor 209 00:17:45,660 --> 00:17:47,700 makes this one of the most documented cases 210 00:17:47,700 --> 00:17:49,440 of wild children throughout history. 211 00:17:50,480 --> 00:17:52,799 In fact, the diary served as the basis 212 00:17:52,799 --> 00:17:55,380 for Truffaut's movie called The Wild Child. 213 00:17:56,099 --> 00:18:08,859 In Los Angeles, Truffaut's movie premiered at the Los Feliz Theater in Hollywood. 214 00:18:10,500 --> 00:18:16,299 One of the strangest chapters of this story is the timing of the premiere. 215 00:18:17,140 --> 00:18:20,220 For Truffaut's movie about history's most famous wild child 216 00:18:20,220 --> 00:18:23,579 opened exactly one week after Genie was discovered. 217 00:18:25,359 --> 00:18:29,779 In true Hollywood fashion, the Genie team took advantage of this coincidence. 218 00:18:30,480 --> 00:18:32,319 They arranged their own private screening. 219 00:18:37,900 --> 00:18:42,220 In charge of this event was hospital chief of psychiatry, Howard Hansen. 220 00:18:42,220 --> 00:18:51,559 Well, that afternoon at 4.30, we left Children's Hospital and we paraded up the street. 221 00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:55,359 We had an entourage up the street to the Las Feliz Theater. 222 00:18:56,140 --> 00:19:04,180 It was awe-inspiring to us because here was the first case that had been documented in any scientific way. 223 00:19:04,180 --> 00:19:11,740 and here we were having an opportunity to see a film portrayal of that here was history's stamp 224 00:19:11,740 --> 00:19:18,019 of approval for daring to rehabilitate a wild child guitar inspired everyone at the screening 225 00:19:18,019 --> 00:19:41,500 in other words everybody was shocked and stunned they just sat in silence for a bit because 226 00:19:41,500 --> 00:19:44,240 the film was so powerful in itself. 227 00:19:44,859 --> 00:19:50,279 And then the analogy with Genie began to hit. 228 00:19:51,019 --> 00:19:54,759 It was like here history was repeating itself, 229 00:19:55,160 --> 00:19:57,039 and everybody there thought, 230 00:19:57,259 --> 00:20:00,319 here is an opportunity to learn something. 231 00:20:01,660 --> 00:20:04,700 The screening was part of a special conference 232 00:20:04,700 --> 00:20:06,920 for which the Genie team invited consultants 233 00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:08,160 from all over the country. 234 00:20:08,160 --> 00:20:14,960 a government agency the national institute of mental health had agreed to fund a scientific 235 00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:21,539 project on genie now it was time to focus the direction of research it soon became clear though 236 00:20:21,539 --> 00:20:27,359 that participants were unlikely to agree on one course of action oh we were off in a million 237 00:20:27,359 --> 00:20:34,500 directions i mean each expert each person in their own discipline thought oh wow i can do this i can 238 00:20:34,500 --> 00:20:41,319 do this, I can do that. We were flooded, flooded with our own associations and with the pursuits 239 00:20:41,319 --> 00:20:47,420 that each of us might have thought, wow, look what we can do, look what we might learn from this, 240 00:20:47,940 --> 00:20:56,099 a girl who has appeared out of nowhere. To bring all the proposed plans for Jeannie into focus, 241 00:20:56,099 --> 00:21:01,319 there was another player on the team, David Riggler, a psychologist at Children's Hospital. 242 00:21:02,140 --> 00:21:04,359 Riggler, too, was hooked on Jeannie's case. 243 00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:08,160 I think everybody who came in contact with her was attracted to her. 244 00:21:08,799 --> 00:21:11,640 She had a quality of somehow connecting with people, 245 00:21:11,779 --> 00:21:15,279 which developed more and more, but was present really from the start. 246 00:21:16,400 --> 00:21:19,660 She had a way of reaching out without saying anything, 247 00:21:19,960 --> 00:21:22,440 but just somehow by the kind of look in her eyes, 248 00:21:22,940 --> 00:21:24,720 and people wanted to do things for her. 249 00:21:28,019 --> 00:21:30,559 Riggler decided how to focus the research 250 00:21:30,559 --> 00:21:33,720 around the time of Genie's first birthday at Children's Hospital. 251 00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:36,059 Genie was now 14 years old. 252 00:21:36,740 --> 00:21:39,539 The timing was fitting, because Riddler wanted to know, 253 00:21:40,019 --> 00:21:42,240 could the clock be turned back for Genie? 254 00:21:42,640 --> 00:21:46,119 In particular, could a teenager still learn to talk? 255 00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:49,579 This had already been the subject of much debate 256 00:21:49,579 --> 00:21:51,019 by the time Genie was discovered. 257 00:21:53,240 --> 00:21:55,539 It all began with Noam Chomsky, 258 00:21:55,539 --> 00:21:59,180 a young linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 259 00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:02,380 Chomsky declared that we acquire language 260 00:22:02,380 --> 00:22:04,140 not just because we are taught it, 261 00:22:04,559 --> 00:22:07,079 but because we are born with the principles of language. 262 00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:08,539 They're in our genes. 263 00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:12,400 We have language, Chomsky said, because of nature, 264 00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:14,099 not just nurture. 