14-year-old girl types that she was sexually abused
December 18, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
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.”
Oh, my. This is going to be a complicated case. Very sad.
Facilitated communicaton was all the rage in the MR community in the nineties but faded when validity could not be proven. The “facilitator’s” role in the typing is at best not reliable and at worst, suspect.
Let’s pray the law enforcement can use other techniques to find the truth. Sad indeed.
From skeptic.com, “Facilitated Communication
& the Power of Belief” . I have read a lot about facilitators and it seems to me to be a sad and dangerous cheat.
I do not know enough about FC to comment on its role in this case; I do think it has a place and serves a purpose for many people who would otherwise be unable to communicate. I’ve actually requested some information about it.
In any case, it certainly sounds like perhaps the girl has been traumatized and assaulted at some point, else why would this have become an issue now? It is a sad situation and a complex legal tangle for sure.
Two recent books—The Road Trip and Rapid Prompting Method seems to have some similarities, in the use of touch to “support” an autistic person’s hand. I’m not quite sure what to think……….. Did anyone else beside the one aide from the school learn about the abuse from the girl’s typing?
FC and the potential influence of adult facilitator is a controversial issue, esp. given a similar case in the past.
If it can be discerned that the person using the technique is independently composing the message, I believe it is a powerful aid, if the person who is helping to facilitate the message is responsible for the content, it has potential for confusion and abuse.
If this girl has been/or potentially been sexually abused, the facts of this case must be determined ASAP, and I hope that law enforcement can do so. False allegation can destroy a family. True allegation that is discounted because of the victim’s disability status or “credibility” is tragic.
I obviously have no idea whether this is a credible claim or not. But this is what bothers me:
…The girl is now staying with Rabbi Levy Shemtov, the family’s rabbi, who states that the abuse “‘absolutely did not happen.”‘ …
Wouldn’t it be better to find a neutral person for her to stay with until this is sorted out?
Joe
What a courageous girl. Not only did she figure out that the sexual abuse was wrong, but she spoke out about it. But why isn’t her brother staying somewhere safe, too? I’d be worried about him staying with his father, since he can corroborate her story.
I found that very disturbing as well. What would prompt a rabbi to say such a thing?
We don’t know whether she’s using FC, though. She could be typing independently or with very minimal input.
Her story should be easy to confirm: Find a second facilitator who doesn’t know the situation, have her tell it again, and compare the stories. If they match, then the only issue left is her truthfulness; and that’s the same problem faced in all sexual abuse accusations. Her brother’s testimony makes me think she is most likely telling the truth; the main question to me is whether or not her brother coached her–as he might have, if he worried for her safety.
This is confusing, though, because it states that the brother corroborates her story but then states that the brother fondled her. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that they can get to the truth. I feel absolutely terrible for her if this happened and also sad for her if this is not true and her whole world has been turned upside-down.
I’m wondering if that bit about the brother is a typo (a big one, at that), because otherwise the whole story really doesn’t add up at all (he’d have been five, he’s not being charged, and it’s a wack element in an otherwise coherent story…).
But, as noted, the evidence, I think, won’t lie in whether FC is communication or not (or at least it shouldn’t), but in the other evidence (which, it seems, has some merit). We’ll see how this goes, though…
Cliff
Marilena wrote:
“From skeptic.com, “Facilitated Communication
& the Power of Belief” . I have read a lot about facilitators and it seems to me to be a sad and dangerous cheat”.
Eric Schopler, the editor of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders published an editorial excoriating Biklen and FC describing the method as being akin to ventriloquism.
FC takes its place with ‘repressed memory recall’ theory as the two most discredited pseudoscientific therapies of the 1990s both of which led to innocent people being arrested and indicted for child abuse.
Kristina, I read the news source and you typed the Rabbi’s quote and put into a different context, leading us to believe something he didn’t
mean.
“Rabbi Levy Shemtov, the family’s rabbi, who states that the abuse “‘absolutely did not happen.’” This refers the alleged visit by her parents and brother at the Rabbi’s house-which the girl apparently “typed”. There is a court-ordered restraining order against all three at this time. The Rabbi makes no reference to the “abuse” at all.
“The child, in additional typed messages, said the parents visited her at night and said they would be taking her to South Africa.
“I can say absolutely it did not happen,” said Rabbi Levy Shemtov, the family’s rabbi with whom the girl has been staying. “Her parents were never there. And the child was never alone.”‘
Good catch. That is correct.
Looking over the article, I found this little infuriating gem.
“The problem here is that the prosecutors are acting as though the only limitation this child has is that she cannot speak,” said defense attorney Robyn Frankel, who represents the girl’s mother against charges of child abuse and witness intimidation. “What they don’t understand is that when a person has autism, their brains are wired differently.”
Well, that was ignorant. Talk about the “incurable autism” scenario; they have differently wired brains just so that they are incapable of communicating? I’m still trying to decide the full implications of this statement (and if it goes out to consider that her brain was wired such that she couldn’t understand what was happening, I’ll have a fit).
Cliff
Err… it should read “incurable communication defect”, not “incurable autism”. No idea why I typed that as so, not thinking straight.
