The Detroit Free Press reports more developments in the case of a 14-year-old autistic girl who accused her father of rape through facilitated communication, a widely discredited communication technique where a facilitator holds the arm or wrist of the girl over a keyboard while she spells out messages.
Family Court Judge Joan Young ruled that the girl could continue to use facilitated communication at school, but that she could not use it to communicate about the pending case against her parents. The judge was alarmed that West Bloomfield police had questioned the autistic girl's mentally-impaired brother on December 4, 2007, without notifying his guardian and without a parent or attorney present. She said this is not to happen again.
A column by Brian Dickerson, "Crying rape through a Ouija board", also appeared in the Free Press on 2/6/08. He concludes that "...the gravity of the state's allegations can't camouflage the weakness of its case. Barron [the District Court judge] should call an end to this travesty now, before a higher court does it for him."
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