Genie Wiley: Dark History of the Child Hidden From the Whole World

[00:00:01] Kyle Risi: Adam, I want you to imagine a child who has never seen the world,

[00:00:05] Adam Cox: like in a poetic sense.

[00:00:07] Kyle Risi: I mean, literally,

never seen a toy, never seen a tree. Not even the sky.

For 13 years, Jeannie Wiley's entire world was four dingy walls, a blacked out bedroom and a few plastic objects.

[00:00:23] Adam Cox: Jesus.

[00:00:24] Kyle Risi: By day she was strapped to a potty chair, and by night she was zipped into a steam bag, like a straight jacket.

And then when, by pure chance, when her almost blind mother stumbled into a welfare office. Staff thought that they were looking at a 7-year-old.

[00:00:39] Adam Cox: I thought she was 13.

[00:00:42] Kyle Risi: And here's the thing, rescue should have been the beginning of a recovery.

Instead, it was the beginning, Adam of something else. She was now a case study, a scientific prize.

[00:00:52] Adam Cox: So they saved her only to then study her. That's awful.

[00:00:57] Kyle Risi: what does it mean to save someone? If no one protects 'em? Afterwards?

[00:01:25] Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating things. We're a weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:35] Adam Cox: We explore strange true stories from the worlds of true crime, dark history, scandals, mysteries, and remarkable people.

[00:01:43] Kyle Risi: I'm Kyle Reese, your Ring master for this week.

[00:01:45] Adam Cox: And I'm Adam Cox, the audience flatulence analyst for this week.

[00:01:50] Kyle Risi: Oh, an analyst. Not like someone preventing flatulence, disturbing the axe.

[00:01:55] Adam Cox: No, I I can't stop it. But what I can do is try and prevent it for the future. So of all the like food stalls and stuff like that, I can then work out what food, give people gas to try and prevent future flatulence.

[00:02:07] Kyle Risi: So like the Mexican stand is definitely out.

[00:02:10] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:02:12] Kyle Risi: Pinto beans. Not on my watch.

[00:02:14] Adam Cox: We learned that very quickly.

[00:02:16] Kyle Risi: That's the thing though, like when, especially in the winter when you're in a tent, obviously they're trying to keep everything warm, but there's a lot of breathing air happening, a lot of humidity.

It's not a nice place at the end of it. 'cause that kind of sticks on you. Do you know what I mean? And you don't want farts included with that.

[00:02:29] Adam Cox: No. It's like going on an aeroplane, you know? It's just a certain smell. You're like, what went down here?

[00:02:34] Kyle Risi: Exactly. You just wanna wash that off once you land. Do you know what I mean?

[00:02:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. You get a whole tan, I swear from being on that

[00:02:39] Kyle Risi: sound. No. Oh god. Moving on guys.

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[00:03:03] Kyle Risi: But guys, let's be honest, because the real reason that people sign up as a certified freak or a big top tier member is that they get access to our exclusive compendium key chain.

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[00:03:19] Adam Cox: Your crotch,

[00:03:20] Kyle Risi: That's it.

[00:03:20] Adam Cox: Should we have a moment of silence for the crotch?

[00:03:22] Kyle Risi: A moment of silence or, or rejoicing? We should have a sound effect of like two uh, key chains dangling together every time we say this. Should I just see if I can roster something up?

[00:03:33] Adam Cox: Yeah. And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favourite podcast app and leave us a review 'cause your support helps others.

Find us and keeps these amazing stories coming.

[00:03:42] Kyle Risi: if you're on Spotify, just click that little rating button and leave us a five star rating. Ideally,

[00:03:48] Adam Cox: and follow. Of course.

[00:03:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that also

[00:03:49] Adam Cox: helps.

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[00:03:57] Adam Cox: Andy,

[00:03:58] Kyle Risi: Adam. That is enough of the housekeeping because today on the ced, we're actually diving into an assembly of silence, curiosity, cruelty, and the terrible cost of being treated like a question instead of a child.

[00:04:12] Adam Cox: Treated like a question. How do you treat someone like a question?

[00:04:15] Kyle Risi: Adam, I want you to imagine a child who has never seen the world and like I'm not talking about in a poetic sense, i'm talking literally, imagine a child who has never seen a toy, never seen a tree, not even the sky.

A child who has never celebrated a birthday, never opened a Christmas present, never even left their house.

And by the way, there's nothing mentally or physically wrong with this child. They have all the faculties of typical human development.

But then Adam, I want you to think about what that would do to that child when they finally emerge into the world.

[00:04:52] Adam Cox: It's like when someone is blind, but then they regain their sight.

[00:04:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah. almost like you've been abducted by aliens and just dropped on a random planet. Right?

[00:05:00] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:00] Kyle Risi: Well, Adam, for decades, psychologists and linguists have actually debated this very idea. How would this scenario impact human development?

How much of who we are and what we are capable of is given to us within a very narrow window of time when we are toddlers.

Language, speech, I'm talking attachment, movement, social behaviours, all those things right? Most of us learn these things so early and so gradually that by the time we're old enough to question them, they're kind of like second nature.

But what if you never got the chance to learn those things? What if no one ever spoke to you or taught you how to ask for food or seek comfort, or even understand what was polite and what was not?

[00:05:47] Adam Cox: This sounds like almost a feral child in a way.

[00:05:50] Kyle Risi: Well, Adam, this debate did stay a debate for decades because obviously to test this would be a massive ethical violation, it would be child abuse.

[00:05:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. Or any, animal or human.

[00:06:00] Kyle Risi: But Adam, that wasn't until 1970 when a nearly blind mother accidentally walked into the welfare office in Los Angeles with her daughter.

She was said to be 13 years old.

But to the staff, looking back at this little girl, she looked seven, but it wasn't her size that concerned them, It was a strange way that she seemed to move this uncanny way that she held her hands, limply in front of her body, and also the wonderment at literally everything she saw in this really mundane social welfare office. Adam.

It turned out, therefore, 13 years this little girl had been locked away by her parents. Her entire world was confined to four dingy walls of a blacked out bedroom where her only toys were a magazine and a threat spool.

[00:06:49] Adam Cox: What were these parents doing?

[00:06:51] Kyle Risi: The conditions that she was kept in were horrific by day she was strapped to a potty by night. She was strapped into a sleeping bag, unable to move.

She was routinely punished for even making a sound. So much so that she was so neglected and abused that she never learned to speak therefore didn't even learn to cry because she was so terrified.

[00:07:13] Adam Cox: She sounds more like a prisoner of war or something.

[00:07:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Adam, today on the Compendium, I'm gonna tell you about the incredible true story of Jeannie Wiley. Now, I'm assuming, based on how inquisitive you were, you've not heard of the story before? I

[00:07:28] Adam Cox: don't think so. I dunno if I'm getting a flashback of a video that I may have seen of her.

Or I'm just confusing her with Donnie from the Wild Thorn Breeze.

[00:07:38] Kyle Risi: Well, I mean, I don't mean to be insensitive here because a lot of what we internalise when we research these stories, we pull upon things that we are familiar with.

And when they were talking about how she walked with these hops and her hands bent at the elbow in front of her, all I could think of was Roger from American Dad. But sadly, it was more horrific than that.

[00:07:57] Adam Cox: I think that's the thing, this is actually a true story. Someone did this to a poor little girl. Someone

[00:08:02] Kyle Risi: actually did this.

[00:08:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. Or her parents did this. Yeah. That's

[00:08:04] Kyle Risi: the

[00:08:04] Adam Cox: even worse.

[00:08:05] Kyle Risi: And I did know the story about Jeannie from a movie that was actually made about her life. It was actually one of those movies, like I would mention, if someone asked you like, what's the earliest movie you ever remember watching?

And I thought I watched it a lot earlier than actually it was released. I thought it was like something that I watched maybe when I was like a preteen, but actually was released in 2001, and it was called The Mockingbird Don't Sing.

And it followed basically the story of a young girl called Katie, who, like Jeannie was locked away in a room for 13 years with almost no human contact, but the story of her abuse, as horrific as it was.

Was actually more about what actually came after she was rescued and how she became kind of the rope in the game of tug of war between scientists who were desperate to study her. I really wanted to watch the film as part of this research, but also didn't want the dramatisation of her story to cloud my understanding of the actual facts.

Mm-hmm. But definitely once we finished recording this episode, I think we should watch this tonight because, um, there's a lot of key moments that always stand out when I think about this film.

And we're gonna go through a couple of them today.

[00:09:07] Adam Cox: So is it based on Jeanie?

[00:09:09] Kyle Risi: It's her true story, but it's, the retelling of it has been slightly dramatised, but the facts of what happened are the same.

But Adam, today, I'm gonna tell you honestly about the deeply sad story of Jeannie Wiley. A child hidden from the world for 13 years.

and the uncomfortable question at the heart of all of this, when a case sits at the cusp of scientific knowledge, where do you draw the line between what is best for the victim and what will progress scientific understanding? But also this story is really interesting from another standpoint, because ordinarily we would call this a survival story, right?

[00:09:44] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:45] Kyle Risi: But survival stories usually come with the archetype, overcoming adversity in a way, some kind of inspirational outcome at the end.

But Adam, honestly, it's not the case for Ginny.

[00:09:55] Adam Cox: Well, she's a 13-year-old girl, and if she has known, no other world is she fighting to be free. 'cause she doesn't know what else is out there.

Right?

[00:10:04] Kyle Risi: She, at the time when she was being held captive, no, 'cause exactly as you said, she didn't know any better.

[00:10:09] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:10] Kyle Risi: But even after she's rescued She still doesn't have the capacity to ask for what she wants or even know what she needs, So she's completely at the mercy of all the people that are in charge of her care, and quite frankly, they put their scientific pursuits over her wellbeing in a so tragic.

[00:10:27] Adam Cox: That's really sad.

[00:10:28] Kyle Risi: And so, Adam, I must say that this episode does come with a trigger warning. We are gonna talk about severe child abuse and neglect, and sadly, it does not end in the uplifting way that we would like it to.

But hey, maybe it does.

The reality is we don't actually know, the best that we can hope for in this episode is to be left with a little bit of hope, that GI is okay, somewhere out there in the world.

[00:10:52] Adam Cox: It sounds like it's gonna be a bit of a tough listen, but I'm interested to hear more about her story.

[00:10:56] Kyle Risi: It is gonna be a tough listen, and I think this is important because, how her story is told in lecture halls and in academic papers, it's told in a very clinical sense.

And I think that does to the story a disservice. I think we need to understand the horrors of what's happened to this girl. We're not gonna glorify it.

But I think we need to also get an insight about the horrors of human nature, but also the incredible compassion that we are actually capable of.

And I think a lot of the time in the retelling of Ginny's story, all of that is left out.

