This is a documentary about a young girl named Genie who is a feral child. She spent the first 13 years of her life tied to a potty chair. She doesn’t know how to walk or speak and makes very little, to no noise, at all. The doctors working on her case deduced that Genie was beat any time she made any noise at all and therefore she doesn’t speak. When doctors first began to examine Genie, they noticed that when she did learn to walk, she had a type of “bunny” walk which prevented her from walking normally. Social workers said, “She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation in American History.” Although Genie was in fact 13, she looked like she was around the age of six or seven.
This documentary takes the audience through the struggles Genie went through as a young child and through her years spent trying to learn how to speak and live a normal life. Another part of this documentary that gets looked at is the experiences of another feral child called Victor of Aveyron. Victor grew up in France and was discovered at the age of 12. He was a young boy that grew up living in the woods and lived like and animal. He, like Genie, didn’t know how to speak and he acted as if he were an animal. This is a great documentary to watch because it exposes the audience to the child abuse Genie suffered and Victor and Genie’s struggle to live a normal life.
Below is a picture of Genie’s “bunny walk”
Below is a link to the first part of the documentary on youtube and this is also where the other parts can be found as well:
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