It's an Autumn day in California.
And an almost blind mother arrives at a welfare office with her daughter in tow (in tow meaning: accompanying alongside or under one's supervision)
Immediately, the staff says that there's something wrong.
Although she appears a little older than a toddler
The girl is actually 13 years old.
Suspecting neglect, they notified the police any strange and tragic tale of
Ginny Wiley begins to unfold
Ginny first came to authorities attention in November 1970
when her mother Irene
walked into a social services building
in California's Temple City
Irene had been regularly beaten by Ginny's father, Clarke
and was suffering from a degenerative eye condition
as well as cataracts, a combination that left her barely able to see
Having finally had the courage to walk out on Clarke
Irene had taken Ginny and fled to her parents home in Monterey Park, California.
From there she made the trip to Temple City
in order to claim disability benefits.
However, her poor eyesight led her to enter the wrong facility, by mistake
Having wandered into the office of Social Services
Irene and Ginny were greeted by a worker who instantly
spotted, something was wrong.
Imagining Ginny to be around 6 years old,
she was shocked to discover that the girl was in fact, a teenager
After questioning Irene
the staff decided to contact police
Both Irene and Clarke were dually arrested
and Ginny was moved to the children's hospital in Los Angeles.
There, doctors soon realised they were dealing with one of the most
extreme cases of neglect that the United States
had ever seen.
According to James Kent, the physician who examined Ginny at the hospital,
the girls prognosis was bleak.
Suffering from extreme malnutrition,
Ginny weighed less than 60 pounds
and stood at just 4 and a half feet tall.
More over she had developed few gross motor skills, and struggled to walk.
On top of this, Ginny struggled to focus on items
farther than 10 feet from her
and struggled with swallowing food.
She would also spit and salivate
where ever she went and was totally incontinent.
Most intriguingly however, was at 13 years of age,
Ginny, could not speak
In fact, Ginny was soon discovered to be almost totally
incapable of making any sound at all
According to some accounts, she couldn't shed tears
opting instead to move chairs and
other objects when she wished to make a noise.
Experts concluded that Ginny was not physiologically
or selectively mute, so what had happened
to the teenage girl.