[00:11:29] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:29] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, our story actually starts with Clark Wiley, that's Ginny's father and the man who would set in motion everything that will actually happen to Ginny.

And like so many people capable of unspeakable abuse, Clark himself grew up in a fairly unstable environment.

When he was six, his father was killed when he was struck by lightning.

[00:11:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's, it's pretty rare, isn't it, to get struck by lightning.

[00:11:51] Kyle Risi: Yeah. What was he doing? Was he like filling an aerial?

[00:11:53] Adam Cox: Well, can't, don't go outside

[00:11:55] Kyle Risi: playing golf.

Following this though, to make ends meet Clark's mother, Pearl started running a brothel out of their home, which as you can imagine, is not a great environment for a young child to grow up in, right?

[00:12:06] Adam Cox: No.

[00:12:06] Kyle Risi: As a result, Clark is moved between various care homes and foster families over the years. One of the defining characteristics of Clark is that he seems to suffer from an aversion to noise.

it is really overwhelming to him. It's not clear whether or not he had autism or maybe he was on the spectrum or had some kind of thing. I don't know all the Zs out there,

[00:12:28] Adam Cox: but, so any noise? This is,

[00:12:29] Kyle Risi: yeah. He just seemed to have an aversion from it. And like this would've been in the twenties and thirties, so it probably wasn't that well understood if he did have some degree of autism.

However, he's often described though as really withdrawing away from environments that even exhibited even a small rumble of sound.

When Clark becomes a man. He ends up actually reconnecting with Pearl and they come very close. Again, it's not clear why maybe he or she was trying to make up for the years of neglect and distance between them.

But for whatever reason, Clark ends up worshipping his mother almost obsessively.

He eventually though, moves to Los Angeles to find work, and he sells in as a window, an awning installer, and also a general handyman.

Honestly, even though Clark is the monster of this story, Adam, at this point, there are no red flags to suggest anything was Amis other than him having this strange aversion to noise.

[00:13:25] Adam Cox: That's weird to have this aversion. Is there a condition for this? Because I know certain like frequencies or pictures and stuff like that can make people, feel nauseous and stuff But to have an aversion to all noise

how can you live with that?

[00:13:38] Kyle Risi: I think as more and more young kids with Aspergers and autism do get diagnosed. I've seen people out there in public wearing kind of ear offenders. Do you know what I mean? maybe if they had known a bit more about this at the time, maybe he might have been one of those kids.

[00:13:52] Adam Cox: Yeah. Fair point.

[00:13:53] Kyle Risi: Adam. Overall though he is functional, albeit very particular, he was productive. He didn't exhibit any signs of violence or volatility.

And so when he's in Los Angeles, he meets a woman called Irene oglesby.

There is a huge gap between them. He is in his mid forties. Irene I think is in her early twenties.

They date for a while and eventually they get married and soon after they move to the suburbs, where the people who knew them. They were just a regular married couple.

They live a very strange existence though, which is largely driven by Clark's noise aversion. It's something that Irene didn't really anticipate would be an issue when they got married. But Adam, their entire existence is just a stone cold, silent world. Irene is even forbidden from owning a radio or a tv.

[00:14:37] Adam Cox: Well, that's no fun. how does she get into this? And then did she know about his noise version? Then she moves in with them and then he tells her, and then it's like, whoa.

[00:14:44] Kyle Risi: I think it's just she didn't really anticipate what it would mean for their life, but also, I don't know, when I imagine their life and what it's like living in that house, it feels like just the colour is drained from that environment,

[00:14:56] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:14:57] Kyle Risi: everything is dark, everything is silence. It feels like their happiness is just void.

[00:15:02] Adam Cox: It reminds me of that family guy sketch, I think it was Stewie, and he's like married to some old woman or something at the time, and he's reading a newspaper and she, I don't know, makes the tiniest noise and he like, looks at her and gives her evils,

[00:15:16] Kyle Risi: gives her a darted look.

[00:15:17] Adam Cox: So I can imagine this poor woman. Yeah. She's in this house. She stands on a floorboard and it creaks and she gets shouted at,

[00:15:23] Kyle Risi: That's exactly it. She is that the point where she does try her very best to walk around the house as silently she, as she possibly can.

And looking back at she later does describe her life as effectively ending on her wedding day.

[00:15:35] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:15:36] Kyle Risi: That's bad.

[00:15:36] Adam Cox: That's, that's really bad. And sad

[00:15:39] Kyle Risi: Clark. At the same time, he also expects Irene to maintain an extremely rigid domestic routine. She has to wake up at the same time. Every morning. Dinner had to be served at the same time every day. There was a time for laundry, there was a time for errands, a time for literally everything.

Anything that threw off this routine,

even the mailman unexpectedly knocking on the door was enough to infuriate Clark and wreck the entire day.

[00:16:03] Adam Cox: Oh God. He sounds like a nightmare.

[00:16:05] Kyle Risi: of course, he is abusive to her. He does beat her. It is not great.

And as time goes on, Adam Clark becomes more and more isolated from the outside world and expects Irene to follow suit.

Like neighbours see them less and less, and by the 1950s they're almost completely closed off from the world. And while the silence was torturer for Irene, her literal world was also closing in on her Not because she was confined to this house, but also Adam, because she was also going blind.

[00:16:34] Adam Cox: Why?

[00:16:35] Kyle Risi: Well, when she was a child, she had slipped and hit her head on a washing mango. It's like an old timey thing that you would kind of use to dry clothes.

[00:16:42] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:42] Kyle Risi: Basically, this resulted in severe neurological damage and by the time she was an adult, cataracts had started to form and now she's completely blinded one eye and starting to go blind in the other.

Her loss of vision also meant it was difficult for her to leave the house, which of course, as you can imagine, someone like Clark, this suited him to a T.

[00:17:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. There's no excuse now for her not doing the chores or whatever.

[00:17:05] Kyle Risi: But also simple things like navigating the house became harder for her, especially to do that in silence.

[00:17:10] Adam Cox: I was gonna say, you're gonna be stumbling around. Mm-hmm. And that's not gonna go down Well, I bet.

[00:17:14] Kyle Risi: And so she becomes more and more dependent on Clark, which only widens his control over her.

When they got married irene also pictured a life with Clark where they would've had children. Right?

[00:17:25] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:25] Kyle Risi: But honestly, this demand for absolute silence and his rigid routine that he demanded, coupled with her inability to care for a child now that she was going blind, forced her quite frankly, to accept that children was not on the cards for them.

[00:17:40] Adam Cox: Do you think in some way that the way she was living almost brought on the blindness? I know obviously she had this injury, but I don't know. It just feels like she lived this quite reclusive life I don't know, it's always a case of mind over matter. I just felt like she's come withdrawn and almost like an old woman very quickly.

[00:17:56] Kyle Risi: Possibly. I mean the resources do suggest that the cataracts and a loss of vision has come from this accident that she had when she was a kid so it's not really a case of like, 'cause she's become so reclusive.

[00:18:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:08] Kyle Risi: However, Adam five years into their marriage, Irene does actually fall pregnant.

She hopes that maybe Clark might change when the baby finally arrived, but her hopes are completely dashed When she finally gives birth to a baby girl. Clark will not tolerate the sound of that baby crying because when she did, Clark would leave her in the garage to just cry it out.

Mm-hmm. She is a brand new baby infant

[00:18:32] Adam Cox: and that's the only way that she can tell you

[00:18:35] Kyle Risi: anything. Anything. Exactly.

Eventually, when the baby Adam is 10 weeks old after being left to cry it out in a cold garage, she contracts pneumonia , and Adam, that baby dies.

[00:18:45] Adam Cox: Really?

[00:18:46] Kyle Risi: Officially, her cause of death is listed as pneumonia. But of course, what caused that pneumonia? Right? Gross neglect.

[00:18:52] Adam Cox: Wow. I thought this baby was gonna be genie,

[00:18:54] Kyle Risi: Nope. A couple more to go.

[00:18:57] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:18:58] Kyle Risi: A year later, Irene gives birth a second time.

This time it is a little boy. The baby is diagnosed too late with Rh incompatibility. It's a condition where the red blood cells are attacked by the body's immune system.

And so within two days this baby dies as well.

They do have a third child, this is a little boy, his name is John. He's completely healthy, but just like the first baby again, Clark will not tolerate any crying. eventually, even preventing crying becomes primary for Clark. he even discourages Irene from talking to her baby.

Like, don't talk to her. 'cause you're just gonna R him up.

[00:19:33] Adam Cox: That's horrible. Like a mother should be singing, nursing, playing peekaboo, all those kind of things, right?

[00:19:41] Kyle Risi: again, you can't help imagine the story with zero colour. Mm. There's no happiness there, is there?

[00:19:47] Adam Cox: No,

[00:19:47] Kyle Risi: Of course. This effect of not talking to this baby does have an impact on John because by the time he's four years old, his speech is far behind other children his age.

It's Clark's mother Pearl, the one who was running the brothel.

[00:20:00] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:01] Kyle Risi: Who first recognises that something is wrong and so she volunteers to take John to live with her for a few months.

And Adam is only for a short time, but she nurtures him she talks to him and John makes incredible strides in his ability to speak.

Like there was speculation amongst doctors that John might even have some kind of developmental issue, but Pearl stepping in proves that that is not the case It was this demand for constant silence that was all to blame for John not really keeping up with his speaking developments.

[00:20:30] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:30] Kyle Risi: Eventually, John does go back to live with Clark and Irene, but Pearl routinely steps in whenever she can.

It actually becomes a bit of a cycle where John is just shuttle between his parents and his grandmother. It's like, come on, why do you have to keep doing this? Why can't you just get the message that you're not treating him well? You're not raising him like he should be raised.

[00:20:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. Surely the grandmother must sense that something's up to the point where the child's better off somewhere else,

[00:20:56] Kyle Risi: Do you make that call and call child services?

[00:20:58] Adam Cox: True. But

[00:21:00] Kyle Risi: It's actually during this time where John has been shuttled between his grandmother and his parents' house, that Irene actually becomes pregnant again.

And so on the 18th of April, 1957, irene gives birth to Jeannie. It's not her real name, by the way, Adam. This has always been kept a secret. to protect her identity. You can go online to find out what her real name is, but we are gonna continue calling her Ginny just because they've added respect for her privacy, but it is publicly available out there.

[00:21:27] Adam Cox: I see

[00:21:28] Kyle Risi: Jeannie, when she's born, she does show signs of Rh incompatibility as well. But they do end up catching it very early, and so she's given a blood transfusion, which does end up saving her life.

Adam, aside from this, Jeanie is completely healthy and her first checkup with the nurse records show that her weight was at the 50th percentile, completely normal.

Her motor responses, her development markers all bang on.

