On a cold winter day in 1938, a soc

On a cold winter day in 1938, a social worker walked anxiously to the door of a rural Pennsylvania
farmhouse. Investigating a case of possible child abuse the social worker soon discovered a five-
year-old girl hidden in a second-floor storage room. The child whose name Anna, was wedged into
on old chair with her arms tied above her head so that she could not move. She was dressed in
fifthly garments, and her arms and legs -- looking like matchsticks – were so frail that she could
not use them.
Anna’s situation can only be described as tragic, She was born in 1932 to an unmarried
and mentally impaired woman of twenty-six who lived with her father. Enraged by his daughter’s
“illegitimate” motherhood, the grandfather did not even want the child in his house. Anna
therefore spent her first six months in various institutions. But her mother was unable to pay
for such care, so Anna returned to the hostile home of her grandfather.
At this point, her ordeal intensified, to lessen the grandfather’s anger, Ann’s mother
moved the child to the attic room, where she received little attention and just enough food to
keep her alive. There she stayed – day after day, month after month, with essentially no human
contact – for five long years.
Upon learning of the discovery of Anna, sociologist Kingsley Davis (1940) traveled to see
the child. He found her at a country home, where local authorities had taken her. Davis was
appalled by Anna’s condition. She was emaciated and feeble. Unable to laugh, smile, speak, or
even show anger, she was completely unresponsive, as if alone in an empty world.