Genie Wiley, is one of the many cases of feral children. She was locked in a room for her whole childhood, with little to no contact with anyone other than her abusive father. The effects of her isolation were catastrophic and virtually impossible to reverse. Genie “Wild Child” Wiley, is a case where nature took over in a nature vs. nurture stance. This wild child spent the first 13 years of her life locked in a dark room, with little to no communication or interaction with anyone. “Her deranged father had strapped her into a handmade straitjacket and tied her to a potty chair in a silent room of a suburban house since she was a toddler” (Carroll). Genie, the name given to her to protect her identity, looked as if she was 7 or 8 years old,
One of the cases found in the novel by Cynthia Crosson-Tower dealt with a little girl by the name of Jessica Barton. Although still a small child, her foster family had an issue trying to raise her in which she gave them behavioral issues and she would not react to them and was hard to ...
As Roland was forced to grow up away from his home, he also was exposed to many terrible attributes of life included physical, mental and sexual abuse. The first account that Roland shares is his story of
A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Dugard is an autobiography recounting the chilling memories that make up the author’s past. She abducted when she was eleven years old by a man named Phillip Garrido with the help of his wife Nancy. “I was kept in a backyard and not allowed to say my own name,” (Dugard ix). She began her life relatively normally. She had a wonderful loving mother, a beautiful baby sister,, and some really good friends at school. Her outlook on life was bright until June 10th, 1991, the day of her abduction. The story was published a little while after her liberation from the backyard nightmare. She attended multiple therapy sessions to help her cope before she had the courage to share her amazing story. For example she says, “My growth has not been an overnight phenomenon…it has slowly and surely come about,” (D 261). She finally began to put the pieces of her life back together and decided to go a leap further and reach out to other families in similar situations. She has founded the J A Y C Foundation or Just Ask Yourself to Care. One of her goals was, amazingly, to ensure that other families have the help that they need. Another motive for writing the book may have also been to become a concrete form of closure for Miss Dugard and her family. It shows her amazing recovery while also retelling of all of the hardships she had to endure and overcome. She also writes the memoir in a very powerful and curious way. She writes with very simple language and sentence structures. This becomes a constant reminder for the reader that she was a very young girl when she was taken. She was stripped of the knowledge many people take for granted. She writes for her last level of education. She also describes all of the even...
“We aren’t the weeds in the crack of life. We’re the strong, amazing flowers that found a way to grow in the challenging conditions.” (McElvaney, 1057) The book entitled “Spirit Unbroken: Abby’s Story,” offers a perspective on child abuse providing a positive outlook on a tragic situation. Even in the best of circumstances, however, victims of abuse can see the effects of the trauma for the rest of their life. For each individual person affected by this form of trauma, the reactions can vary. The same type of abuse in two different people can have very different outcomes – one could be that of coping, and the other a life of brokenness. Especially at impressionable ages, any form of abuse can be a hindrance in living a normal life. Children
The setting of this story is described as an old nursery that is located on the top floor of an old isolated mansion that is several miles off of the main road. The narrator’s treatment is “prescribed” by her husband, John, who orders her to stay in bed and separate herself from the outside world in a bedroom that previously had several different identities. “It was a nursery first, and then a playroom and gymnasium, I should judge, for all the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the wall”(730). The feeling the room creates around her slowly begins to alter her mindset. The barred windows create the sense of being trapped within the walls around her which slowly starts to transform the room into the identity of not just any prison, but the narrator’s prison.
Once a slave, Nanny tells of being raped by her master, an act from which Janie’s mother was brought into the world. With a
As a child Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother; a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games that left one of her sons nearly dead. She no longer considered him a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and smelly, and when he was allowed the luxury of food it was scraps from the dogs' bowl. The outside world knew nothing of the nightmare played out behind closed doors. Dave dreamed of finding a family to love him and call him their son. It took years of struggle, deprivation and despair to find his dreams and make something of himself. A Child Called 'It' covers the early years of his life and is an affecting and inspiration memoir of one child's determination to survive.