At a later checkup though, doctors discover that genie has a congenital hip dislocation,

[00:21:58] Adam Cox: is she born with that or is that from abuse?

[00:22:00] Kyle Risi: She's born with it. It's basically where the ball of the thigh bone doesn't firmly fit inside the socket. Mm-hmm.

What this means is that Ginny has to wear a splint it is very uncomfortable for her.

Remember she's an infant and so as you can expect, she's way more upset than she would normally be.

[00:22:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:18] Kyle Risi: And again, if Clark has a aversion to noise, it is not going to end well

[00:22:22] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:23] Kyle Risi: We don't know exactly how he responded, but what we do know is that at a later checkup, Jeanie's weight percentile had dropped Adam to around the 10th percentile.

[00:22:33] Adam Cox: What does that mean?

[00:22:34] Kyle Risi: So like an average baby. Mm-hmm. Would weigh at the 50th percentile. She was at the 10 percentile. So she was drastically underweight.

[00:22:41] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:22:42] Kyle Risi: People think that maybe Clark was possibly withholding food from her as a punishment for grumbling about him to wear this splint.

But I also don't understand the logic there. 'cause surely he knows that starving a baby would just make her cry even more. And so this cruelty just becomes like a cycle.

The more she cried, the less she was fed, the less she was fed, the more she cried. Right.

[00:23:03] Adam Cox: If she's having these regular checkups with doctors and things, are they not suspecting that she's being neglected?

[00:23:08] Kyle Risi: Do you know what, there's no alarm Bess right now. It's more of a case of oh, by the way, there's more that you could be doing. Make sure she's exploring new foods or making sure that she's getting fed, mm-hmm. I don't think there's cause for concern right now.

[00:23:19] Adam Cox: Sure. Yeah. Okay. It just seems like because it's in the 10th percentile Yeah. It just feels quite a big difference.

[00:23:26] Kyle Risi: That's right.

Doctors also, Adam, start to notice that her development is also falling behind. She was missing obviously key milestones they would expect for her age.

They don't think that anything is inherently wrong with her, but they kind of sort of encourage more encouragement than she might be getting

[00:23:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. But then it doesn't sound like they're gonna be doing that. But then what is the mother, she surely wants to perhaps be doing this, right?

[00:23:49] Kyle Risi: I think so, yeah.

However, when Irene tells Clark this, he reads this very differently. He reads this as Ginny been mentally disabled. And so from that moment on, he writes her off completely.

He tells Irene and John not to talk to Ginny at all, not to engage with her, and somewhere in his twisted mind he decides that she's gonna die anyway.

[00:24:10] Adam Cox: That's awful. All they're saying is just interact with your daughter.

[00:24:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And feed her a bit more, Now I don't know where that comes from. I'm sure he was been abusing her and punishing in her, but in his mind, he doesn't see this as his fault.

[00:24:22] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:23] Kyle Risi: Adam, this is worsened in 1958 when Pearl, Clark's mother is killed in a hit and run while she's taken John out for the day.

So the one person who might have been able to step in to help Jeanie in this situation is now essentially gone.

But also Adam, him, poor John, he watched his grandmother get killed.

[00:24:42] Adam Cox: That's awful. And like now John's got no one to look after him really? And treat him like a little boy like he should.

[00:24:49] Kyle Risi: that in itself, watching your grandmother be killed. That must leave hiss own kind of trauma, right?

[00:24:54] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:24:54] Kyle Risi: As for Clark, he is devastated that he has lost his mother. He is already extremely withdrawn. And so this ends him spiralling. Clark ends up quitting his job and the family, they move into Pearl's house on Gold Western Avenue in Temple City in California.

Adam, He turns Pearl's bedroom into a shrine to her, he leaves it exactly as she left it and he literally forbids anyone from going into that room.

[00:25:17] Adam Cox: Uh, he's definitely got some weird issues, right? Yeah. Anyone that treats their mom's old rumour. The shrine. I'm getting like Ed vibes.

[00:25:25] Kyle Risi: Ed vibes. Yeah.

[00:25:26] Adam Cox: I'm getting, psycho vibes.

[00:25:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And it doesn't make sense because like his mother neglected him and you think about Ed Geen, his mother wasn't very nice. Him either, but yet he worshipped her.

It's very bizarre.

But also, this is a very small house. It's just two bedrooms.

There are four of them living in this house, right? But one of those bedrooms are now off limits.

[00:25:43] Adam Cox: So what does, how does that even work?

[00:25:46] Kyle Risi: Well, Clark ends up sleeping in his recliner and every night he goes to bed holding a gun because he's increasingly more and more paranoid about the dangers that are lurking outside the house.

[00:25:56] Adam Cox: Okay. He's just not right.

[00:25:58] Kyle Risi: Irene is forced to sleep on a dining room chair and John is forced to sleep on the floor.

He's a little boy.

Ginny, on the other hand, she is shut away in the only bedroom, completely isolated from the rest of the family. it is grim.

She's never allowed out of this bedroom. Clark completely blacks out all the windows. The only light that comes into the room is from a small gap in the blacks out window, but it's so high up that she can't even see outside.

[00:26:25] Adam Cox: It's weird that they've given her the room.

[00:26:27] Kyle Risi: Keeping her locked away.

[00:26:28] Adam Cox: I get that.

But it also doesn't make sense because none of them have got their own room. It doesn't make sense. So Jeanie's stuck in this room. She can't look out the window.

[00:26:37] Kyle Risi: No. this is all from two years old.

Because she can't look out the window, she doesn't even know what a tree looks like. She's never even seen a squirrel. She can't even see the sky is awful.

This dingy, dirty room is the entire scope of everything that she knows from the age of two years old.

[00:26:53] Adam Cox: So what does she have to do in this room? Like if she can't see how it's dark and dingy, she doesn't have toys, like you say. I think she had a magazine. Is that right?

[00:27:01] Kyle Risi: I mean there are a few basic bits of furniture. There's also a couple plastic raincoats hanging on hooks on the wall.

The only toys, if you want to even call them, that is a small plastic ThreadPool and a couple plastic containers and also a fucking TV guide.

By design, this room is to keep her separated from the wider family because according to Clark, she was mentally disabled.

She was a disgrace to the family and he believed that she was gonna die soon anyway. So he was just keeping her locked away until the inevitable happened.

[00:27:33] Adam Cox: Ah, he should not have been allowed kids. She needed to have been taken away.

[00:27:37] Kyle Risi: When it comes to dinner time, food is literally dumped in her room, Adam she is left to feed herself alone while the rest of the family eat other parts of the house.

Her meals mostly consists of baby food right up until she's like 13 years old, by the way.

it's because she does not know how to chew solids. They'll occasionally give her milk soak cereal and the occasional boiled egg. But because she doesn't know how to chew these things, all she knows how to do is just break the food down with her hands. And as a result, it is not uncommon for this little girl to just end up choking on a boiled egg.

[00:28:10] Adam Cox: That's so weird to think that she didn't know how to eat.

[00:28:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah, she doesn't. And when she does choke, she spits the food out naturally.

Adam, She's just punished by Clark, and he does this by rubbing her face in it or beating her with a wooden plank that he leaves hanging in that room.

And again, Clark puts this down to her being mentally disabled. The fact that she cannot eat properly. She can't even eat a boiled egg

But the thing is though, she could easily have learned how to eat, even if she'd just given a chance to have a meal with another human being. She could have easily just watched how they do it. Right. And She would've picked it up because she's not mentally disabled. She just needed to know how to do it.

[00:28:46] Adam Cox: How is Irene allowing this

[00:28:49] Kyle Risi: Adam? She's under control, right? There's not really much that she can do. Her whole world is closing in on her as it is. She's already oppressed. She's already beaten by him anyway. With her vision failing, what can she do?

[00:29:01] Adam Cox: I dunno. I just feel like that's her daughter. She must be able to hear her. She must know. Like fair enough. She can't see, but she must know. Like the state her daughter is in,

[00:29:12] Kyle Risi: she does know.

Yeah. What Irene will do is she will occasionally sneak genie food in the middle of the night.

Sometimes it's anything that she can muster. And sometimes it's things that she can't physically eat because she can't chew, right? And so there will sometimes be bouts where she will end up choking.

So she has to be very careful about what she sneaks at.

[00:29:32] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:29:32] Kyle Risi: because she never uses her teeth, her baby teeth never fall out and so by the time she's 13 and she's rescued, she literally has two full sets of teeth in her mouth.

[00:29:41] Adam Cox: So you can see both rows almost.

[00:29:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. They both come out together.

[00:29:45] Adam Cox: I see.

[00:29:46] Kyle Risi: She also gets no interaction with anyone, and when someone does come in to feed her, to clean her, to put her to bed, or whatever it might be, it's in complete and total silence.

With Clark's demand for quiets across the house like Adam, no television, no radio, and any conversation that happens in this house is just reduced to whispers, which Jeanie can't even hear. Right? She can't even listen to the world that's happening out around her.

[00:30:10] Adam Cox: She's not developing and then she's not playing with her brother.

What's the brother doing? Does he believe his father in terms of like, yeah, she's mentally ill.

[00:30:18] Kyle Risi: Do you know what? At the end of the day, I don't even think John, 'cause he's was very small when Jeanie was born, right?

[00:30:24] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:24] Kyle Risi: And so like to him, he doesn't even know any better

[00:30:26] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:27] Kyle Risi: There's also no language helping her to build a picture of her reality, right? There's no words to help her kind of dissect or categorise this very sad bedroom that she calls her entire world.

so If she cries, tries to vocalise or even hums, she's beaten with this wooden plank that Clark keeps in her room as a visual warning of what will happen if she does make any sound.

What is even sadder is that she just also does not know any different, she does not know that this is wrong.

[00:30:52] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:30:53] Kyle Risi: Here's the thing.

Clark himself refuses to speak to her when he's telling her off or he's beating her. So instead, the way that he communicates with her is through growls and barks.

Eventually, Ginny split is obviously taken off, and naturally she becomes more curious and mobile around this little dungeon that she's been kept in.

[00:31:13] Adam Cox: And what age is she at this point?

[00:31:15] Kyle Risi: So she's still around about two, maybe three.

And of course, because the splint is off, she teaches herself how to crawl, and then eventually she learns how to kind of do her own version of walking. It's not great, but it is her own version of kind of walking around.

[00:31:29] Adam Cox: What do you mean by that?

[00:31:30] Kyle Risi: Well, we'll go into kind of like when she's found how the kind of clinicians describe how she walked and how she moved. It's very odd. It might still, Because also she's never using her legs that kind of, the muscles don't develop properly as well. So these all these things will end up having an impact on how she walks.

[00:31:48] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:49] Kyle Risi: And because when she does walk, because it is this strange little genie walk, if you will, Clark just uses this as another example of her disability.

