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A 14-year-girl from West Bloomfield (Michigan) has accused her father of raping her repeatedly while her mother did not intervene, today’s Detroit Free Press reports. The girl, who is autistic, does not speak and communicated about the alleged abuse via a keyboard at school, with an aide supporting her hand. Her 13-year-old brother, who has Asperger Syndrome, has told investigators that “he saw his father showering with his sister and naked with his sister.” The Detroit Free Press notes that the reliability of Facilitated Communication is a key issue in the case. This was reportedly typed by the girl:
“My dad gets me up, bangs me and then we eat breakfast, he puts his hands on my private parts mom knows and doesn’t say anything.:
In additional typed messages, the girl is alleged to have typed that her parents “visited her at night and said they would be taking her to South Africa.” Her father has been charged with first-degree sexual conduct; physical evidence, such as DNA, has not been reported to link the father to the alleged abuse. A registered nurse’s report was cited according to which “the girl’s hymen showed three ‘nonacute tears,” likely signs of sexual assault.” The girl’s mother has been charged with “severe mental and emotional abuse.” The girl is now staying with Rabbi Levy Shemtov, the family’s rabbi, who states that the abuse “‘absolutely did not happen.’”
The end of the Detroit Free Press details more about the girl and cites the school aide who helps to facilitate her typing:
The mental status and abilities of the child, who attends special education classes, are unclear based on the court filings and other sources. Pretrial investigators noted that the girl needs help with her hygiene. The girl can swim and recently completed a 5k race.
She’s been using the facilitator board for three years and an earlier posting by her mother on an autism Web site said the child wrote poetry.
The girl described early morning rapes, assaults in the shower and fondling by her brother, said the school paraprofessional, who added that the girl told her the assaults began at age 6 and that she tried to tell her mother through pointing and pictures, but that her mother did nothing.
The Facilitated Communication Institute, located at Syracuse University, lists a number of studies and sources on the technique and the “question of authorship.” The American Psychological Association‘s Resolution on Facilitated Comunication can be read here. A 1994 article from the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine evaluated children’s disclosures of sexual abuse via Facilitated Communication and, while neither supporting or reputing the technique, concluded that “many children had other evidence of sexual abuse, suggesting that each child’s case should be evaluated without bias.”
Having used FC for many years, I agree with James Todd that “Clever Hans” unconscious subtle cuing is part of the phenomena. I also believe sub vocalizations may possibly have an impact. Automatic writing is something I also have done in partnership with the kids. In that process, I feel we are influencing each other in a meditative dance so to speak. My vocabulary is used but not my normal writing style. The information just flows and is often poetic and/or prosaic. That said,neither “Clever Hans” or automatic writing does not explain the extent of what I have experienced. It is like we are “joining” at a subconscious level. It needs to be studied and I would love to be involved in a double blind study. It needs to be done to advance our understanding of the perceptual reality of these unique individuals, and in turn our own consciousness capabilities. I want to know the answers! That is why I encourage others to look beneath the surface of their own
experiences.
In the meantime, it should never be used to accuse someone of something and certainly not be used in a court of law. I am shocked that it has happened again. My heart goes out to the family.
@Geo,
thank you very for the update. What an ordeal (to put it mildly) the family has been through—-
The Wendrow family has filed a lawsuit against the school, police, DHS and prosecuting attorney’s office just a few days ago. The American Bar Association national website under ethics just a few months ago in an unrelated case described Andrea Dean the Oakland County Assistant Prosecutors conduct as bizarre. And her boss
David Gorcyca on multiple occasions has been investigated by the Attorney Grievance Commission for misconduct.
The Wendrow family in the lawsuit has charged the police were directed in part how to investigate the case. The facilitator the school had trained and utilized as been discredited completely in the information she had provided. The prosecutor has been charged with ignoring and circumventing specific judicial orders and failing to follow standard protocol.
Julian Wendrow, after spending 80 days in jail has been completely exonerated. A national mens support group has been very vocal in how this case was handled.
In retrospect it seems that this case from the first was tainted with ignorance and zealous, even dishonest prosecution. A very loving and tightly knit family was ripped apart and no one is willing to accept responsibility for the erroneous decisions that kept occurring.