Cliff
Your article completely takes out of context what the Rabbi said—read the following-he did NOT say it did not happen
Defense attorneys said the strength of the prosecution’s case is undermined by the girl’s claim that her parents and brother violated a court order by visiting her in the home in which she was placed.
The child, in additional typed messages, said the parents visited her at night and said they would be taking her to South Africa.
“I can say absolutely it did not happen,” said Rabbi Levy Shemtov, the family’s rabbi with whom the girl has been staying. “Her parents were never there. And the child was never alone.”
Thank you for pointing that out.
From today’s Oakland Press:
“I’m wondering if that bit about the brother is a typo (a big one, at that), because otherwise the whole story really doesn’t add up at all (he’d have been five, he’s not being charged, and it’s a wack element in an otherwise coherent story…).”
It’s possible that the little boy just imitated his father.
The January 28th Detroit Times reports that Bloomfield 48th District Court Judge Marc Barron has ruled that the 14-year-old girl who cannot speak “could demonstrate her use of a computer keyboard facilitator and possibly testify about allegations that her father sexually assaulted on several occasions.” It seems that the technique of facilitated communication will be under scrutiny in this case:
“It’s possible that the little boy just imitated his father”
I’m pretty certain, though that he’d be at least separated and mentioned as being psychologically affected in some terms. It’s the only place he’s even mentioned, and it’s a fairly vague statement that seems to be implying an understood. It’d make sense if the referenced had been mentioned before, with that understood created, but not if the subject was shot out of the air.
Anyway, it’s interesting that they’re choosing to put FC on trial and not look to other evidence as primary. Perhaps it’s just not as present as need be, but I’d find setting up such a debate unhelpful. Great for a general discussion, not so great in determining the circumstances of a potentially threatened person.
Cliff
Since no one posting here knows the details of this case, I will provide some. I was there for every minute of both days.
It is troublesome to see how many firm opinions about this matter are being formed on the basis of a few newspaper stories that are seriously abbreviated relative to what they would normally be due to the Detroit Mayoral scandal. I am not making the last part up. That’s what the reporters said to me.
Perhaps reading this will cause some to see this matter in a very different light.
There has been no trial yet at all. There has only been one special hearing, which took two full days in court, occasionally briefly interrupted by other court matters. There was no lunch break on day two. The next scheduled event is a preliminary hearing.
The girl failed two separate tests of facilitation on two separate days, literally not getting a single answer correct in about two dozen tries. Basically, the facilitator was sent from the room, the child was asked a simple question such as whether she was a boy or a girl, and then the facilitator was let back in to facilitate the answer. In some cases, the child was allowed three attempts to answer–with prompting. Most of the answers were random typing. Some were complete sentences totally unrelated to the topic of the question.
The child looked happy and calm during the entire proceedings on both days, smiling as she came in and greeting the facilitators and prosecutor with apparent excitement. The prosecution claimed the child was afraid and nervous because of the presence of her parents–even though on the first day the room had been arranged and screened so that she could not see them. The parents were not present at all during the second test. The prosecution could not identify any visible signs of distress, apparently inferring it totally from the wrong answers. A defense expert experienced with autism testified that the child showed no apparent signs of distress at all, either during the initial police interview or during either test.
The prosecution had planned to do their validation tests using special Bose noise-canceling headphones and no visual screening of the facilitator from the questioner. For safety and liability reasons, those headphones are designed for to allow sufficient sound through to hear voices and traffic. The defense experts, both with extensive audio technical experience, had to insist that the headphones not be used because the facilitator could hear speech through them. The judge did his own test, finding that he could hear speech through the headphones just as the defense had warned. He changed the test to make the facilitator leave the room. It is certainly important to consider the implications of the prosecution setting up a validation test using headphones they must have known did not fully block sound and not using visual screening at all.
Harvard augmentative communication expert, Howard Shane, was brought in by the defense to do a validation test. He was not permitted to do anything but provide verbal testimony. That is, the prosecution was allowed to do two tests they themselves had designed (and apparently rehearsed). The defense was not allowed to do any validation tests.
The defense was allowed to ask just one single question in one test: “What is the capitol of Michigan?” Despite repeated requests, defense was not even allowed to do a simple test screening the eyes of the facilitator from the keyboard. (Both facilitators had said they could facilitate without seeing the keyboard.)
In addition to not allowing the defense to do any validity testing during the hearing, the judge refused to let the defense conduct any independent tests of the validity of the child’s FC at any other time.
Even though there have apparently been no standardized evaluations of the child given (except with FC) for about three years, none has been done for this case. Thus, the child’s cognitive ability will not be assessed to establish a non-FC baseline. The last non-FC evaluations are three years old and older.
The child’s Leiter-R IQ test score is reported to be 72, almost two standard deviations below normal. Yet, this girl supposedly does 9th-grade algebra and English. She supposedly writes poetry about the Holocaust.
Since starting FC in school in 2005, the Walled Lake Michigan school has not once done any kind of evaluation of the validity of FC with this child. The special education coordinator said that she did not believe FC belonged in the school, but supposedly relented under the parents’ pressure, as dictated by the Superintendent. No other child in the district uses FC despite the reported glowing successes achieved by this child.