It's like you haven't taught her how to walk.

[00:32:01] Adam Cox: You never gave her a chance.

[00:32:03] Kyle Risi: You didn't give her a chance.

Exactly. And so of course when she starts shuffling around the room, she might try rattle the door. She might bang her plastic containers together.

Of course, this outrageous Clark. And so he ends up Adam strapping her to a potty chair by the waist and by her wrists.

This is how she spends her entire day.

And When it's time for bed, Irene or Clark will unstrap her. They'll put her in her crib, but to stop her from getting out, they place her into a sleeping bag that acts like a makeshift straight jacket.

And because of course she's small, she's curious, nighttime is when she's able to at least stand up, albeit inside a bloody sleeping bag, right? Mm-hmm. She might even flump out of the crib to go and explore the room.

And so to prevent this Clark just places a y mesh over the top of the crib and it becomes essentially a cage.

And so all day she's strapped to a potty chair all night. She's trapped in a cage.

[00:32:54] Adam Cox: She needs to go to the toilet. Mm-hmm. What? What's that situation?

[00:32:58] Kyle Risi: she has never been taught any bladder control, she wants to go to the toilet. She goes right there and then,

[00:33:03] Adam Cox: and then she's just gotta continue sitting on it. And what They come and change it? I don't know. Probably not that often.

That's just heartbreaking, actually.

[00:33:09] Kyle Risi: This is all she knows. She has no idea that this is not normal. Even if she did have a sense of that, there is no way for her to even vocalise this. Right. She is petrified to even show any kind of form of anguish.

[00:33:25] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:33:25] Kyle Risi: Because she knows she's just gonna get beaten.

[00:33:27] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:33:27] Kyle Risi: Her entire life with no toys, no simulation, nothing to drive her wonder or imagination. You can imagine how you could become just a shell of a human being, an empty human being, because you cannot process what's happening to you. You can't process the world around you. Language is such an important thing. Right.

[00:33:45] Adam Cox: I feel like Clark believed that she was, mentally ill or whatever, or was gonna die. But almost by treating her this way, it was almost encouraging for that to happen.

[00:33:56] Kyle Risi: I don't bias it. I just think he just developed an aversion to her. Maybe he couldn't control the crying. And so he wrote her off for that. He's using this as an excuse.

[00:34:05] Adam Cox: And was he punishing her or abusing her, hoping that actually maybe this kind of abuse would kill her?

[00:34:10] Kyle Risi: It sounds like it, doesn't it?

[00:34:11] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:12] Kyle Risi: And honestly, I think that if Irene's eyesight had not been as bad as it was, I think maybe things might have been marginally better for Jeanie.

Maybe I'm just being hopeful.

But I think that her maternal instinct might have pushed against Clarks control just enough to maybe allow herself to offer her some comfort, at least.

Mm-hmm. And I know it doesn't seem like that now, but the fact that Ginny's even in a position to be rescued at one point is as a result of her pushing back, threatening that she's going to leave Clark.

And so it's only the second time that she takes Ginny out into the world that she has discovered. But I think there is a want for her to not be treated in this way.

[00:34:52] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:34:52] Kyle Risi: But at this moment in time, she's so dependent on Clark. I think it takes a lot for her to stand up to him.

[00:34:58] Adam Cox: Well, I guess she's depending on him, right? To help around the house for money, for the house, for food,

[00:35:04] Kyle Risi: everything. Literally everything.

[00:35:05] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:35:06] Kyle Risi: This is how Jeannie lives her life for 13 years. It is just so brutal. And the consequences of this are so severe.

Because she spends her days either strapped to a potty chair or locked in a cage. Her leg muscles, like I said, they don't develop like a normal child.

When she walks, she's extremely stiff. She walks with her arms, held out in front of her bent at the elbows, likely from all the years, forced to be strapped in that same position.

But also being confined to this small room also affects her vision as well. Normally you learn to focus things near and far. Mm-hmm.

But because everything in Jeanie's world is so close, her eyesight never develops beyond that.

She can only see a few feet ahead of her. And because sound is what gets her punished, she becomes essentially selectively mute.

She can make noise, but she stays silent to avoid a beating. And so she never cries. Instead her discomfort manifests itself in other ways. Like she'll just scratch herself or she'll hit herself.

[00:35:58] Adam Cox: That's weird and really sad actually, that she's learned that behaviour to try and not make a sound.

[00:36:04] Kyle Risi: And it's not like even if she did wanna make a sound that there would be anything meaningful because she's never also been taught to speak and so like she's never trained her tongue to make meaningful sounds.

She's capable of making sounds though. And is wild to think that this abuse can see for 13 years in a suburban neighbourhood,

[00:36:21] Adam Cox: but then like friends, although maybe they didn't really have many friends by the sound of things, they became quite reclusive as you said. But I would've thought neighbours would've known that they did have a girl at one point.

[00:36:31] Kyle Risi: Well, Adam Neighbours didn't even realise that Clark and Irene even had a daughter.

[00:36:35] Adam Cox: Oh, really?

[00:36:36] Kyle Risi: They would see John leaving and coming home from school. They just assumed that he was their only child.

[00:36:40] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:36:41] Kyle Risi: And John is abused too, by the way. Like he's routinely beaten and Clark exerts the exact same control over him that he does irene, it seems to get worse after Pearl's death as Clark becomes more and more paranoid about the dangers that are lurking outside. And so when John comes home from school, he's instructed to first knock, identify himself before then being allowed in.

[00:37:02] Adam Cox: What is Clark worried about?

[00:37:04] Kyle Risi: I don't know, Adam, again, I think possibly he might have some kind of autism. I'm not gonna say that is a reason for his paranoia, but I think that might explain this kind of methodicalness, this demand for silence. But then I think it's these mother's death that has driven kind of the paranoia.

And so it's not just Ginny has been abused, the entire family's been abused, although what's happening to her, of course is very different.

John does understand enough to know what is happening to Ginny is actually wrong though, because when he turns 18, Adam, he does run away from home,

[00:37:34] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:37:34] Kyle Risi: But what is tragic is that he never reports what is happening to his sister.

[00:37:38] Adam Cox: Oh, so he doesn't go back?

[00:37:39] Kyle Risi: No. At this point, after years of living like this, I don't think even Irene is ever going to act on her own. It Like Ginny gets rescued by accident. In spite of that, I think Irene would've never have alerted anyone.

[00:37:52] Adam Cox: So John ran away. And never thought, okay, my mom's being abused. I've got a sister who's trapped in a room that maybe you didn't really have much of a relationship with. But even still,

[00:38:03] Kyle Risi: it is a guilt that he carries with him for his whole life.

[00:38:05] Adam Cox: But I guess he's in such a way where he is I need to get out.

[00:38:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:38:09] Adam Cox: But

[00:38:09] Kyle Risi: protect myself, recover, and then maybe I can do something. But I don't think maybe he would've done, but by the time maybe he did think that he should have done something, Jimmy's already been rescued.

[00:38:19] Adam Cox: I guess there's a risk that maybe he thinks if he does go back or whatever, then he might get trapped back in where he was.

But he's allowed to leave the house. And equally just go call the police, say what's been going on.

[00:38:31] Kyle Risi: And like I said, after years of living like this, I don't think Irene was ever gonna act on her own.

She's heavily dependent on Clark and afraid that if she leaves, he will kill Jenny. Remember, that is also a fear here.

She's not just fearing for herself. She's fearing for Jeannie.

[00:38:45] Adam Cox: So she's trying to, in some ways, yeah. Look after her, but in the way that she thinks is the best way to do that.

[00:38:50] Kyle Risi: Exactly. So I'm not excusing her lack of action, but I think I can understand the fear that she's living with.

[00:38:55] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:56] Kyle Risi: Still, Irene, like I said, she does have moments of clarity. She goes behind Clark's back, she does give genie food whenever she can.

It's meaningless to us.

But within her means and her capabilities, this is kind of an act of compassion. It's very clear. Right?

[00:39:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. And I guess rebellion a little bit as well. Yeah. Against Clark. But it just seems so minute that Yeah. That if she, maybe that's all she thought she could get away with.

[00:39:20] Kyle Risi: It's actually one of these moments of compassion and kind of pushing back against Clark that leads to actually Jeanie being rescued.

I think, from what I can remember, she wanted to go and visit her mother, and Clark said, no, she threatened to leave him.

Eventually he said Yes, I think she takes Jeanie with her.

And then a second time that happens is October, 1970 when Irene has to go into town to process some paperwork for her disability payments.

For some reason, again, she gathers that courage to take Jeannie with her. Adam, I do wonder if Irene's vision is so bad by this point that she doesn't fully understand that the state, that Genie is even in.

[00:40:00] Adam Cox: Possibly because if she doesn't know that, I guess the way that she walks, moves and stuff like that, she knows she probably doesn't talk or whatever.

[00:40:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:40:08] Adam Cox: Then yeah, she probably just thought she is a normal girl way.

[00:40:11] Kyle Risi: I think maybe she might have a sense of how she moves, but how malnutrition she is, how little she is. I think when she sees Jeanie, she just sees like a blob

[00:40:20] Adam Cox: and so she decides to take her out and she's done this twice. Why does she decide to take her out that day?

[00:40:27] Kyle Risi: I think it's part of this kind of rebellious period that she's in.

[00:40:31] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:31] Kyle Risi: Right.

She is threatened Clark.

[00:40:34] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:34] Kyle Risi: She said, I want to go visit my mother. I want to take Jeanie. He's finally agreed.

He said no, but then he's finally agreed and she's okay, I think I can see a way forward for me demanding things that I want and for him to let up a little bit, and so it just so happens that she had to go in to do this paperwork.

She takes Jeanie with her. I dunno where Clark was on this day, but thank God she did take her.

[00:40:55] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:56] Kyle Risi: When Irene is in town, she ends up taking a wrong turn because instead of walking into the disability benefits departments, she wanders into the social services office.

[00:41:05] Adam Cox: What are the chances?

[00:41:07] Kyle Risi: I think it's in the same building or in the same area where all the government buildings are.

[00:41:10] Adam Cox: Oh, okay.

[00:41:11] Kyle Risi: It's like, it might even be the same building, just a different department.

[00:41:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. Kind of.

[00:41:15] Kyle Risi: And she's blind.

[00:41:17] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's not like completely across town.

[00:41:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly.

When she approaches the counter, the staff instantly clocked jeanie.

Obviously she looks a mess, but for her age, she's also extremely thin and fragile.

But Adam, there is something about the way that she moves that catches them off guard. She doesn't so much as walk as shuffle forward. Her arms are seemingly locked at the elbows in front of her.

also at the same time, everything around her is fascinating. Everything except for the physical people in the room. She doesn't look anyone in the eyes. She's just hyper-focused on everything else. Like, she cannot get enough of the mundane things that she is seeing in this office

[00:42:01] Adam Cox: God as also, like she's a 13-year-old girl.