Greetings Mr. Andrews.
Or, perhaps I should say, “Hauska tavata!” (which exhausts all the Finnish I know except for a few phrase-book essentials such as “Missä on vessa”).
Yes, indeed, the prosecutor did what is described. The hugging and touching you note resembled the kind of casual affectionate contact that parents and well-liked teachers sometimes have with children. In many other situations it would have gone unnoticed — or at least unremarked. In the courtroom, the actions suggested that the relationship between the prosecutor and child had become too personal. To some, a message was being sent. With the parents only a few steps away, but prevented by the court from being seen by their daughter, the prosecutor and facilitators were signaling to all whose child the girl really was. Even if such intent on the part of the prosecution team was imagined by some the parents’ supporters, the insensitivity of the actions was not. This was not a child temporarily bonding with or being comforted by a neutral, court-appointed caretaker. This was a child being doted over during the two-day hearing by the same prosecutor and same facilitators who were accusing her parents of years of systematic rape. “Impartiality” was not the operative term. The devastating effect of all this on the family was clear, painful to watch, and, if their newly announced lawsuit is any indication, enduring.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080912/NEWS03/809120414/&imw=Y
The qualified immunity protections enjoyed by prosecutors, judges, police, and school officials against charges of professional misconduct and malpractice make such lawsuits difficult to win. However, this was not an ordinary case marred by ordinary errors. In addition to the malpractice issues that arise when credentialled educational professionals devote untold sums of taxpayers’ money to a discredited intervention, there are those amazing videos of the police trying to elicit testimony by lying to the girl’s developmentally disabled brother. Complicating everything further could be the ongoing ethics investigation of the chief prosecutor for improper actions in another, similar false accusations case (fronted, coincidentally, by the very same assistant prosecutor). More information about these things can be found in the links below:
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/NEWS03/80316001
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080316/COL04/803160557
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080822/NEWS03/808220399
Thank you for your interest in this case, which is obviously garnering world-wide attention. It will not only be fascinating to see what happens, but the outcome will speak volumes about the state of our justice system in Michigan.
Jim
“The child greeted the prosecutor with a hug and the prosecutor hugged and touched the child affectionately several times during the proceedings.”
Why the hell was the prosecutor doing this?! If a teacher or a psychologist did that, there’d be charges; so what is going on with this prosecutor? Especially given the nature of the charges levelled at the parents in this case…
1459 days ago
[...] Kristina Chew’s coverage beginning in December 2007 over at AutismVox. Sphere: Related Content « Mad [...]
Dr. Todd,
I apologize for not responding earlier to your comment (I guess I might say, I have been very busy with “work” at my college). I’m very interested in your noting the “psychology of influence” and how it plays or part, or might play a part, in FC and also in any attempts (by a parent; therapist; teacher) to “interpret” and “translate” the communications (verbal and non-verbal) of an autistic child.
And thank you for mentioning Rapid Prompting. I’ve seen the videos and read the guide — a lot to consider.
Thank you very much again.
1520 days ago
[...] in December, a 14-year-old autistic girl from West Bloomfield (Michigan) accused her father of raping her repeatedly while her mother did [...]
Dr. Chew:
Sorry about not getting back sooner to your question about FC articles. It’s been a busy time. The folks at my job are interested in having me do something they call “work.”
Obviously, I think the main issue in FC is facilitator control. We know it happens. We find it literally every time we look for it. We are seeing it right in front of us in Michigan when the facilitator projects her Christian religious metaphors onto this Jewish child. Thus, I am interested in the psychology of influence itself. How do people, who seem otherwise rational, come to believe that they are not influencing the communications–sometimes even after they have been shown, without question, to be doing so? Thus, I really like Daniel Wegner’s work. His article, “Clever Hands: Uncontrolled Intelligence in Facilitated Communication” is literally a new classic.
His other work along the same lines is also excellent–with the added benefit that you can get most of it on the web.
