True Wildness — The Genie Wiley Story

Sometimes one word is enough to describe some stories. This story is one of those, and it can be described with only one phrase, real savagery.

In 1959, a strange family moved to the suburbs of Temple City, California. The house in which they settled was previously occupied by an elderly woman, but not so long ago she died. The family consisted of three people. The men named Clark, the women Irene, and at the time a seven-year-old boy named John. The strange thing was that the family led a very isolated way of life. They had virtually no contact with the outside world. Their son John only went outside to go to school. There he was also very withdrawn and had no friends.

The house itself, after the family known as the Wiley moved into it, literally turned into almost a dungeon in just a couple of weeks. The windows were mostly always covered with thick cloth, so that almost no light penetrated there. Of course, all this was strange and could arouse certain suspicions among the neighbors, but no one could have guessed what a wild secret the Wiley family was actually hiding. A secret that, only after a long 11 years, shocked their neighbors.

In 1970, a strange fifty-year-old woman came to an appointment with one of the employees of the Department of Social Assistance in the California city of Temple City. She had large black glasses on her face and, as it turned out, she was practically blind. The woman’s name was Irene Wiley. In the eyes of the man who talked to her, she gave the impression of not being the most adequate person, but the main attention of the worker was attracted by a girl of about 7 years old, whom Irene brought with her. The child scratched, spat and, as if imitating a rabbit, moved jerkily around the room, arms outstretched in front of him. Surprised by such behavior, the worker politely asked what happened to the child. A moment later, the officer was dialing the phone number for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office. From that day on, the name of little Genie Wiley became known to everyone. And her story shocked the world. However, it is worth starting it not from 1970, but much earlier.

Little is known about Genie’s father’s past, except that at about 3 years old, his mother gave him to an orphanage for children, where he spent most of his childhood. It is believed that at birth, his mother gave him a ridiculous name, which he later changed to Clark. However, up to this point, he was very often ridiculed by his peers because of his ridiculous name. Already when he grew up, he managed to restore relations with his mother. She seemed to be trying to right the wrongs of the past. Clark, sensing this, became very attached to her.

Genie’s mother, Irene, was 20 years younger than Clark. As a child, she received some kind of head injury. This led to Irene’s vision problems. From her youth, she almost did not see in one eye. After the wedding, the relationship between Clark and Irene looked quite ordinary, but everything changed behind the closed doors of Wiley’s house. Clark showed himself as a domestic tyrant, sometimes beating his wife, which only worsened her vision problems. Ultimately, she began to see so badly that she became completely dependent on her husband.

After 5 years of marriage, Irene became pregnant. The beatings from her husband did not stop, but despite this, Irene gave birth to a healthy girl. But Clark didn’t like children. He thought they were very noisy. It is not clear why the couple started them at all then. Perhaps they simply did not know how to use contraceptives, but the fact remains. Clark, unable to bear the spirit of children’s crying, began to close his daughter for the night in the garage. The result of this was that 3 months after birth, the girl died of pneumonia. About a year later, the couple had a second child. This time it’s a boy. But he also died only 2 days after birth.

In 1952, the couple had their third child. That boy, John. Clark did not change his attitude towards children and still continued to force his wife Irene in every possible way to force the child to remain quiet. This led to the fact that by the age of 4 the boy was underdeveloped. He spoke little and was very shy. By this time, the mother of the father of the family decided to take her grandson to her. She considered her son Clark to be a bad father, and so she judged soundly that a four-year-old boy would be better off in her house. Living with her, the boy began to show noticeable progress in development. But 1959 changed everything.

One day in 1959, Clark’s mother was crossing the road with her seven-year-old grandson John. At a road intersection, she was hit by a drunk driver. John was not hurt. The elderly woman died on the spot. This added to Clark’s already immense paranoia about the outside world. To some extent, he blamed his son for what happened, who was simply with his deceased grandmother that day. After the death of Clark’s mother, the Wiley family moved into her house. As mentioned above, they led a reclusive life, and none of the neighbors had any idea that in addition to the seven-year-old John, Clark and Irene also had the same two-year-old daughter Genie at that time.

Jeanie was born in 1957, two years before the death of Clark’s mother. At birth, she had some health problems. In particular, her leg bones were weak and she needed to wear special leg braces for the first few years of her life. She also had trouble eating solid foods. It is believed that this made her father think that Jeanie was not quite mentally healthy and made his already weak care for her daughter more detached. As stated earlier, when Clark’s mother was killed by a car, the Wiley family moved into her house. Genie was 2 years old at the time.

