Who is Genie the wild child?

Search: Genie the wild child

Why: Allison Harvard / Creepy Chan is on "America's Next Top Model" again this season for the All-Stars showdown. Rich at fourfour just loves her.

On her KnowYourMeme page,

Origin

Pictures of this very big-eyed person started popping up on 4Chan in late 2005. The photos there feature a range of looks, usually landing somewhere between Fiona Apple in the video for Criminal, to Genie the wild child.

Well, I don't know who that is.

Answer: She is Susan Wiley, a former feral child! Points of note:

• Her dad Clark was a lunatic who sort of killed 1 or more of her older siblings.
• She was born in April 1957 in Arcadia, CA.
• For the first 13 years of her life, she spent most days locked in her dark bedroom strapped to a potty chair:

Clark had been told something along the lines that Susan was perhaps slightly retarded and might develop slowly and developed a strange compulsion that she must be "protected" from the outside world. Clark's idea of protection was to keep Susan shut in her bedroom most or all of every day, and tied into a straitjacket at night. She was also sometimes or often tied to a potty-chair and left that way for hours, all day, or even perhaps overnight at times.

Susan still wore diapers, couldn't talk, and was fed a substandard diet which stunted her growth. Her unusual diet consisted of "warm cereal, honey, milk and an occassional egg." When found, she weighed 59 pounds and was the size of a 7-8 year old. From years of confinement, her muscles had not developed normally, which caused her to walk in a peculiar way.

• In 1970, when Genie was 13, her mother Irene took her out of the house and fled, but Social Services spotted the sickly-looking girl and took her in as a ward of the state. (Shortly after, Clark committed suicide by gunshot.) She had a vocabulary of about 20 words / phrases, mostly negative ("stop it," "no more"), and she also sniffed and spat a lot.

• She was put into therapy and eventually learned to say more things, trust adults, dress herself, and even smile. She was also a subject of fascination and research for many scientists, some of whom even took her into their homes as a foster child.

• Eventually, the National Institute of Mental Health - who was funding research on her - noted that she wasn't producing much scientific data, so they cut funding. She was put with several new foster families, many of which abused her and caused her to regress.

Source: Wikipedia, County Historian, Genie the Wild Child Tumblr

The More You Know: Today, Genie is 54 and lives in an adult foster care home in Southern California. This picture (with Irene) is from 1989:

(Note: When I found that picture, I was like, "Oh, that's pretty recent, just about 10 years ago." And a few hours later, I was all, "Holy shit, 1989 was 22 years ago." So, sorry I couldn't find anything newer. Sorry.)