Remember, I am a Skinnerian behaviorist recommending that you read articles by a consciousness researcher. These must be really good. Seriously, they are some of the best empirical analyses of belief in personal control and agency that you will find. In the same vein, the article “Facilitated Communication as an Ideomotor Response” from Psychological Science is quite good–and scary. I think the willingness of people to so quickly assume that there are not controlling the output they so clearly are controlling is key to the problems we see in FC, especially in this case in Michigan.
If we could get B.F. Skinner’s 1934 Atlantic Monthly article, “Has Gertude Stein a Secret,” on the web, I’d have a link to it. Skinner was actually an English Literature major in college, and hoped to be a writer. (It is an inside joke with him that he says he “failed” as a writer after writing than a dozen books, including a novel.) The Gertrude Stein article is really about “automatic writing,” which is writing while being unconscious of the specific content. Automatic writing is a real phenomenon that the hypnosis people are very interested in. Skinner talks about how Stein used this technique in some of her works. Behaviorists are interested in this because complex linguistic behavior occurs without any awareness at all. Technically, they say that the stimulus control of the behavior we call “awareness” is distinct from the stimulus control of the verbal output itself–which is lacking entirely in pure automatic writing. The relevance here is not just the awareness issue, but that we see similarities between the kind of content produce by automatic writing and what we often see in FC, especially the extended pieces and poetry. Essentially, the facilitator is engaging in automatic writing but attributes the output to the person with autism. I think all those “content analyses” of FC that have come out of Finland and Italy in recent years would be much more interesting as analyses of the facilitators’ automatic writing than the communicators’ supposed thoughts.
Of course, I am going to recommend something really obvious. But now it’s available on the web, and should be read by anyone who does behavioral experimentation or interacts with other organisms: Clever Hans (The Horse of Mr. von Osten). This book, published almost 100 years ago, is second to none in showing how behavior can come under the control of movements so small the person doing the influence does not even know he or she is making them. In this case, the horse look like he was intelligent because he stopped responding when he saw the tiniest display of “anticipatory withdrawal” in the person asking the questions. Essentially, the person relaxed a bit when the horse arrived at the right answer. An entire commission was unable to figure this out, and it took Oskar Pfungst to do the work–essentially using what we’d now call “single-blind” and “double-blind” tests–to find the source of control. People really did believe that the horse was showing what the FC people would now call “unexpected literacy.” The morals of the Hans story are (1) that we should never underestimate the sensitivity of another organism to the behavioral cues we are sending and (2) never assume that we can detect cuing just by looking. I really believe anyone who thinks that cueing can’t occur without touching, as they try to make happen Rapid Prompting, needs to read the this book and take in its message. Then, if they have the strength of their convictions that the communication they see is genuine and independent, they should do the double-blind tests that their leaders tell them to avoid.
These are my recommendations. Even if they were not all what you might have expected, I hope they are interesting and helpful.
Jim
One of the saddest parts of this to me is realizing that this girl may have spent a lot of time “learning” a non-functional “communication system”.
What a mess.
@Dr. Chew,
Yes, the Brian Dickerson article. And just wait until you see the police interrogation tape of the brother who has ausperger’s (sp?). I am curious to see if they allow the same school facilitator to facilitate the daughter at the prelim exam in March, whether they will allow the facilitator to hear the questions and whether there will be coaching prior to the examination by the prosecutor. There is still a lot of room available for abuse of process by the prosecutor and, unfortunately the Judge in this case. Let’s hope that the Appellate Judge sees things more clearly. Don’t forget the FC demonstration that took place in Court was set up under the “rules” of the prosecutor and the Judge and the miserably failed to establish that the child could communicate.
@Robin,
Thanks for extending the discussion here—a lot fo disentangle here. Are you referring to Feb. 6 article by Brian Dickerson?—trying to keep things straight here. Thank you—
From the Detroit Free Press (Feb 6) by LL Braisier:
Why is the prosecutor’s office continuing to go forward with the case? That is the million dollar question! There is no reliable evidence to support the allegations. In fact, the only evidence,including the prosecutor’s own expert, contradicts the charges. The only plausible answer is that the prosecutor would have to admit the severe injustice that has been perpetrated against the family. More importantly, why aren’t the Judges putting a stop to this nonsense. Everyone is afraid to take a stand, to be seen as weak or in essence, admitting to a grave mistake. The system is moving far too slowly to serve the best interests of these children and children in general. Not only is the father sitting in jail and the mother on a tether, but the kids remain in foster care – outside of their communities (regardless of the fact that there are families in the district willing to take them) and without any contact with their parents for about 2 months. Not only will this damage the family’s reputation and emotional well-being but it will also destroy any financial stability they had prior to this nonsense. Someone has to speak out, speak now and speak loud. The prosecutorial power and the system is not working and needs to be reviewed and revised.
