The moral obligation to be empirical: Comments on Boynton's “Facilitated Communication—what harm it can do: Confessions of a former facilitator”

Abstract

Janyce Boynton (2012) does a great service by explaining how she came to author false accusations of sexual abuse against an innocent family using “facilitated communication” (FC). FC involves a “facilitator” allegedly providing motor and emotional support to enable nonspeaking people to communicate by typing or similar means. FC was never credible and is now scientifically discredited. Nevertheless, FC seems to be growing in professional and academic adherents. This article expands Boynton's analysis. It shows how potentially extreme legal remedies might be imposed on academics to deal with the consequences of the irresponsible promotion of FC in the classroom. It explores the practical and legal dangers of adopting FC-recommended forensic techniques to assess authorship of sensitive output, such as abuse allegations. It shows how FC is a type of automatic writing with special features that enhance the lucidity and stability of the facilitator's unconscious composition. These features make false abuse allegations a rare but inevitable aspect of FC.

Source of funding: No source of funding reported.

Keywords:

• Facilitated communication
• Pseudoscience
• Supported typing
• Developmental disabilities
• Autism

Acknowledgments

Thanks go to Lisa M. Todd for valuable comments on various drafts of the manuscript.

Declaration of interest: The author has served as an expert witness for the defense in the Wendrow criminal case mentioned in this article. He had access to the exhibits in the criminal matter and testified in court. Any comments made about the case come from that experience. The author is solely responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes

1. Palo Alto, CA.

2. Recent Syracuse graduates from the last decade who endorse FC have done very well (Recent Student Dissertations, n.d.). Zachary Rossetti is now at Boston University. Christine Ashby is at Syracuse. Christi Kasa-Hendrickson is Department Chair at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Alecia Broderick is at Columbia University Teachers College. David Smukler is at SUNY (State University of New York) Courtland. Mary Winston (Missy) Morton is “Interim Head of School” at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. (For representative works by these individuals on FC see, Ashby, 2011; Ashby & Causton-Theoharis, 2009; Broderick & Kasa-Hendrickson, 2006; Kasa-Hendrickson, 2006; Morton, 2009; Rossetti, Ashby, Arndt, Chadwick & Kasahara, 2008; Smukler, 2005.)

3. The website of the Hope Technology School does not say anything about FC. Between 2008 and 2009, the school scrubbed its site of references to FC, replacing them with generic references to “AAC” and “Augmentative and Alternative Communication” (Todd, 2009).

4. An attempt to hold Syracuse University generally responsible for harm relating to false facilitated allegations did not succeed (Storch v. Syracuse Univ., 1995). A more focused suit might have a greater chance of success.

5. Hope Block is the sister of primary author Pamela Block, former President of the Society for Disability Studies. Both Pratt and Block are listed as chapter authors. Both apparently require full-time attendants.

6. This simultaneous facilitation by Rammler became the basis of a demonstration of FC involving Hope Block and Pratt in a course taught by Hope Block's sister Pamela Block at SUNY Stony Brook. The event was described as a “date” (Kasnitz & Block, 2012, p. 207).

7. “Presume competence” is the supreme commandment of FC (Biklen & Burke, 2006; Rubin et al., 2001; Facilitated Communication Institute, 2000; Jorgensen, McSheehan, & Sonnenmeier, 2007).

8. Dumpty has been given the title “Dr.” because the tone and contents of his discourse so closely resemble that of a seasoned academic in a faculty meeting 25 minutes after its scheduled end. Our method of determination, making an assumption about Dumpty's degree based on the contents of the “narrative” rather than looking to more authoritative and sources of information, is likely to meet with the approval of FC advocates, who shun fancy things like authenticity (see e.g., Beukelman & Mirenda, 2006; Biklen, Saha, & Kliewer, 1995; Cantor, 2007; Emerson et al., 2001; Emerson, Griffiths, Prentice, Cosham, Howard-Jones, & Grayson, 1998; Mirenda, 2003, 2008; Niemi & Kärnä-Lin, 2002; Savarese, 2007).

9. The “message passing test” is mentioned, but it seems to be suggested as an informal post hoc assessment rather than a formal test. Even if Borthwick et al. (1992) mean the more formal version, its forensic value is preemptively subverted by standard FC methodological shortcuts (Biklen & Cardinal, 1997): “Message-passing is often the best available test, although even then allowances may have to be made for people with word-finding problems who can give a message in general terms but not in its exact words” (Borthwick et al., 1992, para. 13).

10. Also attended by the Wendrows.

11. Even if the word were genuinely McDonald's, and not a guess by facilitator Rosemary Crossley cued by the reactions of onlookers, we might expect more in three days from someone who could supposedly discuss nuclear policy, do algebra, and coauthor a book.

12. In the Wendrow case, the facilitator who made the accusations in the school became the defacto “interpreter” for the court, worked with the prosecution, and continued to facilitate with the girl in the school as the case progressed. Impartiality was not a priority.

13. Differential attention: One thing is given attention relative to another in a mutually exclusive manner.

14. The FC training sessions and workshops I have attended did not include any warnings about the problem of false accusations.