265 00:22:15,380 --> 00:22:17,339 Then along came a neuropsychologist 266 00:22:17,339 --> 00:22:18,980 to add his own twist to the theory. 267 00:22:19,420 --> 00:22:22,500 Eric Linenberg agreed we're born with the principles of language, 268 00:22:22,500 --> 00:22:25,079 but claimed there is a deadline for applying them. 269 00:22:25,079 --> 00:22:30,380 If a first language isn't acquired by puberty, he said, it may be too late. 270 00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:34,559 Chomsky and Lindenberg rocked the field. 271 00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:36,299 They were hot. 272 00:22:37,440 --> 00:22:38,579 Linguistics was in. 273 00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:44,519 It was a perfect time to test the new ideas, recalls linguist Alyssa Newport. 274 00:22:45,079 --> 00:22:48,079 What Lindenberg proposed is what's called the critical period hypothesis. 275 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:53,799 And what he suggested is that there's a particular period in the life of humans 276 00:22:53,799 --> 00:22:56,079 when they're ripe for learning languages. 277 00:22:56,980 --> 00:23:02,559 What this hypothesis was looking for was some more direct evidence. 278 00:23:02,759 --> 00:23:04,920 But of course you don't do these experiments. 279 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:07,960 One never wishes to deprive somebody of language 280 00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:10,880 during the critical period to see what happens. 281 00:23:11,779 --> 00:23:14,059 It happened that at that time, 282 00:23:14,299 --> 00:23:17,099 when that would have been the right thing for Lenneberg's hypothesis, 283 00:23:17,480 --> 00:23:18,559 genie was discovered. 284 00:23:18,740 --> 00:23:21,420 Stove! Stove! 285 00:23:21,420 --> 00:23:27,099 this is why Susan Curtis joined the genie team she was a graduate student in 286 00:23:27,099 --> 00:23:34,180 linguistics she would put the critical period hypothesis to its first real test 287 00:23:36,420 --> 00:23:48,000 this is one of the first videotapes of Curtis's work with genie she wanted it 288 00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:52,579 It seemed to me almost desperately to recode her world with verbal labels. 289 00:23:52,920 --> 00:23:55,359 And sometimes we would just stand at a window 290 00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:59,640 and she would take my hand and point out the window at a panorama before us 291 00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:02,579 and I wouldn't really know exactly what it was she wanted to know the word for, 292 00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:06,039 but she would persist until she at least got a new word. 293 00:24:06,980 --> 00:24:09,180 While Curtis tracked Jeannie's speech, 294 00:24:09,599 --> 00:24:12,500 James Kent continued work on her emotional development. 295 00:24:12,500 --> 00:24:19,039 Kent was concerned that with the growing number of people involved in her case Jeannie wouldn't 296 00:24:19,039 --> 00:24:26,660 be able to form single dependable relationships so he set out to be her surrogate parent wanted 297 00:24:26,660 --> 00:24:30,059 to be part of her sort of ordinary life so I would frequently be there in the morning when 298 00:24:30,059 --> 00:24:34,940 she had breakfast and be there in the evening when she went to bed read her a story kiss her 299 00:24:34,940 --> 00:24:40,700 goodnight turn off the lights go and then do things during the day when she became when she 300 00:24:40,700 --> 00:24:43,759 had sort of the important things that she had to go through like physical 301 00:24:43,759 --> 00:24:47,000 exams or things like that I would come along with her as though she were my 302 00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:56,299 child she was very special to me well doctors aren't supposed to love their 303 00:24:56,299 --> 00:25:02,299 patients but if you could find a word that meant the same thing yes yeah I was 304 00:25:02,299 --> 00:25:26,769 very attached to her first time she saw helium balloon she couldn't believe him 305 00:25:26,769 --> 00:25:32,650 the fact that you could let them go up and pull them back down again she had a kind of laugh that 306 00:25:32,650 --> 00:25:36,549 some people have and it's just a full-out chuckle it's so contagious everybody around them starts 307 00:25:36,549 --> 00:25:46,240 to laugh well they made her laugh like that one of my memories was that we would go to a place 308 00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:54,680 say Woolworth's where there would be a stand of spools of thread and spools where each color 309 00:25:54,680 --> 00:26:00,380 thread would incrementally change from the spools next to it and she wanted a 310 00:26:00,380 --> 00:26:06,500 word for every different hue and I didn't know I mean I had a box of 64 311 00:26:06,500 --> 00:26:10,579 Crayola crayons as a child and I remembered you know burnt sienna and all 312 00:26:10,579 --> 00:26:14,299 these colors that I tried to extract from my memory but I don't English 313 00:26:14,299 --> 00:26:17,839 doesn't have words for all of these different shoes and she was very 314 00:26:17,839 --> 00:26:24,619 frustrated when I would say very dark blue and very very dark blue for Jeannie 315 00:26:24,619 --> 00:26:32,210 every new object every field trip was a visit to a magic kingdom the previous 316 00:26:32,210 --> 00:27:03,130 fall the world had discovered genie now genie could discover the world there was 317 00:27:03,130 --> 00:27:09,269 a time that she passed a father and a little boy who were coming out of a shop 318 00:27:09,269 --> 00:27:14,309 and the little boy was carrying a toy fire engine and they just passed and 319 00:27:14,309 --> 00:27:19,829 then they turned around and came back and the boy without a word handed the 320 00:27:19,829 --> 00:27:24,930 fire engine to Jeannie. She never asked for it. She never said a word. She did this kind of thing 321 00:27:24,930 --> 00:27:40,730 somehow to people. Could I imagine what that was like? Could I see things with her eyes? I don't 322 00:27:40,730 --> 00:27:45,289 believe so. I don't believe I really could. Sometimes I could understand and guess pretty 323 00:27:45,289 --> 00:27:50,950 well what she was going to do, but that was familiarity and not an ability, I think, to 324 00:27:50,950 --> 00:28:07,099 empathize with, understand the way she saw the world. The summer after her discovery was a time 325 00:28:07,099 --> 00:28:15,440 firsts for Jeannie. The most significant happened here in the home of Jeanne 326 00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:25,099 Butler, her teacher at Children's Hospital. Jeannie moved in. It was a new 327 00:28:25,099 --> 00:28:30,140 step for Jeannie, her first trial run in a foster home. 328 00:28:37,099 --> 00:28:43,980 milk into the bedroom here butler videotapes genie's passion for hoarding things especially 329 00:28:43,980 --> 00:28:49,900 containers of liquid although there is no obvious explanation this has been reported in other cases 330 00:28:49,900 --> 00:28:58,730 of children raised in isolation genie began living here after butler said she had exposed 331 00:28:58,730 --> 00:29:05,049 genie to german measles it began as a temporary quarantine butler wanted to make it permanent 332 00:29:05,049 --> 00:29:16,460 butler shown here with genie and james kent wanted to be genie's official foster parent 333 00:29:16,460 --> 00:29:22,339 and she wanted to see changes in the handling of genie's case butler thought frequent visits 334 00:29:22,339 --> 00:29:27,319 by team members kent and susan curtis were exhausting genie that was the summer when we 335 00:29:27,319 --> 00:29:33,200 were then both disallowed into gene butler's house so um you know we didn't we didn't have 336 00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:39,839 such a fun summer it was a summer that included weeks of of uh concern and anxiety and you know 337 00:29:39,839 --> 00:29:46,819 anger and all kinds of things because he and i were kicked out of jane's house why she was crazy 338 00:29:46,819 --> 00:29:51,859 and she didn't want the other attachments i mean she wanted she i mean she used to walk around 339 00:29:51,859 --> 00:29:57,259 saying i'm going i am going to be the next annie sullivan this girl is going to make me famous 340 00:29:57,259 --> 00:30:02,839 and we used to sort of joke about it because she was so overt about it and we thought why doesn't 341 00:30:02,839 --> 00:30:06,980 you know even if she has the desire why is she so willing to tell the rest of us but she certainly 342 00:30:06,980 --> 00:30:09,079 found a way to concoct, and she concocted 343 00:30:09,079 --> 00:30:10,660 this story. The whole thing is untrue. 344 00:30:10,799 --> 00:30:12,559 She didn't have German measles. She had a rash. 345 00:30:14,859 --> 00:30:16,960 The bickering continued for more than 346 00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:18,759 a month, according to journals 347 00:30:18,759 --> 00:30:20,940 left behind by Jean Butler, who died 348 00:30:20,940 --> 00:30:21,759 in 1988. 349 00:30:23,599 --> 00:30:24,819 Butler wrote she 350 00:30:24,819 --> 00:30:26,900 feared Jeannie was being experimented 351 00:30:26,900 --> 00:30:27,700 with too much. 352 00:30:27,700 --> 00:30:29,460 Are you going to do that again? 353 00:30:30,759 --> 00:30:31,880 Whether this was 354 00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:33,740 Butler's true motivation in keeping 355 00:30:33,740 --> 00:30:35,940 away other team members cannot be known. 356 00:30:35,940 --> 00:30:39,519 but it raised again the issue of how Jeannie should be treated. 357 00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:43,700 Could she be a scientific subject and still be a patient? 358 00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:49,579 On the morning of August 13th, social workers arrived at Butler's house 359 00:30:49,579 --> 00:30:53,279 with a decision on her application to be Jeannie's foster parent. 360 00:30:54,380 --> 00:30:57,299 Partly on advice from Children's Hospital, it was rejected. 361 00:31:00,109 --> 00:31:03,250 We were not satisfied with the quality of the care 362 00:31:03,250 --> 00:31:07,589 that Jeannie had at Jean Butler's. 363 00:31:07,589 --> 00:31:09,849 So that had to be interrupted. 364 00:31:10,450 --> 00:31:17,529 And, again, it was up to management, i.e. us, to interrupt that. 365 00:31:18,769 --> 00:31:22,269 Jeannie returned to Children's Hospital for only a couple of hours. 366 00:31:22,769 --> 00:31:25,069 A new foster parent came to take her home. 367 00:31:26,390 --> 00:31:27,529 It was David Riggler. 368 00:31:28,910 --> 00:31:31,410 Riggler decided to take charge of the case. 369 00:31:32,190 --> 00:31:34,589 He decided to take over Kent's role as therapist 370 00:31:34,589 --> 00:31:38,730 and also be Jeannie's foster parent and the principal investigator. 