There are many feral children that we know of, and Genie is one of the greatest discussed today. Genie was born in 1957 in Arcadia, California. Almost from the time of birth, Genie wasn't treated very well. There are reports done from different psychologists, police officers, and welfare authorities that all report she was being abused, neglected, and isolated socially from outside communications. Genie was reported to L.A. Child Welfare around 1970.
Taming Andrew was a true story about a boy who was kidnapped by his father at a young age and returned 5 years later. While being kept by his father he was severely neglected. He was physically abused, he did not have access to healthcare, and did not go to school. When he was returned to his mother he was found to be behind in cognitive development, he cannot succeed academically because he is unable to read, write, and communicate properly. Andrew’s cognitive delays were a product of his lack of a nurturing environment and education.
Marie had just traveled from her hometown of Ville Rose, where discarding your child made you wicked, to the city of Port-Au-Prince, where children are commonly left on the street. Marie finds a child that she thinks could not be more beautiful, “I thought she was a gift from Heaven when I saw her on the dusty curb, wrapped in a small pink blanket, a few inches away from a sewer as open as a hungry child’s yawn” (79). Marie has suffered many miscarriages, so she takes this child as if it were her own, “I swayed her in my arms like she was and had always been mine” (82). Marie’s hope for a child has paid off, or so it seems. Later, it is revealed that the child is, in fact, dead, and Marie fabricated a story to sanction her hopes and distract her from the harsh reality of her life, “I knew I had to act with her because she was attracting flies and I was keeping her spirit from moving on…
Jasmine Beckford’s case is the oldest out of the three; in 1984 Jasmine died as a result of long-term abuse aged 4. In 1981 her and her younger sister suffered serious injuries and were paced with foster carers for six months. After this they were allowed back home with their mother on a trial basis as social services were meant to support them. During the last ten months of Jasmine’s life she was only seen once by social workers (Corby, 2006).
We have all heard the African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The response given by Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, simply states, “If you’ve got a village. But if you don’t, then maybe it just takes two people” (Donoghue 234). For Jack, Room is where he was born and has been raised for the past five years; it is his home and his world. Jack’s “Ma” on the other hand knows that Room is not a home, in fact, it is a prison. Since Ma’s kidnapping, seven years prior, she has survived in the shed of her capturer’s backyard. This novel contains literary elements that are not only crucial to the story but give significance as well. The Point-of-view brings a powerful perspective for the audience, while the setting and atmosphere not only affect the characters but evokes emotion and gives the reader a mental picture of their lives, and the impacting theme along-side with conflict, both internal and external, are shown throughout the novel.
One of the feral cases is that of Genie. This is a girl who was severely abused by her family especially her father. Genie’s father consistently punished her through beating to an extent that she could never have a chance to exercise things as a normal human being. The situation was even worse due to the fact that Genie was kept in a close room right from when she was an infant up to the age of 13 years. By that time, Genie had developed a severe abnormality. Her behavior and physical functioning of her body was completely like that of a less human being. She was speechless, could not construct a two word sentence and demonstrated no sense of personality.
Lawrence Kohlberg conducted research on the moral development of children. He wanted to understand how they develop a sense of right or wrong and how justice is served. Kohlberg used surveys in which he included moral dilemmas where he asked the subjects to evaluate a moral conflict. Through his studies, Kohlberg observed that moral growth and development precedes through stages such as those of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development. He theorized that moral growth begins at the beginning of life and continues until the day one dies. He believed that people proceed through each stage of moral development consecutively without skipping or going back to a previous stage. The stages of thought processing, implying qualitatively different modes of thinking and of problem solving are included in the three levels of pre-conventional, conventional and post conventional development. (2)
On November 4, 1970 in Los Angeles, California Genie’s condition was brought to attention by a social worker. The worker discovered the 13-year old girl in a small, dimly lit, confined bedroom. An investigation by authorities exposed that the child had spent most of her life in this room and typically was tied to a potty chair. Genie was found in diapers because she was not potty trained. Her case is an example of extreme isolation from human contact, society, sunlight, and any other environments besides her room. The deprivation of attachment showed when she was timid to humans, almost afraid. Someone whose life was a developmental nightmare could not possibly be expected to have the basic trust that the world is trustworthy and predictable. The life she lived was incredibly horrifying as morals, and psychology portray just how severe the consequences were on Genie.