Not only has the FC been disproven as a reliable form of communication in this instance, there is no other evidence to support the allegations. Please see Brian Dickerson’s article from this week in the Detroit Free Press. The physical exam of the girl clearly does not support the abuse alleged – finally Dickerson points this out.
Other travesty’s include the December 2007 court ordered visitation for the mother with her son that was not implemented until Feb. 8, 2008 – due to red-tape issues that could have easily been resolved by the prosecutor, but were not. There are many more instances that suggest malicious prosecution as well as bad behavior on the part of the DHS workers and the police investigators. Since when, as a society, do we allow the interrogation of a 13 year old child without the child’s guardian or parent present? I could go on and on, but this regresses from the issue of FC addressed in this particular blog.
Dr. Todd,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful responses. What are some good scholarly studies about FC that you would recommend?
Thank you again from Kristina Chew
Cliff:
You are welcome.
Jim
Thank you very much for answering my questions!
Cliff
Cliff:
Thank you for your thoughtful questions. I will try to answer them completely within the limits that court cases sometimes set.
Why put FC on trial? Well, that was essentially the purpose of the special hearing–to have the prosecution put on its demonstration of FC. Obviously, the proceedings would follow the rules of such hearings with examination, cross examination, and so on. As I said, the preliminary hearing has yet to be held. What, if anything, the attorneys do in the interim, I don’t know. The ways of the courtroom are a growing mystery to me.
I think some of your technical questions about FC in the courts can be answered by an article by Brian Gorman, “Facilitated Communication: Rejected in Science, Accepted in Court–A Case Study of the Use of FC Evidence Under Frye and Daubert,” in Behavioral Sciences and the Law (1999, volume 17, pp. 517-541).
Is the defense trying to hold that she isn’t intellectually capable…? Yes, that was the testimony. Very sadly, this girl is severely developmentally disabled, a condition that started around age two, as it often does. She does not speak, follows only simple directions, has limited self-care skills, and has numerous other indicators of severe cognitive processing problems. All of the pre-FC reports up to age 10 are consistent with this. After 10, aside from the FC-mediated output and related claims, there is nothing in any report of her behavior to indicate that things have changed significantly.
The Leiter-R score discrepancy? You have already noted that this is a case in which many obvious discrepancies are being overlooked. There is another report, also done with FC, that says that she has the verbal skills of a 21-year-old. That is obviously inconsistent with the Leiter-R score. Of course, if you are looking for discrepancies, we have the aforementioned FC reports of a parents’ visit that didn’t happen; observant Jewish people suddenly subjecting their daughter to Christian afterlife beliefs; non-existent grandmothers; another non-existent relative; a non-existent dog; suddenly not spelling the brother’s name right after years of apparently doing it correctly; erroneous reports of extra bedrooms; and so on.
I agree. There seem to be enough inconsistencies to call the whole thing into question.
Jim
Reading through that, I have a few questions to ask, if you don’t mind (and are reading this).
Why put FC on trial? Are there simply not enough extraneous details to make a decision?
Is the defense trying to hold that she isn’t intellectually capable because of her autism, in other words that autism “wires the brain” differently so that she wouldn’t understand?
Did anyone explain how she communicates the way she does with FC while getting a 73 IQ using FC? What assumptions are being made because of that?
Don’t take this to be me attempting to find reasons to attack the defense (because it’s very much not), it’s just some questions that have been pressing me a little bit throughout.
Cliff
1560 days ago
[...] T. Todd, Ph.D., of the Eastern Michigan University Department of Psychology recently commented with details about a case involving a 14-year-old non-verbal autistic girl and FC. The girl, who is [...]
Thanks a lot, Dr. Todd.