[00:42:04] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:04] Adam Cox: And Irene has managed to get her all this way. How does she keep an eye on her? Like Yeah. How has she not ran off or anything, but maybe she's so like,

[00:42:12] Kyle Risi: I don't think these people are beyond the idea of putting her on a leash.

[00:42:15] Adam Cox: Possibly. Yeah. Fair point.

[00:42:17] Kyle Risi: But it doesn't seem like she wasn't on a leash otherwise. That would've been one of the things they clocked.

[00:42:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. But I guess, Jeanie's not gonna run away. Or maybe she's scared. Yeah. So she's gonna keep with her mother

[00:42:25] Kyle Risi: possibly.

[00:42:26] Adam Cox: But yeah, I imagine like the way that you've described her and moving in, like they're gonna ask some questions, is what's going on in your child?

[00:42:32] Kyle Risi: 100%. But also imagine what Jeannie is going through in this moment. Like I said, it must be like she's been taken to a completely brand new planet

[00:42:41] Adam Cox: and people are speaking to her and she's not probably even understanding why.

Oh

[00:42:44] Kyle Risi: no, she does. She can't understand anyone.

[00:42:46] Adam Cox: Yeah.

So people are like, coming up, are you okay? And she's what is going on?

[00:42:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Who the fuck are you? The person behind the counter asks Irene about the girl and she asks how old she is. She's shocked Adam. When Irene tells her that she's 13 years old, because she looks seven.

The woman behind the counter, immediately calls a manager, and soon after that, they call the police.

And Adam Jeanie does not go home with Irene that day.

[00:43:08] Adam Cox: Good.

[00:43:09] Kyle Risi: She is basically taking into care

[00:43:12] Adam Cox: and what does Irene do in this? Is she like protesting? No, she's my daughter. Or is she like, good.

[00:43:18] Kyle Risi: Possibly a little bit of that, but at the same time, remember, she's gotta go home to Clark.

[00:43:22] Adam Cox: Well, you didn't really want her in the first place, but

[00:43:24] Kyle Risi: this Yeah. But now they're busted.

[00:43:26] Adam Cox: Yeah, that's true.

[00:43:26] Kyle Risi: That's the thing, because following this, both Clark and Irene are charged with felony child abuse, and they are both scheduled to appear in court a month later in 1970.

Adam, here's where the fucking injustice is, because before the court date,

Clark shoots himself in the head.

[00:43:44] Adam Cox: Oh yeah.

[00:43:45] Kyle Risi: Quite

[00:43:46] Adam Cox: a coward.

[00:43:47] Kyle Risi: He even has the audacity to lay out his clothes that he wants to be buried in on the bed as if he thinks he deserves that common courtesy after what he's done.

[00:43:55] Adam Cox: No. Stick him in a hole in the ground.

[00:43:56] Kyle Risi: He also writes a suicide note containing instructions on what should happen to John. And he says something like, oh, I love him, or whatever.

And in response to Jeanie, all he writes is, the world will never understand.

[00:44:09] Adam Cox: Mm. I think they will.

[00:44:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah, of course. But the thing is though, what's key is that buried in that line is an admission.

Right? Mm. Like he knew what he had done was completely wrong.

And so with Clark dead, the trial ends up just focusing on Irene and her defence. Adam works in her favour.

The argument is basically that yes, what she allowed to happen was indefensible, but she too had been a victim of Clark and the abuse and the intimidation, and had not knowingly or willfully participated in the cruelty towards Jeannie, And as a result, the criminal charges against Irene are completely dismissed.

[00:44:42] Adam Cox: Are they? And then what happens to her then? Does she just go back to her house then and

[00:44:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah, essentially.

So Adam, after her rescue Jeanie, is taken to a children's hospital in Los Angeles. It is shocking again, as we pretty much know, her weight is just 59 pounds. That, is less than half the average for a girl her age.

[00:45:02] Adam Cox: What's that in kilos?

[00:45:04] Kyle Risi: 26 kilos.

[00:45:05] Adam Cox: Wow. That's, that's nothing.

[00:45:08] Kyle Risi: She's also seven inches shorter than the average. She's also severely malnourished. They observe the same haunting movements that the people in the welfare office kind of experienced, like the hops and the shuffles, the hands held out body hunched over by the hips.

It's partly due to severe muscle and bone issues, but also because Adam, like I said, no one ever taught her how to walk properly or hold herself properly.

[00:45:29] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:30] Kyle Risi: It's also clear that after years of moving like this, she's physically unable to straighten her arms or her legs.

[00:45:37] Adam Cox: I was wondering if the muscles are almost like they're so short Yeah. That they can't like extend or anything like that. Is there anything they can do, like over time, like to train or

[00:45:47] Kyle Risi: Quite possibly.

Some of the early photographs I've seen of her, she still has her arms. I think it's also like a comfort thing. It's just what she know is normal to her. Mm-hmm.

So, I dunno if over time maybe she could lengthen those muscles. It's gotta be a muscle shortening rather than like the bones being set. Do you know what I mean?

[00:46:04] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:46:04] Kyle Risi: Adam, she also can't control her saliva. And again, it's because she's never been taught how to swallow. Like she just keeps it all in her mouth. So she's constantly just drooling.

And so like seeing her in this condition, naturally, the immediate response is to start focusing on genie's rehabilitation.

But then Adam, the scientific and academic community, get wind of this case in adverse of commas, and it basically begins genie's next chapter.

Because it ushers in a whole new realm of abuse. Even though there are good intentions underneath it all. There is also this pursuit of scientific knowledge. They need to settle debates that have been raging for decades.

Tests need to be run as well, and slowly that starts to take precedence over her care because remember, she's an incredibly rare situation.

For years, these professionals have debated whether or not there was a critical period for language to develop in childhood development, a narrow window where certain things had to be learned or maybe they might never, ever be learned.

[00:47:05] Adam Cox: I mean, the fact that she can't even swallow to like get rid of her spit makes me think, how do you teach someone that at 13?

[00:47:12] Kyle Risi: Exactly, yeah. And so to them, suddenly you have this kinda real test case sitting in front of them that they can prove and test all of this.

At this point, no one really knows what they're looking at. Has 13 years of abuse caused some permanent degree of mental incapacity?

They're not quite sure.

Or has the canvas for development simply just been left blank now waiting for it to all be painted in? If the latter is true and they suspected this might be the case, then Ginny was an incredibly valuable test case because what they saw in her was extraordinary curiosity, not in a way that would suggest that she had a mental incapacity.

She wanted to get close to everything to work out what the fuck it was.

Her limited vision obviously meant that she had to do everything up close, but she'll grab objects, she'll put 'em right up to her face, just trying to understand what they were, how they felt, or how they worked. Do you know what I mean?

So to me, this is what a toddler would exhibit, but because of course she's in beginning opportunity, it's now coming.

[00:48:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, are they trying to push her in that direction?

[00:48:17] Kyle Risi: I think so.

They definitely want to test that because right now she's taken it all in. And what clinicians suspected that they were watching was not an infant building those neural pathways at the expected age, but a 13-year-old doing it at a point where some scientists argued that it should already be too late.

And because Jeannie's case overlapped several fields of study, this tug of war begins between scientists, psychologists, and neurologists.

Everyone basically wants access to her.

They band together to seek some funding and to set up a test programme. time with her is then divided equally between these different subsets of research teams. And very quickly Adam.

She starts being moved between different institutions. When one team's time with her kind of runs out before the other is finished, it literally causes serious fights. Like it gets vicious.

I also can't imagine just how terrifying this must have been for Jeannie herself.

[00:49:07] Adam Cox: What are her living conditions?

Does she have a bedroom and a bed now? I mean, I imagine she does, but is she constantly being monitored and observed?

[00:49:16] Kyle Risi: Yes, exactly. Now she is put with a foster care. We'll get onto that in just a second. So she does have that time away, but it, that itself causes massive issues.

But literally at the same time, like the fear that she must be going through now, like she's now out in the world. That must be far too much for her. Everything is just overstimulation

[00:49:35] Adam Cox: and then that's changing every, I dunno how often, but every few weeks or whatever

[00:49:39] Kyle Risi: it's, yeah. That's it. So everything is literally brand new for her. And overwhelming, remember, she also can't speak and so she cannot say no.

She can't even communicate what her needs are. Even crying, the most basic way of expressing distress or discomfort was beaten out of her. So she can't communicate that. She doesn't know to communicate when she doesn't

[00:49:56] Adam Cox: Yeah.

And I get that she couldn't go into like foster care straight away. 'cause I can't imagine many families being equipped to kind of manage or deal with her. Right, exactly. She needs a lot more support.

But it doesn't feel right that she's being studied to the extent that it sounds like she is.

[00:50:14] Kyle Risi: Yes, that's right. And it's not even started yet, really.

Her first sessions with these teams of scientists in their retrospective kind of fields are mostly observational.

They kind of wanna start off with working out her level of intelligence and her capacity to learn.

But it is almost impossible to work that out because so much of what she might be capable of is actually buried under fear.

They sort of work out though in the end that in most areas she functions at a three-year-old level.

But again, only in some areas, in other areas, she's surprisingly advanced.

A, she recognises her own name. She understands simple words, but she also has this insatiable curiosity, which seems to be different from a curiosity exhibited by someone who might be mentally incapable.

She really is this canvas that is now rushing in to be filled in. Do you know what I mean?

[00:51:06] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:06] Kyle Risi: It must be just incredible to watch.

In other areas that really surprises them are how she's just not really that afraid of many things considering what she's been through.

However, she does have this intense fear of dogs where her reaction is basically to recoil or to wet herself or to scratch at her skin.

And of course, as we know, Clark would bark and ground at her. Right.

[00:51:26] Adam Cox: God. Yeah. Because I was just thinking like she wouldn't have seen a dog before.

And yet that typically for a kid is, a lot of joy. Dogs, cats, any kind of animals, and yet she's associating that barking with her dad and just being told off.

[00:51:40] Kyle Risi: But Adam, over time, she starts to feel safer and more comfortable with her surroundings, and she does start to become more vocal as a result, she starts making sounds of curiosity and wonder at things that she's experiencing for the very first time.

Like, she'll coo and she'll be like, oh. And she'll be like, make these really? Mm-hmm. I just, that fills me with so much colour in a story where it's been so devoid of colour. Do you know what I mean? You can almost feel it rushing in now.

[00:52:04] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:52:04] Kyle Risi: And so the research team think that maybe someone more experienced with special needs education should be brought in to assist.

This is a woman called Jean Butler, and this is the woman that essentially becomes her foster mother. She's really taken by Ginny and as well as teaching her everything, she also gets really invested in, in just making sure that she's okay.

