Mockingbird Don't Sing

A film by Harry Bromley-Davenport

On 4 November 1970 on the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite reported on the horrific story of a 13-year-old girl discovered in the small Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia who was still in diapers, barely able to walk and unable to speak. She had been kept in severe isolation by her parents with virtually no human contact for more than ten years. Confined to her bedroom, tied to her potty-chair by day, and at night restrained in an over-sized crib with a cover of metal screening, she was often forgotten and left alone to fend for herself. As Cronkite noted, it was one of the worst cases of child abuse ever to surface.

The tragic story of Genie (named Katie in the film) is the subject of this drama made in 2001. The director worked closely with Dr Susan Curtiss (Sandra Tannen in the film) now a linguistics professor at UCLA, who as a graduate student interested in language acquisition had been present from the early stages of Genie's rescue, starting a few months after she arrived at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. Genie immediately won the hearts of all the doctors and scientists involved in her case.

The film begins with the early years of Katie's life of isolation, fear and abuse at the hands of her unstable and domineering father. Her mother, Louise, sensing that her husband is now potentially homicidal, leaves the house taking her daughter with her. Almost blind from cataracts, Louise is seeking medical aid treatment, but unwittingly enters a social services agency where Katie's physical condition immediately alerts the authorities' attention and she is taken into care at Children's Hospital. There she becomes the focus of observation and research by scientists and doctors who are eager to discover if Katie has a normal learning capacity and whether it is possible for her to recover completely from years of deprivation. For them, Katie is the perfect opportunity to test the Criticial Period Hypothesis which contends that the ability to acquire language is limited to the years before puberty, after which, as a result of neurological changes in the brain, the ability is lost.

In her new environment Katie makes rapid progress, but whilst her vocabulary grows she is still unable to string words together into meaningful, grammatical sentences. Scans indicate she may in fact be mentally retarded, either from birth or as a result of injury, chronic malnutrition or lack of mental stimulation. But over the following years Katie demonstrates a remarkable ability to develop non-verbal communication skills – illustrating complex ideas and even feelings in quick sketches, and by learning to use sign language. Her mental development however eventually levels out to a point from which she does not progress further.

Throughout the years of research, Katie's life is far from stable and we see how she becomes the victim in a tug-of-war between those who want to help her, study her, and provide her with a normal home environment. Funding for the research project is eventually withdrawn and Katie is passed around between her mother, the hospital, and several inappropriate fostering placements where she suffers further abuse. The only person who truly cares for her wellbeing and who can offer Katie a stable and loving home is Sandra Tannen but Katie's mother forbids it, threatening legal action against all those involved in her daughter's case. Katie begins to regress, deteriorating both physically and mentally and her mother places her in a home for retarded adults where it is believed she has remained for the rest of her life.

Genie's story is a very poignant one. Perhaps if therapy had been the priority over research then things may have turned out differently. She was a victim not only of abuse at the hands of her father but subsequently of the limitations of society's mechanisms for dealing with abused children. The film sensitively and accurately documents the system's initial success yet ultimate failure to address the needs of a very special child.