Here on SWIFT, we’ve discussed the use of what’s known as “facilitated communication” [FC] a purported method of allowing autistic persons to express themselves while being unable to speak. Unquestionably, this simply does not work, and extensive investigations have established that fact, repeatedly. The danger of the FC travesty and the lengths to which public officials will go to embrace and use this nonsense through sheer ignorance was never better illustrated than by the situation in which Julian Wendrow and his wife Thal of Oakland County, California, recently found themselves. It was a result of the Oakland County prosecutor choosing to accept FC as a legitimate means of obtaining information from a child, Mr. Wendrow’s severely autistic daughter. The father was prosecuted and jailed after being accused of sexually assaulting his child, even though a physical exam showed no sign of such an assault. As a result, the family sued in federal court in 2008, alleging 38 counts of false imprisonment, wrongful prosecution and other atrocities. They have been awarded a $1.8 million settlement.
Julian Wendrow spent 80 days in the Oakland County jail. His wife, Thal Wendrow, was also jailed, and the girl, 14, and her brother, 13, were placed in foster care for months. A school aide, using FC, had typed out a dreadful story that, if true, would have called for police action. It described criminal acts said to have been entered into by Mr. Wendrow and his young son. And it was all a total, invented, fiction.Just think of the distress the younger brother had to undergo. His sister, who cannot speak and functions on the level of a two-year-old, reportedly typed out that her father had been raping her since age seven, and on the strength of that, the prosecutors charged and jailed Mr. Wendrow.
In their lawsuit, the Wendrows named the police department as a defendant, in part because of a two-hour interrogation a detective conducted with the 13-year-old boy shortly after his parents’ arrests, lying to him that they had videotapes of both he and his father sexually assaulting his sister! The boy, who suffers from Asperger Sydrome – a milder form of autism – can be seen in the official police video rocking back and forth and crying piteously during the interview, insisting to the interrogator hat neither he or his father had assaulted anyone.
The kid – at age 13! – had no adult representative present during the interview. This is a distinct infraction of any and all decent standards of police protocol, yet the lawyer representing the police department has now stated that the department would investigate the case the same way again, including the interrogation of the boy and the jailing of the father! Said the lawyer
"We’ll assess everything, but really, right off hand, I can’t think of anything they would do differently because we really don’t think they did anything wrong."
Not “really,” sir? How about putting a snicker in there, just to reassure us that they might have been a teeny bit over-zealous? As if to emphasize their stupid decision, Detective Joseph Brusseau, the officer who conducted this modern inquisition, remains on the Oakland County police force.
Attorney Deborah Gordon, who represents the Wendrows, had a clear picture of the situation:
"They pushed this thing in spite of literally having no evidence of any kind of abuse, other than this Facilitated Communication nonsense, which is in effect a Ouija board… What the police department did was unbelievably horrific."
The attorney representing the police department chose to define the $1.8 million settlement as
"…nothing more than a business decision by the insurance company, with no admission of wrongdoing or of any liability."
Sir, it’s obvious that you’re required to fluster about and try to save what you can of any reputation your client the Oakland County police might still have, but this statement is something out of another Gilbert & Sullivan farce, and not at all funny. This so-called “facilitated communication” has been widely dismissed by experts worldwide because studies have clearly shown that it is the “facilitator” who is actually doing the typing. Nevertheless, the Wendrows had urged the school district to use it, hoping that it might help their child, and the “facilitator” had spun out this fiction to fulfill whatever needs he might have had.
The notion that FC is a legitimate treatment is still entertained by the naïve, and enthusiastically encouraged by Syracuse University, by Professor Douglas Biklen – a sociologist and professor of special education there – and by others who have chosen to ride this dreadful mare all the way to Hell.
Where does the responsibility for this tragedy lie? The Oakland County prosecutors – who were also named in the Wendrow family suit – have admitted in depositions that they didn’t investigate the FC method prior to bringing their charges, and could not find anyone to support the method as reliable, despite nationwide inquiries after the arrests, yet they went ahead and pursued the prosecution. I have news for these fumblers. At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
And how was the truth about “facilitated communication” finally discovered and demonstrated by other investigators in this case? Gee, someone decided to actually look into the procedure as it was used on the girl, and discovered that without an “agent” holding her hand while closely watching the keyboard and directing her hand, this afflicted little lady was unable to type a single answer to any questions posed to her in district court!
Duh.