371 00:31:40,589 --> 00:31:42,450 Ordinarily, mental health people 372 00:31:42,450 --> 00:31:45,630 are not involved in these kinds of multiple roles, 373 00:31:46,029 --> 00:31:48,089 but I have to stress how desperate we were 374 00:31:48,089 --> 00:31:51,069 to find a place that was appropriate. 375 00:31:51,569 --> 00:31:53,789 And I remember making the commitment in my mind 376 00:31:53,789 --> 00:31:54,970 for a three-month period, 377 00:31:55,210 --> 00:31:57,369 which obviously got extended much longer. 378 00:31:58,170 --> 00:31:59,789 How long was she with you? 379 00:31:59,849 --> 00:32:02,390 She was with us approximately four years. 380 00:32:04,589 --> 00:32:07,529 Jeannie's new home was in a neighborhood near Children's Hospital. 381 00:32:08,730 --> 00:32:12,349 She lived here with David Riggler, his wife Marilyn, and the Riggler children. 382 00:32:12,789 --> 00:32:18,789 We really didn't know what to expect, except that we knew that Jeannie needed a great deal of help. 383 00:32:18,890 --> 00:32:25,650 And on the other hand, it was very exciting to feel that perhaps we could help her, 384 00:32:26,029 --> 00:32:28,130 and perhaps she could be rehabilitated. 385 00:32:29,329 --> 00:32:33,869 Marilyn, a graduate student in human development, was Jeannie's new teacher. 386 00:32:34,589 --> 00:32:37,789 she soon found herself giving jeannie unconventional lessons 387 00:32:39,470 --> 00:32:44,029 jeannie would erupt in silent storms of rage tugging and tearing her own body 388 00:32:44,910 --> 00:32:49,470 to turn jeannie's self-destructive anger outward marilyn taught her how to have a fit 389 00:32:49,470 --> 00:32:58,099 how to slam doors and stamp her feet eventually marilyn encouraged jeannie to turn her pain and 390 00:32:58,099 --> 00:33:05,859 anger into words and there came a time when she could say rough time and sometimes she could tell 391 00:33:05,859 --> 00:33:13,619 you the degree of how upset she was by waving one finger, which meant she was very upset, 392 00:33:13,619 --> 00:33:19,019 or kind of waving her hand, which meant she was upset, but it wasn't going to be a big 393 00:33:19,019 --> 00:33:20,019 deal. 394 00:33:20,019 --> 00:33:35,299 One of Marilyn's first tasks was to awaken in Jeannie a sense of her connection to the 395 00:33:35,299 --> 00:33:44,900 physical world like her historic counterpart Victor Jeannie seemed 396 00:33:44,900 --> 00:33:50,039 disconnected from certain bodily sensations I would allow her to run her 397 00:33:50,039 --> 00:33:56,059 own bath water or her own shower water and when I would touch it I would 398 00:33:56,059 --> 00:34:03,740 realize it was icy cold and I would say oh this is so cold you're gonna freeze 399 00:34:03,740 --> 00:34:09,679 and it was as though it didn't make any difference in their new role as Jeannie's 400 00:34:09,679 --> 00:34:13,500 foster parents the Riddler's were suddenly responsible for a child who 401 00:34:13,500 --> 00:34:21,420 needed full-time supervision they also took responsibility for Jeannie's 402 00:34:21,420 --> 00:34:28,780 therapy attempts to help her grapple with the horror of her childhood in this 403 00:34:28,780 --> 00:34:33,280 primitive role-playing exercise, Marilyn pretends to be Jeannie's mother. 404 00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:40,280 Hurry up! Hurry up, because there isn't any time. Father's gonna be angry. 405 00:34:40,280 --> 00:34:44,280 Marilyn tries to elicit memories of Jeannie's past. 406 00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:47,280 I wonder what you're thinking. 407 00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:59,380 Do I die a father? Do I die a father? 408 00:34:59,380 --> 00:35:03,380 You want to see your father? Father is not living. 409 00:35:03,380 --> 00:35:10,619 Do you remember what it was like when you lived at home? 410 00:35:10,619 --> 00:35:14,619 What were you sitting on when you ate the cereal? 411 00:35:14,619 --> 00:35:22,619 In the potty chair. 412 00:35:22,619 --> 00:35:26,260 Where did you stay when you lived at home? 413 00:35:26,260 --> 00:35:27,260 Where did you live? 414 00:35:27,260 --> 00:35:28,260 Where did you sleep? 415 00:35:28,260 --> 00:35:41,920 While this videotape shows how distressed Jeannie was by her childhood, 416 00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,599 it also reveals a developmental breakthrough. 417 00:35:45,559 --> 00:35:48,500 Jeannie was using language to describe past events. 418 00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,099 Jeannie was talking about things that happened 419 00:35:54,099 --> 00:35:56,159 before words were a part of her world. 420 00:35:58,019 --> 00:36:01,440 For a child who barely spoke just a short time ago, 421 00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:04,340 Jeannie was doing remarkably well with language. 422 00:36:04,940 --> 00:36:07,280 Susan Curtis continued to track her progress. 423 00:36:09,099 --> 00:36:15,059 Jeannie could read simple words. 424 00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:17,000 Her vocabulary was growing. 425 00:36:17,780 --> 00:36:20,519 Here she is about to say, I like log. 426 00:36:21,159 --> 00:36:22,420 I like log. 427 00:36:23,139 --> 00:36:24,400 Let me see. The log? 428 00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:25,780 I like log. 429 00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,760 You found a picture of a log. I didn't even know you knew what a log was. 430 00:36:30,199 --> 00:36:32,300 Where do you see a log? 431 00:36:32,300 --> 00:36:42,179 I was struck with how different the words that she knew were from the vocabulary words that young children would know when they're acquiring a first language. 