Secret Of The Wild Child: Neglect And Ethical Controversy

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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 …show more content…

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…

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

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