And so it's her that actually petitions and floats the idea of, fostering her, the research team think it'll kind of give her that a bit of stability in between kind of, testing sessions and research sessions.

It's a great call.

And so Jean and Jeanie under her guidance of, the research team, they start undergoing a sort of crash course in literally life itself.

It is so weird. Eating, walking, talking, getting dressed, using the toilet, right. Something she picks up really fast.

People do critic her intelligence though, when like she's slow to pick up other things, but honestly, fuck you to them because like they're expecting results within weeks when Todd does sometimes take years to master some of these things, right?

[00:53:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:05] Kyle Risi: And so the transformation for me is fairly dramatic Within days. Jeanie is actively helping Jean dress her, like it's not perfect, but she does understand that the clothes need to go on the body.

[00:53:18] Adam Cox: She gets that and she's putting a leg through an arm or whatever it is.

[00:53:21] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

She starts learning how to control her bodily functions, realising that you can hold it in until you need to go to the toilet.

[00:53:27] Adam Cox: I mean, that must be a relief for everyone.

[00:53:30] Kyle Risi: Yes.

One of the interesting things that Jeanie notes is that she gravitates towards things that are made from plastic.

Her favourite possessions end up being a collection of 20 brightly coloured plastic buckets that she keeps neatly stacked by her bed.

They are her price possessions.

Oh.

But also the way that she interacts with them doesn't seem like pure fascination. It's more like a comfort, something that's familiar. Right? Because plastic objects were some of the only things that she had to ever play with.

So in a world where everything is completely brand new, these buckets become a source of safety and familiarity to her.

Yeah. That's interesting. Although, I mean, I get that growing up, that's probably all she had, but I dunno, there's all these things that she could have now, surely like a teddy bear and things like that, that we sure associate, she wouldn't have had that.

And don't get wrong. She wants all of that.

[00:54:20] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:20] Kyle Risi: But I think because it's so overwhelming when she's at home and she's in private and she's in her bedroom, she can gravitate towards something like, oh, it's been a tough day learning what a damn squirrel was. Do you know what I mean? I just wanna kick back with a couple buckets and chill out.

Of course her fascination with the world only intensifies when she does go outside, which must be such a strange concept for her because it's not just objects now, Adam is literally everything. The sound of the wind, the sound of birds, traffic for God's sake, the feeling of the wind on her skin. She's literally mesmerised by absolutely everything.

Aside from it being so sad, it's just really incredible to understand what she must be going through.

[00:55:03] Adam Cox: I think that's the thing. 'cause she's learning so much in a short space of time. Like we learned, all these things over years as a toddler. Like I don't remember the first time I saw the sun.

[00:55:12] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:13] Adam Cox: Or the wind or anything. But she, and

[00:55:15] Kyle Risi: did you experience that while you're conscious?

[00:55:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. And it's wild. And that a point where, you're probably gonna remember this. I dunno what the have memory or long-term memory functions like.

[00:55:24] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:25] Adam Cox: But she's gonna remember the first time she saw this or felt that

[00:55:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

There's something inspirational in that. Right. And there's very often not told in the story of Jeanie Wiley.

[00:55:35] Adam Cox: Yeah. I mean, obviously no one should go through those circumstances to, to feel like this. Mm-hmm. But yeah, It's a shame. I'd love to know obviously where she ended up going to or what she's doing because how she would talk about the past and what she's done since. But I dunno, perhaps we'll get there.

[00:55:52] Kyle Risi: I'm gonna have to disappoint you Adam. 'cause it doesn't pan out that way, unfortunately.

[00:55:55] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:55:56] Kyle Risi: But Adam, slowly, basic language starts to emerge at first. There are just single words, which shows that she has cognitive awareness of things, but is also now learning how to catalogue the world in her mind, which is what language is. Right. It's not just a way to communicate, it's a catalogue of the world.

And eventually those single words then become strings of two, maybe even three. So we're essentially communicating through our catalogue of the world.

So rather than saying like Ball, she might say, then Ginny Ball. Do you know what I mean?

[00:56:27] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:28] Kyle Risi: Probably the most memorable moment in her development, which also shows emotional awareness comes when she's at a supermarket with Jean, her caregiver. And she literally says, Jeanie happy.

[00:56:39] Adam Cox: Oh, that's really sweet.

[00:56:41] Kyle Risi: It is.

But also, Adam, remember Jeanie is 13 years old, so biologically she's developing and she absolutely has an awareness of what makes her body feel very good, but also no sense of what is appropriate. And so quite often in front of other people, she'll just go off and have a very good time by herself.

[00:57:01] Adam Cox: Oh

oh my.

[00:57:04] Kyle Risi: This is actually part of what I remember the most from watching The Mockingbird don't sing.

It's the single memory that sticks out the most when I remember this film all those years ago.

At the time I was very young, but I vividly remember that scene where she's been driven somewhere, right. Lightly to like another test or whatever, and she's just in the backseat, just having a whale of a time and they have to explain to her. It's like, darling, you do that in private.

[00:57:28] Adam Cox: Yeah. That's a thing you're trying not to shame her.

[00:57:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I can't remember in the film how they dealt with it. It was back in the eighties, so normally there is a shame element to that.

[00:57:37] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[00:57:37] Kyle Risi: probably. But I think in the way they handled it in the film in 2001, I don't think that they necessarily did shame her, which is the right way to do it.

[00:57:44] Adam Cox: Yeah, but the way she was going through this, did they shame her? Or you can't, you couldn't have done Shirley.

[00:57:49] Kyle Risi: I don't know, honestly. All I remember is just her in the backseat.

But aside from this, one of the biggest breakthroughs comes when she knows enough language to start giving people insight into what actually happened in her house.

She begins stringing words together, like, and this is heartbreaking, right? Father hit arm, no spit. Father hit big stick, big wood genie cry. Father is angry, father makes me cry. So all those types of words that she strings together.

[00:58:15] Adam Cox: But I thought she couldn't cry.

[00:58:18] Kyle Risi: She's got the capacity to cry, but she knows not to cry. But Adam most fascinating, was that she seemed to have an understanding that he was dead because she says father dead.

So that's strange as well. Like in a world where everything's brand new, she has as concepts of death.

[00:58:31] Adam Cox: She must have been taught that though, right? Like how else would, you understand what the concept of life and death

[00:58:37] Kyle Risi: is? Possibly. Possibly. Uh, of course every, it's a crash course in life. So maybe someone explained to her about her father, and so maybe she can now, she's like, where is this monster that hurt me? And they maybe had to explain to her what death was. Hmm.

This is basically how her observers get the sense that plastic items held some kind of significance for her. Because they just seem to feature quite a lot in her drawings.

It is clear that Jeanie, despite everything she has been through, did exhibit a lot of the hallmarks of potential.

But after 13 years, Adam of learned behaviour. The question was how much of that potential could she physically reach to the point where maybe she's a completely functioning human being, right?

[00:59:13] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:59:14] Kyle Risi: So researchers apply to the National Institute of Mental Health for funding to continue studying her. The clinicians, linguists, neuropsychologists, we're all interested in studying something called the critical period hypothesis.

It's this idea that we all born with this innate capacity for grammar and language specifically. So this is a language study and that it has to be acquired before puberty, otherwise it will never fully develop.

They wanted to know if Ginny had missed that window. If she could somehow be taught grammar naturally through exposure to speech, it would then challenge the theory, or support it.

Like Ginny had already made huge strides with vocabulary. She could understand someone calling out an object and then repeat it back to you. But grammar is far more nuanced right now. She couldn't quite grasp like the proper structure. So it's more like Ball Genie rather than Genie Ball, which could then become Genie once the ball.

[01:00:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:07] Kyle Risi: Adam, it becomes very clear that she might never actually pick this up. For one, she never, ever asks questions despite her intense curiosity.

Maybe it's because she doesn't learn that actually other people are a source of knowledge and information.

I thought that maybe now that she felt safe and she was adapting and the simulating and being cared for, maybe she'd pick that up. But she doesn't seem to.

[01:00:27] Adam Cox: If she doesn't really know how to form long sentences to ask what is this? Or what are you doing? Yeah. Or what's that?

[01:00:34] Kyle Risi: But you can also ask questions silently.

Mm-hmm. Like you can point to something and go qua.

[01:00:39] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:00:39] Kyle Risi: She also struggles with pronouns not being able to differentiate between the concepts of you and me.

Now, that's not to say that she lacks self-awareness because she does absolutely understand that she's a distinct person, but that awareness is not translating to the language and the grammar.

So it looks as though this critical period hypothesis might be true, that there is this biological constrained window in early developments in this specific area when normal first language acquisition is possible. And that missing this window can leave parts of grammar essentially permanently impaired.

[01:01:11] Adam Cox: That I, I had no idea that, we had to learn this before puberty.

[01:01:15] Kyle Risi: Right? Yeah. That's what it seems to be at this moment in time. Whether or not more research has been done since her, but that's what's looking like at this moment in time.

In most people, language is processed mainly in the left hemisphere. Right. But in genie's case, the hemisphere has been underused because of years of not triggering the neurons that are activated through learning language.

And so scan suggested that her right hemisphere was taking on the linguistic functions it would not normally be able to handle.

So this does shift how scientists think about the concepts of brain plasticity. That's what they want to test.

Mm-hmm.

And this testing does, I think become a bit much, i'm not sure if Jeanie is aware of this, but regardless it does seem to take priority over recovery and you know, like just being a 13-year-old girl.

' Cause people are forgetting that she does need to also live and exist as a young girl in a childhood that she's missed out on.

[01:02:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like she must be wanting to play with toys and things like that. I feel like she's gonna be curious about that kind of thing.

[01:02:09] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

Jean recognises this, And she starts to understand that this is starting to impact her stability.

And so after rubella outbreak, Jean starts isolating Jeanie at home and limiting researchers access tour, which at first you would think is very noble.

The research team, however, see this very differently in the trailer of the film that I watched in preparation. 'cause I haven't watched the film.

Jean is seen telling someone that Jeanie is actually going to make her incredibly rich.

And so it's not clear whether or not that's actually true, but the research team frames this as Jean positioning herself as a primary authority in Jeanie's recovery.

And so she will be cited in academic papers as the person who taught her how to speak or was really instrumental in her progress.

[01:02:53] Adam Cox: But is this the dramatised version?

[01:02:56] Kyle Risi: That's how it was positioned in the drama where she's overheard saying someone, but the, what they accuse her of is keeping her quarantine so she can take a credit for stuff. That's fact.

[01:03:07] Adam Cox: That's fact. Oh really?

[01:03:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So they complain.

Jeanie is removed from jean's care she's sent to live with uh, a couple of the researchers. David and Marilyn, rig leather are husband and wife and they're absolutely on the research team.