432 00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:48,780 She had words for emotions, angry, sad, excited, happy. 433 00:36:49,500 --> 00:36:54,159 She had words, color words, shape words, square, rectangle. 434 00:36:54,159 --> 00:36:55,639 I like shook. 435 00:36:56,099 --> 00:36:57,199 He likes your words. 436 00:36:57,360 --> 00:36:58,159 I shook. 437 00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:01,500 Jeannie seemed to be pulling off a linguistics coup. 438 00:37:02,300 --> 00:37:04,219 She had passed the critical age of puberty, 439 00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:06,800 but she seemed to be learning a first language. 440 00:37:07,699 --> 00:37:09,340 Curtis began doubting the notion 441 00:37:09,340 --> 00:37:11,639 that there was a deadline for doing so. 442 00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:15,900 My early ideas were that the sky might be the limit. 443 00:37:18,539 --> 00:37:22,219 I couldn't help thinking that she might in fact 444 00:37:22,219 --> 00:37:26,840 just be able to show that people really were wrong. 445 00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:30,980 Janie was at last settled into her new life. 446 00:37:30,980 --> 00:37:32,840 She even went to a nursery school. 447 00:37:36,429 --> 00:37:40,010 Hopes grew that unlike other cases of children isolated from society, 448 00:37:40,730 --> 00:37:42,550 genies could have a happy ending. 449 00:37:46,630 --> 00:37:48,429 At the Paris Institute for the Deaf, 450 00:37:48,929 --> 00:37:51,789 genies' historic counterpart also seemed to flourish 451 00:37:51,789 --> 00:37:53,630 when reunited with civilization. 452 00:37:56,070 --> 00:37:57,889 As shown in Truffaut's movie, 453 00:37:58,329 --> 00:38:02,289 Victor responded successfully to methods used to teach the deaf. 454 00:38:02,289 --> 00:38:06,289 Victor's teacher created his own methods as well. 455 00:38:06,289 --> 00:38:12,289 Itar used cut-out letters for lessons that are still used in kindergartens all over the world. 456 00:38:16,289 --> 00:38:20,289 He had a knack for gradually increasing the complexity of Victor's tasks. 457 00:38:20,289 --> 00:38:21,289 tasks. 458 00:38:21,289 --> 00:38:34,789 Victor is teaching Victor to read simple phrases like to throw a key, so he writes throw key 459 00:38:34,789 --> 00:38:39,650 in French and then flings a key, then expects Victor to do the same. 460 00:38:39,650 --> 00:38:43,690 Victor's doing well, he's reading the sentences, performing the actions, but Itar doesn't trust 461 00:38:43,690 --> 00:38:49,110 it, it could be by sheer memory, he's seen Itar do it, so he decides to scramble the 462 00:38:49,110 --> 00:38:54,469 nouns and verbs and get some weird combinations like to tear a stone to cut a cup to eat a broom 463 00:38:54,469 --> 00:39:01,730 presents tear a stone to victor and he shows some ingenuity he goes off he gets a hammer and he 464 00:39:01,730 --> 00:39:07,989 smashes the stone cut a cup picks up the cup and hurls it on the floor and it shatters eat a broom 465 00:39:07,989 --> 00:39:12,610 this time he changes the noun goes off and gets a piece of bread and devours it 466 00:39:12,610 --> 00:39:21,610 This was Etar, constantly analyzing, upping the ante, pushing the kid toward civilization, toward the skills that we have. 467 00:39:21,610 --> 00:39:27,610 And Victor, generally rising to the challenge, each time taking the small step. 468 00:39:27,610 --> 00:39:31,610 This was the kind of struggle they engaged in together for six years. 469 00:39:32,610 --> 00:39:38,610 Indeed, for a while, teacher and pupil were joined in a shared mission of awakening. 470 00:39:38,610 --> 00:39:43,929 and this is as far as film director Truffaut 471 00:39:43,929 --> 00:39:45,590 takes his version of the story 472 00:39:45,590 --> 00:39:48,670 many people have asked me 473 00:39:48,670 --> 00:39:50,369 well what do you think of the Truffaut film 474 00:39:50,369 --> 00:39:52,050 The Wild Child, L'Enfant Sauvage 475 00:39:52,050 --> 00:39:54,250 and what I think of it was 476 00:39:54,250 --> 00:39:56,550 that it was a pretty solid job 477 00:39:56,550 --> 00:39:58,829 of following Tard's reports 478 00:39:58,829 --> 00:40:02,869 but I do have one exception 479 00:40:02,869 --> 00:40:04,329 and that is at the end of the film 480 00:40:04,329 --> 00:40:05,769 the child climbs the stairs 481 00:40:05,769 --> 00:40:07,690 when the idea is that he's walking off 482 00:40:07,690 --> 00:40:10,849 into a future of endless possibilities 483 00:40:10,849 --> 00:40:12,969 in which he may even write his autobiography, 484 00:40:13,210 --> 00:40:14,710 and that's simply false. 485 00:40:15,889 --> 00:40:21,309 In reality, the history books show 486 00:40:21,309 --> 00:40:23,190 that Victor's progress slowed down. 487 00:40:23,909 --> 00:40:26,610 Itard reported, while Victor knew how to read simple words, 488 00:40:27,070 --> 00:40:28,809 he never really learned how to talk. 489 00:40:29,630 --> 00:40:33,130 Itard recommended that the forbidden experiment be stopped. 