Incredibly sad, disturbing article about a so-called feral child (though actually she was neglected indoors, not left to die in the woods). Long ago, when I was in grad school, I remember being fascinated by the idea of feral children. I had some lengthy connection in my mind that I never wrote up, connecting the Wild Child of Aveyron, who was named Victor, with Victor Frankenstein: something to do with the nature of humanness, and the tabula rasa, and Victor as such a celebrated test case. I think the author of Not Even Wrong has also written about Victor WRT autism. And a long time ago, before I had Primera or had even met the spousal unit, I read the book on Genie by Russ Rymer. One of those odd foreshadowings (but then, I've been interested in a million different things, and out of those million different things, many of them will connect, tangentially or otherwise, to the people I love most).

Came across the article via AutismVox (see links on the side). Someone in the comments there noted a cycle of abuse WRT disability. We don't find out enough about the birth mother's own upbringing to make that call, I don't think, but it's hard to read about a parent like that, who clearly is so incredibly limited and never seems to have been identified by the system, nor were her other two children, at least one of whom also seems to have developmental disabilities. And the thing is, people did call the county about this family. And why, if someone from CPS went out to visit, didn't this trigger Child Find, since she was over six? Never mind whether the child should be removed: why didn't someone question where she went to school, where she should have been (esp. during Jan. or Feb., when one of the earlier calls came), or why Early Intervention or the school system had never been contacted, when this was a child of age who was nonverbal and not potty trained? Wouldn't the child's placement be the kind of thing CPS should be asking about (Deb, if you're reading, is that true?)?

And I always get a bit of a chill reading about "environmental autism," even though I believe it can happen, because it gets uncomfortably close to our man Bruno Bettelheim. And this isn't to say that I feel even academic sympathy for the mother, who more or less repelled me in what I saw of her interview, just that this was someone who was manifestly incapable who fell through the cracks (as the article notes, her focus is mostly on herself and what's happened to her--it's very possible she doesn't have a cause and effect chip that works very well; responsibility seems to be more of a cognitive ability than I'd realized pre-kids. She spends a lot of time denying charges for which the series provides photographic evidence). Even when people tried to do the right thing and call.