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Thank you Judges. Ok folks now for our six and final speaker for the evening and that speaker is Lori Trachta. [clapping]
When you hear the phrase ape men or wild child what do you think of? Most of us would probably think of these fictional characters from movies such
Tarzan and The Jungle Book which are about children that are raised in the wild. Would you ever consider child like this actually existing.
Here are ferel children, and this is Genie and that's Selena. Ferel children help us learn more about human development and I have been studying them
for the past two years. In order to get a better understanding let me explain what a ferel child is and two different cases of ferel children.
According to the Gala Encyclopedia of Childhood and Adolescence the term ferel means undomesticated or wild. So ferel children are children
who are raised without any direct human contact or in isolation. There are a number of different reasons for ferel children
and some of them are: they can be confided by people mainly the parents in isolation, or they can be abandoned at birth due to impairments that
they were born with, or they can also experience extreme trauma or child abuse which caused them to run away.
Some different forms of ferel children are that they can be raised by animals or isolation and the affects that this have on children are that they can lack in
social skills or in language. This is believed to be because at a young age we experience a time called the critical period during this time we are able
to learn language very easily. But once this time is over it becomes very difficult to do so. Now that you have a better understanding of what a
ferel child is I'm going to explain a ferel child that was raised by animals. Her name is Selena Mineola she was born November of 1983 in the Ukraine.
Her parents were addicted to drugs and at the age of three they exiled her from the house. She then sought shelter in a near by dog kennel,
which you can see here. She lived there for a few years with the dogs, at the age of eight a neighbor reported her to the local services. When they
came to rescue her it was very difficult because the dogs actually saw her as part of their family. So whenever they would try they would attack the
people, so they would have to use bait in order to save her. When they did rescue her it was obvious that she wasn't a typical child.
She would bark and walk on all fours. She also had an acute sense of smell, sight and hearing, but she lacked self awareness.
They did an experiment where they would show her a mirror and in the she would see her own reflection, but wouldn't recognize her own self instead she saw it
as another person. According to Anna Colena director of the Odyssey Institute recalls, she was more like a little dog than a human child. She
couldn't speak or could hardly speak. In fact she didn't seem to think it was necessary to speak at all. She now lives in Bareboy Clinic in Odessa.
She was actually able to learn which is a great feat for a ferel child cause most of them can not do this. This is because though she was raised by dogs, she lived in a neighborhood so she heard the language
and later she was able to connect meaning to the words. A recent cognitive test showed that though she was 22 she only has the ability of a five year old.
The next case that I'm going to introduce to you is about a ferel child who is raised in isolation. Her name is Genie. Genie spent the first 13 years of her
life being kept in prison in her own house. She was kept in her room which only had a crib and a potty chair which she was chained to.
Her father was extremely abusive and whenever he would come in to feed her he would only respond to her with growls and barks and if she ever tried to talk
back to him, he would beat her with a paddle. At the age of 13 her mother left her father and went to seek help at social services.
The social worker there actually thought she was six years old when in actuality she was 13. When she found out this information it was obvious that this
child had been sincerely neglected. According to the Temple City Detective, Sergeant Frank Leely recalls, "I already knew that the child was 13 and a half years
old. I took one look at her and she wasn't much bigger than my daughter who just turned 7. I had a really hard time convincing that she was the age she
was meant to be. The child had obviously been sincerely neglected." When they did save her they realized that not only was the size of her
has been lacked because of the way she was treated but she also could not walk properly. She had more of a bunny hop, where she would put both of her
hands in front of her and would hop along with her legs. She also could communicate, she would only spit, sniff and crawl. She was mostly
silent only being able to speak words such as "No more," or "Stop it." After being rescued she spent many years in children's hospitals.
She was able to learn 20 words and phrases but this wasn't enough to be able to communicate fluently. So they talk her sign language.
She now lives in a private faculty for mentally under developed adults. To summarize ferel children were raised without any direct human contact
or in isolation. The effect this has on them are that they lack social skills and human language and today I've shared with you
the different cases of Selena and Genie. If you'd like learn more about ferel children and other cases you can visit www.extraordinarychildren.com. I hope that
you now have a better understanding of the reality of ferel children. Thank you. [clapping]
One more round of applause for all our speakers. [clapping] I'd like to take a five to six minute break,
you can have some refreshments you can congratulate your friends and family members and we'll get back with the results.
So just give us five or six minutes to tally our results.