490 00:40:34,949 --> 00:40:37,690 You know, we attributed to Itard this motive 491 00:40:37,690 --> 00:40:40,309 of wanting to use Victor to build his own career, 492 00:40:40,409 --> 00:40:41,449 and I think that was true. 493 00:40:42,050 --> 00:40:44,650 When the point came that he was no longer serving Victor, 494 00:40:44,769 --> 00:40:48,010 nor serving science, he was no longer serving his career, 495 00:40:48,489 --> 00:40:50,150 he abandoned him, he let him go. 496 00:40:51,150 --> 00:40:52,110 Tarr gave up. 497 00:40:52,429 --> 00:40:54,369 He asked Madame Guérin, the housekeeper, 498 00:40:54,449 --> 00:40:57,130 to take the boy in down the street from the deaf school, 499 00:40:57,650 --> 00:41:01,050 and there they lived, a rather gray, sad, 500 00:41:01,489 --> 00:41:03,449 forlorn existence, the two of them. 501 00:41:03,449 --> 00:41:08,170 So the story is not as romantic as Truffaut would have us believe. 502 00:41:10,309 --> 00:41:13,750 Victor lived his last days at this very spot in Paris. 503 00:41:14,409 --> 00:41:16,769 He died in his 40s in 1828. 504 00:41:22,050 --> 00:41:23,809 Victor's story did not end well. 505 00:41:25,289 --> 00:41:27,309 In Los Angeles, more than a century later, 506 00:41:27,849 --> 00:41:31,469 Jeannie's caregivers were working to ensure that their pupil fared better. 507 00:41:34,159 --> 00:41:36,360 When will you see your mama in the house? 508 00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:37,920 When? 509 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,699 When Jeannie used gestures a lot to communicate, 510 00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:43,699 the Rigglers arranged for her to learn sign language. 511 00:41:44,619 --> 00:41:51,940 I will see Mama Saturday night. 512 00:41:52,940 --> 00:41:56,960 Critics fault the teacher in Victor's case for emphasizing spoken speech. 513 00:41:57,139 --> 00:41:59,539 The Rigglers tried to avoid this mistake. 514 00:41:59,539 --> 00:42:01,719 And we're all finished. 515 00:42:02,739 --> 00:42:06,179 The weeks turned into months, the months into years, 516 00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:09,659 and David Riggler, the man who would be scientist, therapist, 517 00:42:09,659 --> 00:42:11,239 and foster parent to Jeannie 518 00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:14,039 seemed to find a way to juggle all those roles. 519 00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:18,320 In reality, the juggling act had started to fall apart. 520 00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:20,860 This is the paper that's unfolded. 521 00:42:20,860 --> 00:42:22,380 For years, Riggler had trouble 522 00:42:22,380 --> 00:42:24,360 managing the research part of the case. 523 00:42:25,159 --> 00:42:26,800 Curtis's language studies proceeded, 524 00:42:27,500 --> 00:42:29,820 but Riggler had been getting government money to do more. 525 00:42:31,179 --> 00:42:33,579 Indeed, he gathered hundreds of videos, 526 00:42:34,039 --> 00:42:35,860 he supervised countless tests, 527 00:42:35,860 --> 00:42:39,000 but he never clearly defined his own research. 528 00:42:39,659 --> 00:42:41,980 Show me the shoe that's untied. 529 00:42:43,980 --> 00:42:44,539 Untied. 530 00:42:44,539 --> 00:42:49,559 To add to the murkiness of the study was an unresolved question 531 00:42:49,559 --> 00:42:52,639 which would make it difficult to draw firm scientific conclusions. 532 00:42:53,559 --> 00:42:55,739 Was Jeannie brain damaged from birth? 533 00:42:56,460 --> 00:42:57,820 Team members disagreed. 534 00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:03,739 My impression was clearly that Jeannie was mentally retarded from birth 535 00:43:03,739 --> 00:43:08,659 based on, for example, my sleep study, 536 00:43:08,659 --> 00:43:11,400 which showed these extreme spindles, 537 00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:12,860 which are fairly characteristic 538 00:43:12,860 --> 00:43:14,739 of severe mental retardation. 539 00:43:16,039 --> 00:43:18,199 Jeannie, although functionally retarded 540 00:43:18,199 --> 00:43:20,039 because she had hardly lived 541 00:43:20,039 --> 00:43:22,940 and experienced the world around her, 542 00:43:22,940 --> 00:43:25,420 was not mentally deficient in any sense 543 00:43:25,420 --> 00:43:28,219 in which we typically think of as mentally deficient. 544 00:43:28,219 --> 00:43:32,659 For example, on psychological tests that measure mental age, 545 00:43:32,659 --> 00:43:35,280 every year after she had been found, 546 00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:37,780 her mental age increased one year. 547 00:43:37,780 --> 00:43:44,340 This is just not something that happens in a person with a child or an adult who's mentally retarded. 548 00:43:46,420 --> 00:43:56,900 The government agency that was funding the research project grew uneasy with the scientific ambiguities of Jeannie's case. 549 00:43:59,099 --> 00:44:06,119 The National Institute of Mental Health was looking for payback for the years of money it poured into the study, and it wasn't finding any. 550 00:44:06,119 --> 00:44:18,119 After repeated warnings in the fall of 74, NIMH stopped funding the Genie project, citing a failure to collect data in a scientifically meaningful way. 551 00:44:18,119 --> 00:44:28,119 Nobody knew exactly how to deal with this. We were doing our best. We got the best kind of counsel, the best kind of advice. 