The girl never left her room. The room where she lived was always pitch dark. The only window was carefully covered with foil, which reflected sunlight outward and did not allow its rays to penetrate inside. Each morning for Genie began with baby food, which Clark had specially prepared with milk. In every possible way opposing to give the girl solid food. He gave her a few minutes to eat, after which he either took away what she did not have time to eat or smeared it on her face. Genie’s mother, Irene, sometimes stole food from her husband and secretly fed her daughter. After breakfast, a diaper was put on the baby and Genie was tied with a rope to a chair. After that, Clark went about his business for the whole day, leaving her in this position.

Nobody gave the girl toys. So the only things she could play with were an old plastic raincoat and empty spools of thread. At night, Jeanie, dressed in a straitjacket, was placed in a metal aviary that her father had made for her, replicating standard dog cages. The daughter was forbidden to speak, and for any attempt to make a sound remotely reminiscent of a human, her father beat her with a stick. The girl also could not hear extraneous voices. Hating any manifestation of extraneous noise, the father categorically forbade having a radio or TV set in the house. He also did not allow his wife or son to communicate with Genie. Each time, interacting with the girl, Clark Wiley only occasionally barked or growled, imitating dogs. This is how little Jeanie Wiley grew up, deprived not only of sunlight, normal food and toys, but also of human contact, being in the isolation of a dungeon her father made with his own hands.

The life of the Wiley family changed in 1970. Then Jeanie’s older brother, John, ran away from home. This prompted the almost blind mother of the girl Irene, secretly from her husband, to take her daughter and contact the social service. On this day, thirteen-year-old Jeanie Wiley, for the first time in 11 years, saw something other than the walls of her tiny room. Bewildered by the life stories of the girl, who was constantly confused in the testimony of her mother, social service employees conducted a series of tests and identified the child in the children’s hospital at the University of California Los Angeles.

When Genie was first brought to the hospital, she weighed 27 kilograms with a height of 1 meter 30 centimeters. The child could hardly walk and unbend his arms and legs to the end. Jeanie had problems with her teeth due to the fact that she ate only liquid food all her life. She couldn’t chew and spit all the time. The girl’s clothes were always stained with saliva. She also had vision problems due to the child being in a dark, like a mine, room. Tests of the mental state of the girl revealed that in terms of mental development she is at the level of a one-year-old child. This may explain the reaction of the social worker, who at the first meeting decided that Genie was no more than 7 years old. Even though she was actually 13.

For many years, specialists at the University of California have been studying Genie and trying to make her a full member of society. In some ways, their attempts were successful, in some ways they were not. Over time, the girl learned a number of words, but communication is not just knowing words. This is the ability to make logical chains of them. She never learned to ask questions. And she was almost always silent. It is believed that due to her lifestyle, part of her brain was not stimulated for a long time. Because of what, it did not actually develop. The opportunity to integrate it normally into the life of society was lost without a trace.

As for the mother and father of the girl, they were later charged with child abuse, but only Irene came to the court session, who later lost custody of the child. Clark Wiley was dead by then. On the eve of the trial, he shot himself in the head. Two envelopes were found next to his body. One contained $400 for Genie. In another — a note with a short phrase: “The world will never understand”

For a while, the girl lived in a family of therapists involved in her rehabilitation. She described her relationship with her father in the following sets of words:

The father shook his hand. Big stick. Genie cry. Father. Face punch. Father is angry. Cry. Cry Genie.

Later, the girl was assigned to a special institution for adults. The private foundation, which undertook to maintain Genie, carefully concealed information about her future fate and whereabouts. Her mother visited her until she died in 2003. Jeanie’s brother, John, never saw his sister after running away from his father’s house. He eventually died in 2011. It is believed that at the moment, Jeanie lives in one of the adult shelters.

It is assumed that Jeanie’s father was sure that his daughter would not live long and die just like his two previous children. Therefore, he treated his daughter this way, putting an end to her life in advance. However, she survived physically, but her life was still stolen by her father, who kept his daughter in complete isolation from the outside world for 11 years.

In any case, it is impossible to somehow justify the actions of Clark Wiley. The man understood everything that he was acting extremely inhumanly, but nevertheless continued to do it until a dead end was driven. Realizing what awaits him in the future, the man got scared and chose the easy way. The path of suicide.