And Adam that is now a conflict of interest that has now been built directly into her care. Right. The people raising her are also the people who are studying her.

There is now no separation. And so between 1971 and 1975, she's constantly tested, recorded, observed, written about.

And at some point the question becomes is this care or is this just perpetual research?

[01:03:41] Adam Cox: It feels that way. 'cause that's another, what, four years? Mm-hmm. How old is she at this point? Like 18.

[01:03:47] Kyle Risi: She will get to 18. Yeah.

[01:03:48] Adam Cox: That feels like a long time.

Yeah. Why are they not, I dunno how easy it is to rehabilitate, but feel like Sure. Study was your trying to get her to be a functioning adult.

[01:04:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

But it's not happening now because they suspected that Jean was trying to keep control of her. Nobody is now there to seemingly say enough testing.

Just let her watch a damn cartoon.

[01:04:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. She feels like a lab rat or something.

[01:04:13] Kyle Risi: And so instead, Jeanie's entire life becomes tangled up with their careers.

That is the thing in their careers, it's all about them. It's got hardly anything. They might have some sympathy for her and some compassion, but it's definitely not taking precedence over her wellbeing.

Adam, eventually, 1975, Jeanie turns 18 and legally for the research team, this whole arrangement now becomes much trickier funding for their research now comes up for renewal.

And Adam, it is not renewed. It's because people in the camp of let Jeanie just be a child, we're now raising concerns to the National Institute of Mental Health about the ethical practises and the data collection problems in the study. They were like, you're testing her too much and there's a massive overlap between your testing and her care.

Where is the separation?

[01:04:59] Adam Cox: Right?

[01:04:59] Kyle Risi: But on top of that, when she turns 18, the whole situation becomes a legal nightmare as well.

It could be that a factor that played into them not renewing her kind of funding like now we have to tackle kind of the fact that she's not a warden of the state anymore.

[01:05:12] Adam Cox: It also makes me feel like now that they're putting back on this funding, and I dunno, people aren't gonna be able to continue to study her in the same way. Where does that leave her?

Because if they've just been focused on studying her and not rehabilitating her

What's her life Now?

[01:05:27] Kyle Risi: Well, you would think like, well, we can put into kind of care. Right? But the thing is that the care system is not set up to deal with a nuanced case like Genie.

[01:05:35] Adam Cox: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:05:36] Kyle Risi: It's crazy.

And so the research team starts to wind down, although some researchers, like Genie's linguist, a woman called Susan Curtis, they do continue working with her, but is less structured. Of course. There's no funding involved. And so Susan Curtis has to do this kind of pro bono, almost.

[01:05:53] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:54] Kyle Risi: Adam, it's around about this time that Irene appears back on the scene and she petitions for custody.

[01:06:00] Adam Cox: Really,

[01:06:01] Kyle Risi: Adam, she gets it.

It's because remember the court dismissed her case, right?

And so Jeanie goes back to live with her mother. It is such a bad move. Not only because Irene, regardless of being acquitted, was still one of Jeanie's abusers, but also Jeanie needs specialist care. Don't send her back to a woman who is almost completely blind.

[01:06:20] Adam Cox: Exactly. I'm really surprised that they did that, but is it because of the funding was pulled and therefore it's like, well, where else is she gonna go?

[01:06:27] Kyle Risi: Exactly right. There's no funding. I am a scientist. I need, this is my living. I'm not equipped to care for or do this pro bono. And so the sad reality is she has to go back and live with Irene.

And the fact that Irene is not equipped for this is a reality that Irene is fully aware of.

[01:06:44] Adam Cox: What's she gonna do?

[01:06:45] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

Irene also files a lawsuit against the research team and the hospital alleging that genie had been subjected to excessive testing and that the scientific publications had been prioritised over her recovery, which of course has resulted in emotional harm.

So she's not wrong there. But also at the same time, I think suing them is also a way of her maybe getting some funding in order to facilitate her care.

[01:07:07] Adam Cox: But I get that Irene is a victim of abuse as well, and I can understand as a mother, maybe she does want to do Right, but this is just not the right decision. No. And equally like she's going after these research people saying, oh, you aren't treating her right.

Well, hello. You weren't treating her right for 13

[01:07:23] Kyle Risi: years. Exactly. I do wonder, whether or not, ' cause you see this happening in these big high profile cases all the time. Right. Some lawyer comes sniffing around and he goes, clearly, something dodgy has happened here.

Let me kind of like pander at the mother, promise her like a tonne of money or whatnot. And maybe they've kind of ushered in this lawsuit. Who knows?

[01:07:40] Adam Cox: Mm.

[01:07:40] Kyle Risi: Or wouldn't be surprised.

But in court, the researchers, they deny all accusations saying that her rehabilitation was built into their work. But the prosecution say, well then why was your funding not renewed? And then they pull out all the ethical concerns that were raised by the National Institute of Mental Health, and eventually they're forced to settle out of court.

And even today, we don't know the details of how much money was awarded

[01:08:04] Adam Cox: what, uh, Irene

[01:08:06] Kyle Risi: and Jeanie as a exactly, as a result of this lawsuit.

But here's the thing, Adam, with Irene now Jeannie's primary caregiver, it quickly becomes clear that regardless of like what the settlement was, I'm not sure what came first, but it's just too much for her. Irene knew it would be. She, of course, needs specialist care, especially to ensure progress doesn't regress.

That's the most important thing. Jeanie is also unpredictable in a way that Irene just cannot keep up with.

And so Irene, she seeks assistance, but instead of providing it, they decide that it's in Jeanie's best interest to place her into the foster care system.

[01:08:40] Adam Cox: Oh, so after all of that still gets taken away.

[01:08:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah, is reportedly a mixed bag. Some of the families treat her really well. Others are awful, or they just simply do not understand the level of care that she needs.

Their frustration turns into punishment. Sometimes even physical punishment with one family reportedly punching and kicking her.

[01:08:58] Adam Cox: But how many hang on a foster family that's allowed to take in someone and they're abusing this foster child.

[01:09:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah, it is so crazy. And I'll explain in a second, but as a result, a lot of the progress that Jeannie had made literally starts to reverse.

One foster family doesn't even realise that she has the capacity to speak

[01:09:18] Adam Cox: How many families is she going through?

[01:09:20] Kyle Risi: Exactly. Because she's been moved around so much, there is no stable baseline for anyone to properly assess her needs.

So for example, she can leave one family 10 pounds lighter than when she arrived, she will speak less. She will eat less, she will withdraw more.

And then so that becomes the new starting point for the next family. And so at each checkup it might look like she's only dropped slightly, but when you zoom out, the regression is stark across all the placements.

Do you know what I mean? Because no one is joining up the dots.

[01:09:51] Adam Cox: And who is finding that out then? Who's going? Actually, no. There is a big problem here.

[01:09:56] Kyle Risi: It takes a while for that to eventually happen, but they do. and so she loses so much of the progress that she had previously made.

She also stops using the toilet instead, she's holding in her bowel movements.

Psychologists suggest that this is a way of her exerting control over her own body at a time when she has very little or almost no control.

But come on, Adam. I guarantee there must have been a time when she was punished for wetting herself and so was now afraid to do so.

Mm-hmm.

[01:10:20] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:10:21] Kyle Risi: And the sad thing is when she is eventually placed with a better family, it is just too late. The damage has already been done.

And so while I accept that the research team were testing too much, Jeannie was still flourishing in that environment far more than she did in a poorly vetted care system that failed to equip these families with the tools that they needed to properly care for her.

So I'm really torn.

Because she should have been put into a position where she could get all the nurturing that she needed without the testing. That would've been ideal.

But the reality is if she's not been tested on, she's in a welfare system that is just not equipped for her.

[01:10:55] Adam Cox: I think that's it.

Like it's such a rare case and that testing is obviously pushing her.

Mm-hmm.

And she is learning, but she just needed a home to go to. And whether that should have been Jean, I dunno if she was doing the wrong thing or not, but it seemed like that was a fair balance at that moment in time.

[01:11:13] Kyle Risi: Exactly.

Yeah. I'm not sure what to make of the allegations against Jean.

I dunno if that was fiction or it was just like a way to take her out of her control.

[01:11:22] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:11:22] Kyle Risi: If she did say, Jeanie is gonna make me incredibly rich, that is such a shame.

But even in spite of that, even if that was the case, I still think that Jean would've still cared for her better because she would've been in one stable family. She would've been with an a special education teacher that was proven to be making massive strides.

[01:11:41] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like it feel like she would've been better off. Yeah.

[01:11:45] Kyle Risi: It's better the devil, you know?

[01:11:46] Adam Cox: I think so even if she's with Irene and yet she's still going to these, I don't know, testing or medical centre, whatever it was.

Maybe there could have been hybrid there, but if they pull the funding.

I can understand it. Yeah. And she's not a three-year-old that, that's gonna grow up into a functioning adult. Mm-hmm. Going around these foster homes. Completely different case.

[01:12:07] Kyle Risi: And so Adam, by the end of the 1970s, the experiment is basically over with a foster system completely failing her genie is eventually placed into an institution in California.

Like I mentioned, some researchers still try to keep in touch with her. They check on her time to time, especially people like Susan Curtis, like they seem to be really close, but because of the lawsuit, even she's eventually banned from contacting her altogether.

And that is so sad because some of these people actually became her friends, right? Like yeah, they were caregivers and they were kept passionate about it, but they were also her friends.

And honestly, Adam, we don't really know much about what happens to Jeanie after this.

Some of the people who had been close to us say that the last time they saw her was at her 29th birthday party.

And even then the regression was apparent.

She didn't speak much anymore. She avoided or eye contact whenever she could.

Yes, she's somewhere that is taking care of her, but they're not helping her thrive. And that's the biggest shame.

[01:13:03] Adam Cox: They're just feeding her, putting her to bed, sticking her in front of a TV probably.

[01:13:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah. the problem is, is we know that with the right nurturing, she has the absolute capacity to absolutely thrive.

Mm-hmm. And now they're just treating her as like, well, she just needs to be cared for. Bum wiped, fed, go to bed, have a bath. It's awful.

The last thing we do know is that as of the year 2000, she's living in an adult care facility.

We don't know if she's still alive today. If she is, she'll be around about 70 years old.

Adam Asked for her brother. He did give an interview in 2008 where he talks about the shame that he's had to carry with him for not doing something to help Jeanie.

And I say, fair, I understand that the situation is challenging, but still, you probably should have done something.

[01:13:51] Adam Cox: You had a chance to do something, right?

[01:13:54] Kyle Risi: You did enough to save yourself. You could have done something to save your sister. Anything.

Just tell someone.