552 00:44:28,119 --> 00:44:33,739 we had to sort that out and take that as it came but we did the very best we 553 00:44:33,739 --> 00:44:41,659 knew how and we believe that nobody knew any better in the year following the 554 00:44:41,659 --> 00:44:46,480 loss of their research grant the Riggler's decided to end their foster 555 00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:55,400 care of Jeannie their decision caused concern among their colleagues it's not 556 00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:59,659 that it came as a surprise to us or shouldn't have we had a lot of 557 00:44:59,659 --> 00:45:02,559 consultants and a lot of people coming in and one of the questions we were 558 00:45:02,559 --> 00:45:08,599 asked often by more than one person is what's going to happen here when the 559 00:45:08,599 --> 00:45:12,559 hospital goes away when you know if the research grant goes away if all of the 560 00:45:12,559 --> 00:45:15,860 sort of interest in how this youngster is developing when the researchers fold 561 00:45:15,860 --> 00:45:21,440 their tents and go away who's gonna stay behind the genie this was something that 562 00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:28,980 I was certainly concerned about the fact that should we not take genie because we 563 00:45:28,980 --> 00:45:35,880 did not plan to have her forever and it was something that we we talked about 564 00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:42,360 very actively and we finally decided that if we could give her a good home 565 00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:51,780 with much love and rehabilitation within that home nurturing caretaking and good 566 00:45:51,780 --> 00:46:02,059 things that that would give her the ability to cope at some later time so 567 00:46:02,059 --> 00:46:07,079 that she would have a good foundation and a stable home and that was our 568 00:46:07,079 --> 00:46:15,599 reasoning for linguist Susan Curtis it was time to sum up her years of work 569 00:46:15,599 --> 00:46:21,059 with Jeannie a clear picture was emerging in her data but for Jeannie that 570 00:46:21,059 --> 00:46:24,099 That picture was not promising. 571 00:46:24,099 --> 00:46:35,800 Here when asked to make a question, Jeannie comes up with, what red-blue is in? 572 00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:41,179 Jeannie didn't seem to be able to put words together in a normal grammatical way. 573 00:46:41,179 --> 00:46:45,800 This seemed to support the idea of a critical period for acquiring language. 574 00:46:45,800 --> 00:46:49,480 In Jeannie's case, the vocabulary was what she was good at. 575 00:46:49,820 --> 00:46:52,139 Conveying messages is what she was good at. 576 00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:56,840 But if you look at a sentence that she would utter, it wouldn't be grammatical. 577 00:46:57,039 --> 00:47:01,880 So she might say things like, spot, chew, glove, applesauce, buy, store, 578 00:47:02,099 --> 00:47:04,179 where the message was clear. 579 00:47:04,619 --> 00:47:08,239 You know, the dog named Spot chewed the glove. 580 00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,719 Or we need applesauce, we need to buy applesauce at the store. 581 00:47:12,260 --> 00:47:15,840 But in both of these cases, you can see they're not sentences of English. 582 00:47:15,940 --> 00:47:17,900 We wouldn't say, applesauce by store. 583 00:47:17,980 --> 00:47:20,320 We would say, we need to buy applesauce at the store, 584 00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:22,440 or applesauce is what we want from the store, 585 00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:25,000 or something that is an actual sentence of English. 586 00:47:26,860 --> 00:47:30,599 Much of the language research on Jeannie was completed by 1975, 587 00:47:31,079 --> 00:47:32,159 a pivotal year for her. 588 00:47:33,539 --> 00:47:36,440 That summer, she returned here to her childhood home 589 00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:37,579 to live with her mother. 590 00:47:37,579 --> 00:47:44,289 Jeannie's mother had been acquitted of child abuse charges 591 00:47:44,289 --> 00:47:46,769 She wanted to resume care of her daughter 592 00:47:46,769 --> 00:47:50,389 But she soon found it too difficult 593 00:47:50,389 --> 00:47:56,260 Thus began another sad chapter in Jeannie's life 594 00:47:56,260 --> 00:47:59,199 A series of placements in foster homes 595 00:47:59,199 --> 00:48:03,719 Jeannie was subjected to abuse 596 00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:05,400 To punishment 597 00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:07,099 To harassment 598 00:48:07,099 --> 00:48:11,260 To the extreme in some of these homes 599 00:48:11,260 --> 00:48:15,940 Then she would be moved again to another home, and another home. 600 00:48:16,500 --> 00:48:20,400 And meanwhile, we knew nothing about it until the bombshell hit. 601 00:48:21,099 --> 00:48:21,920 The bombshell. 602 00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:24,639 A lawsuit. 603 00:48:25,059 --> 00:48:34,760 A lawsuit against Hansen, Riggler, Kent, Curtis, and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. 604 00:48:35,699 --> 00:48:39,380 Like Victor's, Jeannie's case had not ended well. 605 00:48:39,380 --> 00:48:47,900 and now there was a modern American twist to her story a lawsuit the lawsuit 606 00:48:47,900 --> 00:48:51,860 filed by Jeannie's mother charged the Jeannie team with excessive and 607 00:48:51,860 --> 00:49:03,300 outrageous testing the lawsuit claimed the researchers gave testing priority 608 00:49:03,300 --> 00:49:08,599 over Jeannie's welfare pushing her beyond the limits of her endurance look 609 00:49:08,599 --> 00:49:21,440 carefully. It's dark, yes. Come on. Which box does that belong in? No. The lawyers suing 610 00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:27,199 Children's Hospital were Louise Monaco and Samuel Paz. They should have had clues that 611 00:49:27,199 --> 00:49:32,780 they were going at things wrongly because they were getting visits from NIMH, the National 612 00:49:32,780 --> 00:49:36,880 Institute of Mental Health, telling them, well, gee, yeah, you got all these videos, 613 00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:38,940 but they're not indexed, they're not catalogued, 614 00:49:38,980 --> 00:49:40,059 they're all thrown in a drawer. 