At least a dozen people have been “trained” to do FC with this child. Other children with autism have been “trained” to do FC so that they could “talk to” the child. There are no records of what happened in these cases of kids with autism supposedly facilitating another child with autism.
The child’s facilitators testified that FC would not work without gaining the confidence of the child. They also stated that FC would not work in general if the subject was uncomfortable with the facilitator. Yet, these same facilitators also admitted that the supposedly abusive parents were facilitating successfully right up to the time of their arrest.
According to an official report to the school, the girl supposedly typed sentences and did simple arithmetic the very first time she was facilitated.
The original accusation is full of inconsistencies and factual errors. The name of the dog is wrong. There are three grandmothers mentioned, one with two names. One supposed grandmother’s name doesn’t belong to any relative. The brother’s name is spelled incorrectly and inconsistently in the accusation. In all other FC transcripts created by other facilitators, the brother’s name is always spelled correctly. The parents are said to have separate bedrooms, which is not true. The parents and grandmother, an observant Jewish family, supposedly told the child that if she lied, she would “go to hell.” This is quite inconsistent with Jewish afterlife beliefs and traditions. There are more inconsistencies like these throughout the accusation.
The prosecution’s own expert witness, a noted FC expert who had participated in developing the FC Institute Training Standards and had introduced the family to FC, stated that she did not believe the parents were guilty. She also stated that the FC-authored accusation could not be trusted due to a number of factors including the inexperience and insufficient training of the accusing facilitator. The prosecution’s expert further stated that she had tried to persuade the police to get an independent facilitator for their interview. The police refused the advice and did nothing to establish the independence of the child’s supposed testimony from the facilitator.
The Rabbi’s care of the child was approved by the court. The parents never visited the Rabbi’s house to as reported in the media.
The prosecution own expert’s statement that the family was innocent was stricken from the record based on a prosecution objection that it was not directly relevant to the purpose of the hearing. That is, the prosecution was objecting to a sworn statement made by its own witness.
One of the defense’s expert witnesses, me, has more formal training in FC than the facilitator who made the accusations. The accusing facilitator has apparently done nothing, ever, to determine if her facilitation is free of influence.
The defense experts testified that the child is entirely non-verbal, with very limited non-verbal cognitive skills at about the three-year-old level. For instance, the child is able to set up her computer step-by-step for facilitation. Yet she is unaware that it must be plugged in to work. Outside of writings supposedly produced through FC, there is no evidence to suggest that the defense experts are incorrect. In fact, FC writing is the only evidence offered for the child’s supposedly normal intelligence–the 72 on the Leiter-R notwithstanding.
The child has sufficient manual dexterity to easily grasp and operate zippers and clasps on her computer case. She operated the small latch to open the top of the computer itself while the facilitator was pushing the computer across the table–an impressive manual tracking performance for a child who supposedly needs someone else’s help to press keys. She had no difficulty pressing the computer’s tiny power button twice without the aid of a facilitator. She showed no evidence of any tremors or movement problems that should require stabilization by a facilitator’s hand.
In about 130 separate FC episodes during the accusation, there was only one possible instance of the child initiating communication by presenting her hand first for facilitation. In every other instance, the child was unresponsive to the question until the facilitator solicited the child’s hand.
Despite saying she was capable of doing so, the facilitator did not look away from the keyboard during any of the 130 FC episodes on the video record.
One of the child’s regular facilitators said that the child can read. Another facilitator believed that the child cannot read. These two people having been working with the child for months, sometimes for hours a day. After years of FC, no one seems to know for sure if the child can read or not. Although the ability to read is certainly relevant to the ability to type correctly, especially in a child who supposedly facilitated sentences and math on her first try, no attempt was made to determine if she could read during the hearing.
There has been no other evidence reported that is consistent with the charges.
The facilitators who made and reported the original abuse allegations continue to facilitate with the child. Parents have not been allowed to visit her.
The child greeted the prosecutor with a hug and the prosecutor hugged and touched the child affectionately several times during the proceedings.
Thank you very much for providing all of this information—I have only seen news reports such as this one. Are there other sources that you might recommend that would be helpful?
Thank you again—
I think the stories from the last few days will be more helpful than that very early one you linked to. Here is the most recent from the Detroit Free Press.
It might also be helpful to note that the statement attributed to the girl in the December 18 article you linked to doesn’t actually exist. It is a composite, with spelling and punctuation corrections, supplied by someone to put all the accusations in one incriminating package.
It is also important to note that the Leiter-R IQ test was done with FC. Thus, we cannot say that the child really has an IQ of 72. The psychologist who did the test questioned the score, saying in the report that such an administration is invalid.
Thanks a lot, Dr. Todd.
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
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
Thank you very much for answering my questions!
Cliff
Cliff:
You are welcome.
Jim
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
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.
@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:
@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.
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:
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
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.
“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…
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 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.
@Geo,
thank you very for the update. What an ordeal (to put it mildly) the family has been through—-
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.