The girl spent 10 years locked in a room (8 photos + 1 video)

How easy it is to break a child, turning his life into an isolating hell. A child who has never heard words of love, felt gentle touches or communicated with anyone. Is it possible to restore the psyche after this?





In the family of Clark and Irene Wiley, Susan was the fourth child, but only the second to survive. The girl was born in 1957 and her only health problem was hip dysplasia. Doctors said that as Susan grew up, it would be difficult for her to walk straight. In a loving family, such a child would immediately be surrounded by care, attention, special exercises and the watchful supervision of doctors. But the little girl was unlucky.

Irene was practically blind and completely dependent on Clark, who was not distinguished by his gentle nature. The head of the family was aggressive and overly sensitive to various sounds. So much so that it was not allowed to turn on the TV or radio at home.

The family lived alone, did not communicate with neighbors, rarely left the house, and Clark, taking advantage of the fact that his wife was unable to fight back, periodically beat Irene so badly that she ended up in the hospital. Clark did not want children, but, firstly, contraception was not as diverse as it is now, and secondly, there are doubts that Clark even cared about this at all, preferring to blame this issue of “women’s problems” on Irene.



In the Wiley family, five years after the wedding, the first girl was born, who lived only 10 weeks. It was after her appearance that Clark stopped putting up with the noise and once again, when the baby started crying, he simply took her to the garage for the whole night. This led to hypothermia and pneumonia. The child died.

A few years later, the couple had a son, who lived for several months. He died, choking on his mucus, and his parents did not have time to help him clear his throat.

The third child was taken by the great-grandmother and this saved his life. A few years later, the woman was in a car accident and died. The boy was forced to return to his parents, but he was already strong enough and grown enough to survive with them.

But Susan came in fourth. Her family called her Jeanie.



Irene with Susan and eldest son (early 60s)

Due to problems with her legs, Susan began to crawl and walk quite late. Because of this, Clark called the girl mentally retarded and stopped paying attention to her, did not talk to his daughter and forbade his eldest son and wife to approach her without a special reason.

From the age of two, Susan's father decided that such a child would only disgrace their family and should be hidden from everyone. To prevent her from soiling her diapers, her father simply tied Susan to the potty and locked her in the room. Irene was allowed to feed her only once a day. The girl did not learn to chew on her own, and at night she was put in a sleeping bag, after which she was put in a cradle and tied to it with a wire.



In Susan's "prison" that this separate room became, the lights were never turned on and it was almost always dark. All she had was a potty, curtains, two raincoats, forgotten on hooks on the wall. The window was almost always closed and Susan could only see a small piece of the sky and a corner of the house. When Clark was in a friendly mood (which was extremely rare), he allowed his daughter to play a little with skeins of thread, food containers, and old magazines. But this cannot be compared with those cases when as soon as Susan made even the slightest sound, her father began to beat her with a wooden cutting board until she could no longer cry or scream. Susan never learned to talk. But she got the hang of existing absolutely silently and making sure that no one paid attention to her at all.

It was forbidden for anyone to talk about Susan. The eldest son and mother, afraid of Clark, remained silent and no one knew that there was not one child in the family, but two. Not relatives, not teachers at school, not neighbors.

It was only by chance that social services learned of Susan’s existence. Irene finally plucked up courage and left the house without Clark’s knowledge, taking her daughter with her (the son was already an adult and by that time had hurried to get out of his father’s house). The woman arrived at her mother's house and a few weeks later went to the local office to apply for disability benefits.

She took her daughter with her and, not understanding the doors due to poor eyesight, ended up in the social services department. Towards her underThe employee came in and when she saw the girl’s condition she was horrified. The police were called immediately.



Clark and eldest son

At the age of 13, Susan weighed 27 kg, walked with difficulty, stumbled and could not utter a word. Police immediately went to Wiley's house. Charges were brought against the couple.

The girl was immediately sent to the hospital: due to the terrible diet and complete isolation, her muscles were almost completely atrophied, she could not chew and even swallowed with difficulty. Since Susan was not taught how to use the toilet, she, already in her teens, went under her own steam. And, worst of all, Susan often touched herself in intimate places, which suggests that the father most likely sexually abused his own daughter. The unconscious desire for self-satisfaction in such children usually indicates sexualized violence in the family.

The girl's intelligence was equal to that of a one-year-old child, despite the fact that her brain was fully developed. It was all about isolation and extreme cruelty.



The scientific community became interested in Susan. Psychologists hoped, with the help of the girl, to study in more detail the influence of the environment and surroundings on the child’s psyche. A number of specialists hoped that they would be able to socialize Susan so that she would become a full-fledged member of society.

And everything went very well at first: the girl began to use the toilet, learned to dress in simple clothes, learned the names of the objects with which she most often interacted. Susan began to speak, but in separate words: "Father beats with a hand. Big stick. Genie cry. Don't spit. Father. Beat face - spit. Father beats with a big stick. Father is angry. Father beats Jeanie with a big stick." But this was already colossal progress for a teenager who was no different from a one-year-old baby in terms of development.



During rehabilitation

Psychologist Jean Butler became Susan's first foster mother. She started working with her while the girl was in the hospital and even took her home for a while when the baby was suspected of having mumps. Jean treated Susan very well, took care of her, helped her, although she did not hide the fact that at first she did this largely out of research interest. But later Butler wanted to get custody of her and was refused.

Second foster family. There, Susan mastered the difficult science of expressing emotions: joy, smiling, dissatisfaction, stamping her feet. Here Susan learned to draw.

It is unknown what heights Susan would have reached if her own mother had not had the desire to get her daughter back. And everything that psychologists achieved immediately rolled back. Quite soon, Irene realized that being disabled herself, she couldn’t take care of her difficult daughter and returned her to social services. Susan began to move from one foster family to another. There were six of them in total.

In some of these families, she was again subjected to physical violence, all the experience gained from studying with psychologists began to disappear, and Susan simply became withdrawn. In one of the families, she was beaten so badly that the girl vomited. Susan decided that she would not open her mouth at all, would eat as little as possible, and would also stop talking. Everything came down to primitive sign language, and the psychologists who worked with her simply lost contact with the girl.



Susan Wiley was moved from one family to another. In 2016, it became known that she was alive and was in a psychiatric clinic. But no further details were provided to the public.

Mother Irene died in 2003.

Susan's brother John grew up to become a house painter, but died of diabetes in 2011. In an interview, he said: “My house was like a concentration camp. I didn’t know what a normal life was.”

Clark Wiley did not wait for trial. He committed suicide at home, leaving a snotty note: “The world will never understand.”

Yes, where can the world understand why the father of the family simply destroyed the life of an innocent child, leaving him alone with himself, in the dark, from hand to mouth, for many years.

And a big question for social services, who simply transferred her back and forth, without even bothering to check the families where Susan Wiley lived.