615 00:49:41,159 --> 00:49:43,900 You're doing tests that have no scientific purpose. 616 00:49:44,039 --> 00:49:45,300 You're doing tests that you made up. 617 00:49:45,840 --> 00:49:47,500 And they were doing tests repetitively, 618 00:49:47,559 --> 00:49:50,340 which lose their validity with the repetitiveness. 619 00:49:50,679 --> 00:49:51,719 Yeah, I mean, there are certain tests, 620 00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:53,460 if you administer them within a year, 621 00:49:53,699 --> 00:49:55,719 you can't tell whether you're measuring anything or not. 622 00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:59,139 You're just measuring how familiar the subject is with the test. 623 00:50:00,360 --> 00:50:01,940 Okay, I'll try it again. 624 00:50:02,260 --> 00:50:03,119 Here, you do it. 625 00:50:03,219 --> 00:50:05,159 Put them in the box. I want you to work fast. 626 00:50:05,260 --> 00:50:06,420 Come on, let's work fast. 627 00:50:06,420 --> 00:50:12,659 it was our job to measure her progress to determine what changes were taking place indeed 628 00:50:13,860 --> 00:50:20,980 if we had not done as much as we did we would have really not fulfilled the purposes of our grant but 629 00:50:20,980 --> 00:50:28,579 in addition to that the testing that she underwent was by and large fun experiences for her 630 00:50:28,579 --> 00:50:36,739 depositions were taken experts were summoned while the suit was eventually settled it raised 631 00:50:36,739 --> 00:50:43,460 an important question did the team go as far as it could go in treating Jeannie or did the 632 00:50:43,460 --> 00:50:52,159 research get in the way we did everything we could not to exploit the case in a way that 633 00:50:52,159 --> 00:50:59,119 would impinge on her privacy or impact on her psychologically or emotionally. 634 00:50:59,119 --> 00:51:03,199 And that wasn't difficult because of the feelings we had for her. 635 00:51:03,199 --> 00:51:07,960 I don't think they started out with the notion of let's exploit her for all the money we 636 00:51:07,960 --> 00:51:10,119 can get. 637 00:51:10,119 --> 00:51:14,840 I think maybe everybody started out with the notion, one, they wanted to help her, but 638 00:51:14,840 --> 00:51:19,519 two, this was like the biggest thing that had hit town in quite a number of years. 639 00:51:19,519 --> 00:51:21,679 It was right on the heels of Truffaut's movie, 640 00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:24,780 The Wild Child, hence the name that was given to her. 641 00:51:24,900 --> 00:51:27,260 I mean, when they had seminars at Children's Hospital, 642 00:51:27,380 --> 00:51:31,260 they showed the movie as part of the seminar. 643 00:51:32,099 --> 00:51:34,320 And so, I mean, this was like a worldwide attraction, 644 00:51:34,519 --> 00:51:36,780 so I think it was really easy to get sidetracked. 645 00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:43,780 Despite all she'd been through, Jeannie's troubles were not over. 646 00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,679 In her first foster home, Jeannie was severely punished for vomiting. 647 00:51:50,519 --> 00:51:52,960 The experience was so traumatizing, 648 00:51:53,519 --> 00:51:55,519 Jeannie ended up back in Children's Hospital 649 00:51:55,519 --> 00:51:57,739 where the Rigglers offered assistance. 650 00:51:58,559 --> 00:52:01,599 You couldn't help it. 651 00:52:02,420 --> 00:52:08,239 So now you're keeping your mouth closed so you won't vomit. 652 00:52:09,579 --> 00:52:11,840 Jeannie was afraid to open her mouth. 653 00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:15,760 She regressed to the only way she knew how to be under siege, 654 00:52:16,440 --> 00:52:17,360 completely silent. 655 00:52:24,570 --> 00:52:28,889 This would be one of the last times the Rigglers videotaped Jeannie. 656 00:53:02,079 --> 00:53:06,219 Jeannie now lives in an adult care foster home in Southern California. 657 00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:10,940 It's at least the sixth home she has lived in since the research project ended. 658 00:53:15,650 --> 00:53:18,250 What do we take away from this really sad story? 659 00:53:18,750 --> 00:53:21,469 Look, there's an ethical dilemma in this kind of research. 660 00:53:21,670 --> 00:53:26,469 If you want to do rigorous science, then Jeannie's interests are going to come second some of the time. 661 00:53:26,949 --> 00:53:31,409 If you only care about helping Jeannie, then you wouldn't do a lot of this scientific research. 662 00:53:31,730 --> 00:53:32,710 So what are you going to do? 663 00:53:33,710 --> 00:53:36,909 To make matters worse, the two roles, scientist and therapist, 664 00:53:37,030 --> 00:53:39,010 were combined in one person in her case. 665 00:53:39,849 --> 00:53:42,969 So I think future generations are going to study Jeanne's case 666 00:53:42,969 --> 00:53:44,570 as we've been studying Victor's, 667 00:53:45,190 --> 00:53:47,530 not only for what it can teach us about human development, 668 00:53:47,530 --> 00:53:50,170 but also for what it can teach us about the rewards 669 00:53:50,170 --> 00:53:53,530 and the risks of conducting the forbidden experiment.