[01:14:01] Adam Cox: Yeah,

it's almost like she's been given. This sentence by her father saying that she was mentally ill and that's how she's now been brought up and the people are just gone. Yeah. Look, she is.

[01:14:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. There is some truth in saying like, There is a time window where you need to be introduced to the world.

[01:14:20] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:20] Kyle Risi: Right. And if you miss that window, it can be extraordinarily difficult. And with her, she could have potentially recovered to what degree? I'm not sure.

[01:14:29] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:29] Kyle Risi: But she was clearly damaged by not, being allowed to flourish, not being nurtured, not being held, not seeing things when she was on those moments of ears.

[01:14:36] Adam Cox: Not being taught or any Yeah. Yeah. I just, How sad.

[01:14:40] Kyle Risi: But John also talks about how guilty he felt for never visiting her after she was rescued. Apparently he only visited her once.

[01:14:47] Adam Cox: Yeah. Like how much did you care then?

[01:14:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly.

He does eventually die in the year 2011.

Irene, she dies in 2003. She's 87 years old at the time. And Adam Jeanie's story poses this question.

What does it actually mean to save someone?

Because yes, she was rescued from horrific, childhood neglect, abuse and trauma. But rescue should have been the beginning of her recovery, not the end of someone else's responsibility.

Getting her out of that room saved her from Clark, but did it save her from being mishandled, studied, moved around, failed, and then eventually forgotten?

Because that's essentially her story. And I think that is the lesson. Her story leaves behind saving someone is not just opening the door.

It is what you do after she stepped through.

And I don't think that was handled very well. But also I have a massive problem with Jeanie's story as it is more commonly known to the world.

It is a story that is told through this cold clinical lens in the pages of academic papers. It's been recounted in lecture halls, psychology classrooms, and textbooks. People have written literal dissertations on her.

It's not about Jeanie, it's about language and childhood development that's not about Jeanie. Jeanie is just merely a reference point, and I think that's awful.

Of course that matters. But with every lecture, every debate, every academic discussion, what gets less emphasis is that this was a little girl who was abused, neglected, and failed by the system that was supposed to protect her.

Where is it that that paper.

[01:16:22] Adam Cox: Yeah. Rather than this study or experiment or whatever it is. Do you think it would be different now? Because this was what, in the sixties and seventies?

And I feel child welfare was a bit different back then. Do you think she would've got better treatment now? If this was in the news this week?

And the next steps, what do you think would've happened?

[01:16:45] Kyle Risi: I think we know a lot more, but also remember during her time, after she was rescued was during the seventies.

And from the Satanic panic episode, we know that fueled the Satanic panic was this overemphasis on protecting children.

So she was rescued at a time when that was like any child in danger, even if you suspect, let us know. But I think we just didn't understand how to then handle it and treat it like we're still learning about psychology and childhood development and things like that.

But to answer your question more directly, I think it would've been a lot better today.

But still with funding being cut and limitations and all these types of things, I don't know if it would've been better.

[01:17:21] Adam Cox: Yeah.

Would it have turned out any different? At a certain point, I do. I'd like to think that she would've had perhaps more of a sort of family or home to be in. Of course. No doubt that there would be studies to try and also get her to develop. But yeah. Have we learned our lesson? I'd like to think so.

[01:17:39] Kyle Risi: I hope so. Because what seems to be devoid from her story back in the seventies is a lack of compassion. But also from her story, where are the lessons that we can extract from a story that tell us something about the depravity of human nature, but also the compassion of human nature as well.

But by far, the biggest thing missing from a story, and it's not because it's not been documented, it's because Adam, it was never allowed to happen.

And that is the survival aspect of a story.

Because the story was supposed to end with Jeannie overcoming all the odds, flourishing in the face of a diversity, and coming out on the other side as hopefully an inspirational figure.

Someone that we can go, fuck me, look what's happened to this little girl. And look what humanity has done to rehabilitate this girl. And that never happened.

But the way that her case is handled with the pursuit of knowledge being placed over a wellbeing meant that her survival story was never even given a chance.

[01:18:30] Adam Cox: Yeah. It feels like she was just being in limbo almost ever since. Yeah.

[01:18:35] Kyle Risi: She's trapped in what's happened to her, basically, like the impact of all that abuse and neglect means that she wasn't able to break out of what she'd taught herself.

[01:18:46] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:18:46] Kyle Risi: It's wild.

But anyway, Adam, that is the story of Jeannie Wiley.

[01:18:51] Adam Cox: Yeah. It is a really sad story. I like, I think I was familiar with it, but didn't really know the details. And like you say, you just wish there was a happy ending and it's actually really, Harrowing to know that that didn't really happen.

[01:19:04] Kyle Risi: she deserved a happy ending.

More and more I am surfing Reddit. Especially the, today I learned subreddit maybe it's one of our kind of freaks, but we'll do an episode and then I'll be on today. I learned. And there'll be like a, today I learned about the episode that we've done, like within the few days that we've been released. I'm wondering if there are, are freaks out there posting, posting our stories?

[01:19:23] Adam Cox: Some Reddit fiends.

[01:19:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah, Reddit fiends.

But this is where I picked this up. Someone posted a little, uh, TIL about Jeanie. I was like, I remember this girl. She's the girl who was having a good time in the backseat. I'm gonna do an episode of her and then I'm gonna watch the movie.

[01:19:38] Adam Cox: Well told.

[01:19:39] Kyle Risi: Thank you.

[01:19:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:19:40] Kyle Risi: Do you fancy, uh, maybe doing some shoutouts for this week?

[01:19:43] Adam Cox: Let's

[01:19:43] Kyle Risi: do it. Maybe end on a, on a lighter note.

Guys, you should know the drill by now.

The Compendium is not just a podcast, it is also a legally regulated place of work. Who is hiring?

So guys, head over to the Comp Companion Podcast. Click the jobs tab in the footer. Pick your favourite role, fill out your application form, and we will read the best one

[01:20:03] Adam Cox: all you have to do is tell us all about your position. What do you do? What are your duties? What instance have you had to deal with? What is life like at the circus for you?

[01:20:12] Kyle Risi: Yes, absolutely.

And Adam, our standout performance review comes from. Sarah Roberts, who is our top hat security analyst.

Sarah protects executive hats from theft, sabotage, and unexplained dimension hopping. She oversees the secure hat vault and files incident reports when a top hat vanishes mid bow, especially if it returns smelling like smoke and arrogance.

Do you fancy reading out Sarah's day-to-day responsibilities?

[01:20:43] Adam Cox: Of course.

So as the Compendiums top hat security analyst, she runs a strict daily hat count. The budget currently only allows Kyle to own two hats, but nevertheless, it's important work.

If anything, having only two hats makes the pressure worse. There's absolutely nowhere for incompetence to hide.

Her responsibilities include checking that both hats are safely locked inside the secure hat vault.

Carrying out rigorous inspections for signs of tampering. Feather interference, or possible assassination attempts. What?

[01:21:15] Kyle Risi: Oh, really?

[01:21:16] Adam Cox: Relations between Kyle and the monkeys have been tense lately. They have, and I refuse to be caught off guard by a politically motivated hat theft, those pesky monkeys.

[01:21:26] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's it.

[01:21:27] Adam Cox: I also carry out regular cleaning of all top hats, which is something I sometimes feel goes unappreciated.

Yeah. Kyle, why are you not appreciating this? You've got two hats. And they're always clean.

[01:21:38] Kyle Risi: Well, that's good. She doesn't have to clean much, does she?

[01:21:40] Adam Cox: People notice where a hat vanishes into another dimension, but nobody says thank you when it comes back lint free.

[01:21:47] Kyle Risi: Oh, good.

[01:21:47] Adam Cox: She's well suited to this role because she used to work the cloakroom at a B-D-S-M club. Wow. That was, you have seen something.

[01:21:56] Kyle Risi: That took a turn.

[01:21:57] Adam Cox: So she knows how quickly formal wear can turn dingy, sticky, or legally complicated, especially after working with Kyle for just two weeks.

[01:22:06] Kyle Risi: Two weeks

[01:22:08] Adam Cox: So, in terms of major incidents, she says at her last job in a B-D-S-M dungeon called spanking circumstance, a guest's top hat went missing for 43 minutes and returned damp, warm and smelling faintly of sausages.

[01:22:24] Kyle Risi: Oh, no.

[01:22:25] Adam Cox: She strongly suspected it had been used as a torture prop, and we know the guest would not be pleased.

Within four minutes, she restored the hat to its former glory using only steam discretion and a level of professionalism I am still not emotionally ready to discuss.

[01:22:43] Kyle Risi: I'm wanting to know how she got the smell of sausages out.

[01:22:45] Adam Cox: I mean, in four minutes. That is, that's,

[01:22:47] Kyle Risi: yeah.

[01:22:47] Adam Cox: That's working. Miracles.

[01:22:48] Kyle Risi: Is that what she doesn't wanna discuss? I think so. Is the removal of the sausages smell?

[01:22:52] Adam Cox: How did she do it? She will not expand any further.

[01:22:56] Kyle Risi: There you go.

[01:22:56] Adam Cox: And, this does prove that she's the best person for the job.

[01:22:59] Kyle Risi: Oh, good. Yes.

[01:23:01] Adam Cox: In terms of her KPIs, she would describe herself as alert, practical, and only slightly suspicious of magicians. She can spot a tampered hat, a fake feather, and a man pretending he came in wearing that from across the room.

Her only weakness is that as her experience in this field has grown, she's developed a strong aversion to having her stomach pumbed less.

Set about that the better.

[01:23:24] Kyle Risi: That's how she got out the sausage, the sausage smell.

[01:23:28] Adam Cox: Very good. Well done Sarah.

[01:23:29] Kyle Risi: Guys. So if you wanna be featured on a future episode, then remember, head over to the compendium podcast.com, click jobs in the footer and send in your application. We'll read the best one on a future episode,

[01:23:42] Adam Cox: right? Then shall we do the outro?

[01:23:44] Kyle Risi: Let's do the outro.

And guys, so that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

[01:23:52] Adam Cox: If today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then please do us a favour and follow us on your favourite podcast app.

It truly makes a world of difference and helps more people discover the show.

[01:24:02] Kyle Risi: And for our dedicated freaks out there, don't forget, the next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon. And as always, it's completely free to access.

[01:24:09] Adam Cox: And if you want even more, then join our certified freaks tier to unlock the entire archive. Get to delve into exclusive content and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.

[01:24:19] Kyle Risi: Oh, this is where we could put in the, the key chains jangling.

' cause yous get a key chain.

[01:24:23] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:24:24] Kyle Risi: Dang. Dangle. Dangle, dangle.

We drop new episodes every Tuesday. And until then, remember opening a door is not the same as saving the person behind it.

See you next time.

[01:24:34] Adam Cox: See you.