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The effects of child abuse and neglect
The effects of child abuse and neglect
The effects of child abuse and neglect
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Description of Documentary:
Secret of the Wild Child follows the story of neglect and ethical controversy. Genie was only ten years old when child protective services were called to her L.A. home. Once there, CPS found this young girl tied to a potty chair, presumably for the majority of her existence. Genie had lived in insolation for her entire life with no human contact. She never learning to speak because she would be beaten if she made a sound. Genie’s mother claimed that her husband was abusive, which was the leading cause in her not taking action to help her child. Once Genie was taken to the children’s hospital her father shot himself. Now at the hospital, Genie took many tests and met with several doctors. Many doctors and scientists
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were interested in her case because they wanted to learn and advance research findings in their field. In doing so, they failed to remember that this was a young child, a human being, that just needed love and support. Genie began to form attachments with her doctors and teachers and showed major improvements.
Her special education teacher, Butler, decided to foster her and give her a stable life. Butler thought that Genie was being experimented on too much and refused to let the researcher from the children’s hospital visit Genie. Ironically, the researches couldn’t have that, so the children’s hospital people decided that Butler’s care was unfit. Genie was then sent to live with one of her psychologists who acted as her father, therapist, and researcher. This is where ethical lines are seriously crossed in my opinion. Genie stayed with them for four years until their grant money came to a halt. Once the money ran out, they gave her back to her biological mom! This is beyond my comprehension that a therapist would be so heartless as to toss away this child just as she was gaining some normalcy because his grant money stopped coming in. Genie had already been through so much and yet people were willing to give her back to her biological mother. I think this would have been extremely triggering and regressive for Genie’s wellbeing, but I’m not a therapist yet, so what do I know. After a short time living with her biological mother, Genie is put into foster care because she is too much to …show more content…
handle. Did Genie’s mother abuse her more? Or was she only interested in Genie because other people were and she wanted to make money off her? We will never know, but this poor child was never given a chance. Genie was then sent into foster care where she was beaten for vomiting and sent back to the children’s hospital. Later, a lawsuit was filed against the children’s hospital where they charged them with excessive testing of Genie. Most recently, Genie lives at an adult care foster home. This story is extremely disheartening to me that people would take advantage of this child after her parents had already stole so much from her. Genie’s case makes one question where ethical lines are drawn and if the ends justify the means. Significant Information: One thing that I found interesting was Genie’s lack of sensitivity to temperature.
Her body must have adapted to the conditions she was under in her formative years in order to survive, but the idea that she took icy cold baths is intriguing as someone who is very sensitive to temperature. Genie’s ability to learn language and talk was interesting as well. The documentary did say that there were no clear statistical answers from all the exercises/experiments they did on Genie, but the film did show that she was eager to learn and was making progress. If Genie was in a different situation with more support, I think that sign language and a great speech therapist is all she needed to improve the way she interacted. Genie’s ability to form attachments and connections also improved drastically once she had some familiarity to the interactions in her life. Although I believe specific people took advantage of their relationship with this girl, she did show that she still had the ability to become attached. Lastly, the final thing that was interesting and bothersome was Genie’s constant comparison to the wild child, Victor. Just as Victor was “saved” by guys name here and used to further his career, Genie was treated the same. These children had already survived through the unimaginable and yet were continually exploited for science and
greed. Conclusion: In my opinion, Genie was majorly taken advantage of. Genie was abused to the fullest extent in her first ten years and when she was supposedly rescued, she was still treated as less than human. I understand that people want to learn things and an opportunity to study someone like Genie would never have been possible under ethical circumstances. With that said, she should have been placed with a caring and loving family who had her best interests in mind, not theirs. Scientific research can make a huge impact into understanding language, nurture via nature, how humans learn and many other things. When the important figures in Genie’s life decided that their work was more important than her recovery, they were acting unethically. When psychologists lose their empathy and compassion, it is frightening to know that they are in a position of power. Genie’s story will always stay with me and inspire me to advocate for children.
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).
Let 's start off with some of the Feral children. For example Oxana. Oxana was abandoned at a very young age and was found by dogs and was raised by dogs! When she was discovered, she acted just like all of the dogs around her. She walked on all four legs, and always scratched her ears and just always seemed to be just like a dog. Another example of Feral children is Jeanie. Jeanie was raised harsh by her father, and she was beaten up by her father a lot. When Genie was discovered she didn 't really know how to talk at all and she didn 't know how to read or write. So this study is a great conclusion of how Nurture over rules Nature.
