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Sign BAAM's resolution against Facilitated Communication
Despite the failure of
facilitated communication (FC) to produce a single correct answer in two
separate courtroom tests during a special two-day hearing (January 28 and 29),
accusations "facilitated" by a Walled Lake Schools paraprofessional have been
admitted in an ongoing Oakland County Michigan sex abuse case against the
parents of a 14-year-old non-verbal girl with severe autism.
The father has been in jail with no bond since early December. The mother is
on an electronic tether. The two children have been removed. The school
system, the court, and the prosecutor's office are treating the facilitated
output as legitimate communication from the child. The authorities remain
united in their rejection of the accumulated scientific evidence that FC does
not work. With court approval, the school continues to use FC with the child;
the case continues to move forward. (http://tinyurl.com/28x2uy)
Nothing in the hearing pointed to the validity of FC. In a dramatic show of
agreement across FC lines, the defense and prosecution experts all stated that
the accusations accepted by the court could not be trusted. The prosecution
expert, FC advocate Sandra McClennen Ph.D., repudiated the prosecution's
contention that the typing was authentic. McClennen stated that the facilitator
had been poorly trained and that there had been a complete lack of appropriate
protocols to detect or prevent facilitator control. McClennen further testified
that the same facilitator who made the original accusations should not have been
used during the police interview. Defense experts, FC critics James T. Todd
Ph.D. and Howard Shane Ph.D., cited the absence of protections against
facilitator control, the lack of properly controlled scientific evidence for FC,
and the copious scientific evidence on the inevitability of facilitator control
in FC. Todd also pointed out numerous verifiable inconsistencies and factual
errors in the accusation itself, including statements about non-existent
relatives, the use of incorrect names, and the incorrect spelling of the
brother's name (which had been correctly spelled by all previous facilitators).
Todd also noted that girl supposedly reported that her parents and grandmother
had told her that she would "go to hell" if she lied--a warning inconsistent
with the afterlife beliefs of the family’s Jewish faith.
In a true "Perry Mason" moment, the prosecution's own expert witness, who had
already left the prosecutor "red faced" according to a Detroit Free Press
article (http://tinyurl.com/2znsr9), revealed that she believed the parents were
innocent and that she had called the police prior to their interview of the girl
and facilitator to warn of the problem of facilitator control. She had told the
police that they should employ protective protocols--including an impartial,
naive facilitator. Her advice was rejected. It has now been revealed that the
police also interviewed the girl’s thirteen-year-old brother in early December
without the knowledge of the guardian, and without the parents or an attorney
present. The brother can speak but has the developmental disability,
Asperger's Syndrome. (http://tinyurl.com/28x2uy)
After permitting the prosecution to conduct the two failed in-court tests of FC
with the facilitator originally responsible for the accusations, the judge
refused to permit the defense experts to conduct any validity tests at all.
Howard Shane, arguably the world’s acknowledged expert in testing FC for court
cases, was allowed to give only verbal testimony and view the Monday afternoon
FC demonstration. The judge also denied the defense a Daubert hearing on the
scientific admissibility of FC. By doing so, the he rejected the role of science
in determining the reliability of FC as courtroom testimony. Using the Luz and
Warden FC cases of the 1990s as guidance, FC will be treated as a form of
interpretation.
Expert Shane's advice was instrumental in preventing the prosecution from
putting on an illegitimate demonstration of the validity of FC. The prosecution
had planned to conduct its demonstration using Bose noise-canceling headphones
to prevent the facilitator from hearing the questions. Shane stated that the
headphones were not designed to fully block sound. The questions would leak
through to the facilitator, thus contaminating the demonstration. The judge took
the headphones to his chambers and found that he could hear through them just as
Shane had warned. The demonstration proceeded with the facilitators sent out of
the room to keep them unaware of the questions asked the girl.
The school's special education coordinator testified that she had opposed using
FC for a number of reasons. She claimed that the school had adopted and used FC
primarily to satisfy the parents. The use of FC was described as "pilot"
project. Even though the school has apparently trained over a dozen people to
facilitate with the girl, including, incredibly, other children with autism,
there was no indication that school has ever formally tested the validity of FC.
The defense experts also reported that all major psychological evaluations done
for the school in the last two to three years have been done with FC. This has
produced bizarre inconsistencies such as a borderline IQ in the low 70s on one
test and a verbal equivalent age of 21 on another. The girl is supposedly able
to do ordinary high school-level academic work with FC. Based on available
information and pre-FC testing, defense experts concluded that the girl has
little or no expressive language, can follow only simple requests, and has
non-verbal cognitive skills at approximately the three-year-old level.
Commenting on the lack of physical evidence, repeated failures of FC to work in
court, and other significant weaknesses in the case, Detroit Free Press
columnist Brian Dickerson has described the prosecution's case as a
"breathtakingly unprofessional witch hunt." (http://tinyurl.com/28a3tn)
--
James T. Todd, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
Eastern Michigan University
Ypsilanti, Michigan 48197
734-487-0376 (phone)
734-487-6553 (fax)
Sign BAAM's resolution against Facilitated Communication
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