For this paper I read the novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, this novel is told in the span of 25 years, it is told by two characters David and Caroline, who have different lives but are connect through one past decision. The story starts in 1964, when a blizzard happens causing the main character, Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. During the delivery the son named Paul is fine but the daughter named Phoebe has something wrong with her. The doctor realizes that the daughter has Down syndrome, he is shocked and age remembers his own childhood when his sister was always sick, her dyeing at an early and how that effected his mother. He didn’t want that to happen to his wife, so David told the nurse to bring Phoebe to an institution, so that his wife wouldn’t suffer. The nurse, Caroline didn’t think this was right, but brings Phoebe to the institution anyways. Once Caroline sees the institution in an awful state she leaves with the baby and
I watched the documentary “Secret of the Wild Child”, on a girl who was in isolation from birth to thirteen years old. Her name was Genie and is referred to as a feral child. This means she was without human contact from a young age, and has no experience of human care, social behavior, and, of the human language. Feral children are often known as being raised as animals and therefore imitating their behaviors. However, a child who is severely neglected is also considered a feral child. During the time she was discovered, around 1970, there was a major debate in the field of psychology. The famous nature verses nurture argument, meaning does genetics play a greater role in development or does one’s environment. In the case of Genie, the real focus was on her language development and deciphering if there was a critical age to learn a language.
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 ...
The family lives in a public housing subsidy tenement and received public assistance from the State. Her first child, who she called "Mongo", because she was born with a disease called Down syndrome lived with her grandmother, but on days the social worker would visit the grandmother would bring the child by to visit. Though the grandmother was very much aware of the abuse that was taking place in the home, she turned a blind eye. I personally think she was one of the contributor to the dysfunction, though it never show her hurt or abusing precious the fact that she pretend like everything was okay and would help the mother lie to the social worker, so she could continue to receive benefits from the state for her daughter and granddaughter show how e...
A little girl who had been socially isolated for atleast ten years was discovered in 1970 in the Los Angeles, CA area. She was nicknamed “Genie” by scientists, but her real name is Susan Wiley. When “Genie” was little, her father made the executive decision
This story Animal Farm by George Orwell is a novel about an animal revolution over an oppressive farmer. The irony in the story comes when the pigs turn into the very thing revolted against. They exhibit the same cruelty by treating the other animals the same or even worse than previous owners. This cycle of cruelty is shown in the Russian revolution by Joseph Stalin who is represented by Napoleon in the story. Cruelty in animal farm is shown by the human’s treatment of the animals, and the animal’s eventual treatment of each other and the ironic characteristics of the two.
Organization: Cruelty of Puppy Mills/Individuals purchasing dogs from puppy mills/Stricter federal and state laws/Encouraging individuals to not buy from pet stores/online
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.
Death of a Naturalist is concerned with growing up and loss of innocence Death of a Naturalist” is concerned with growing up and loss of innocence. The poet vividly describes a childhood experience that precipitates a change in the boy from the receptive and protected innocence of childhood to the fear and uncertainty of adolescence. Heaney organises his poem in two sections, corresponding to the change in the boy. By showing that this change is linked with education and learning, Heaney is concerned with the inevitability of the progression from innocence to experience, concerned with the transformation from the unquestioning child to the reflective adult. The poem opens with an evocation of a summer landscape which has the immediacy of an actual childhood experience.
Abstract In this essay, I intend to explain how everyday lives challenge the construction of childhood as a time of innocence. In the main part of my assignment, I will explain the idea of innocence, which started with Romantic discourse of childhood and how it shaped our view of childhood. I will also look at two contradictory ideas of childhood innocence and guilt in Blake’s poems and extract from Mayhew’s book. Next, I will compare the images of innocence in TV adverts and Barnardo’s posters. After that, I will look at the representation of childhood innocence in sexuality and criminality, and the roles the age and the gender play in portraying children as innocent or guilty. I will include some cross-cultural and contemporary descriptions on the key topics. At the end of my assignment, I will summarize the main points of the arguments.
"Case 4 Genie, The Wild Child Research or Exploitation?" Case 4 Genie, The Wild Child Research or Exploitation? Georgetown University, n.d. Web. 15 Sep. 2013. .
From the diaries of Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, The Wild Child is a movie made in 1970, with a setting in France from the18th century, and based on a child who had lived in nature his whole life without any human contact. Itard, a well known French doctor for working with deaf-mutes, had taken in this feral child under his care for the purposes of his studies on the child’s intellectual and social education. Given the time period of the movie Itard had taken the “wild-child” in under his own care, and helped teach the child to be more civilized, even though he went against the beliefs of how mentally retarded children were to be taken care of during the 18th century. Although most of the medical doctors who had been in contact with the feral child felt that he, who could not speak, and exhibited violent behavior to others, was mentally retarded and proved to have no hope for becoming civilized. Itard had proven them wrong using both positive and negative reinforcement techniques that helped the “wild-child” improve drastically and become more civilized. Having the ability to teach a mentally retarded child who had not been exposed to civilization was one of the main messages of both the movie and also one of Itard’s main goals. Although succeeding at many techniques that he had done with the “wild-child” ranging from identifying everyday objects, dressing on his own, writing words, to spelling words, he still believed he was unsuccessful due to the fact that the child had not b...
Watching The Secret of The Wild Child, I felt an enormous amount of sympathy for Genie. The thing I found most disturbing was the fact that she was tethered to a potty, she could have caught a wide range of disease from it. What I found most interesting about the documentary was how her rehabilitation team allowed her experiment to fall through. I believe that Genie could have benefited more if the experiment