The Detroit Free Press reports that the family of an autistic girl won a $3M award in a Federal lawsuit for wrongful prosecution against the Oakland County, Michigan, prosecutors office. The article, "Jury awards $3M to Wendrows in wrongful prosecution case" by Lori Brasier and John Wisely, summarizes the case that has drawn national attention because it involved the use of a widely discredited communication technique called "facilitated communication" as evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the parents of a severely disabled autistic girl.
Julian and Thal Wendrow of West Bloomfield, Michigan, were arrested in late 2007 after their 14-year-old daughter supposedly typed on a keyboard that her father raped her while her mother looked the other way. The daughter communicated through a facilitator, an aide at her school, who guided her hand over the keyboard, but she was otherwise unable to speak. The girl was later found in court to be unable to answer questions when the facilitator was our of earshot. This is consistent with court findings in other cases involving FC: "The typing, a controversial method known as 'facilitated communication,' had been widely debunked in the last two decades. Research always found it was the aide guiding the disabled person's hand, either consciously or unconsciously."
This did not stop the prosecutors, however: "Nevertheless, then Oakland County prosecutor David Gorcyca, his chief assistant, Deborah Carley, and assistant prosecutor Andrea Dean pressed on with the prosecution, even as news reports showed the method was unreliable."
In my opinion, the most egregious wrongdoing in the case involved the autistic girl's brother, who is also autistic but is much higher functioning than his sister: "Ian, who received the largest part of the jury award, was interrogated for two hours by West Bloomfield police who told him they had videotape of his father assaulting his sister. Police never had such a tape and the claim was a lie that a psychologist would later testify left the boy traumatized. Jurors did watch a video showing Ian's interrogation, in which the boy, then 13, doubled over in tears."
There was no physical evidence to support the rape charges. And, "the typed statements said the girl was coming forward because she feared going to hell for lying. But lawyers pointed out the Wendrows are Jewish and don't believe in the Christian concept of hell."
Defendants in the lawsuit were all from the Oakland County prosecutor's office:
Former Prosecutor David Gorcyca who left office in 2008 was found to have "…defamed the family when he insisted months after he left office, and a year after the case was dropped, that the Wendrows were in fact guilty of abusing their daughter." He now works as a defense attorney.
Gorcyca's assistant Deborah Carley was found by the jury to have violated the constitutional rights of the autistic girl's brother. "Carley now heads the Children and Youth Services Division for the Michigan Attorney General's office," according to the article.
Assistant prosecutor Andrea Dean was also a defendant in the case.
Deborah Gordon, a Bloomfield Hills attorney, represented the family throughout the suit.
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More coverage of the trial by the Detroit Free Press:
"Wendrow lawsuit against ex-prosecutors to begin", 10/7/14
"Lawsuit against ex-Oakland prosecutors gets under way", 10/8/14
"Attorney: Prosecutors ignored truth in charging couple", 10/9/14
"Ex-prosecutor: Autistic girl was communicating in rape case", 10/14/14
"Former Oakland prosecutor defends actions in Wendrow case", 10/31/14
The parents of an autistic girl have reached a settlement with the girl's school district, Walled Lake Schools in Oakland County, Michigan (northwest of Detroit), in a lawsuit that involved accusations of rape and abuse against the parents that were communicated through facilitated communication (FC, or facilitated typing, as it is sometimes called).
Facilitated communication is a largely discredited communication technique, especially when it has been offered as evidence in court cases, where a person who is unable to talk because of severe cognitive disabilities types messages through a facilitator who usually guides or holds the arm of the disabled person. The communications have been shown to be more likely those of the facilitator than the disabled person.
An article in the Detroit Free Press, "Walled Lake Schools to pay parents in dismissed rape case" by John Wisely, 9/16/14, says that the parents, Julian and Thal Wendrow, settled a lawsuit against the school district for $1.1 million, just three weeks before the suit was scheduled to go to trial:
"West Bloomfield police arrested the Wendrows in December 2007 after a school aide helped their autistic daughter, who can't speak, type a statement accusing her father of repeated rapes and her mother of ignoring the attacks. The statement was written using facilitated communication, where the aide guides the child's fingers over a keyboard.
"The method has never been approved for courtroom use and critics insist the aide was the true author of the writings, either consciously or subconciously."
The article further states that,
"The Wendrows claim their lives have been permanently damaged by the criminal case. Julian Wendrow spent 80 days in the Oakland County Jail before prosecutors dropped the charges for a lack of evidence.
"Thal Wendrow spent five days in jail before being released with an electronic monitoring device attached to her leg.
"When they were arrested, their daughter, then 14, was taken into protective custody. The couple's son, then 13, was interrogated by a detective who tried to get him to confirm the rape accusations by saying police had videotape of his father raping his sister."
The family has collected $3.75 million so far in settlements with the school district, the West Bloomfield Police, and the Michigan Department of Human services. A trial against the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office is set to begin on October 8, 2014.
Here are more troubling facts about this case:
- There was no physical evidence that a rape had taken place.
- The prosecution and the judge in the case accepted the girl's statements through FC as valid even though she functioned at the level of a two-year-old and did not talk. Even the prosecution's witness called to defend FC as a valid form of communication, did not believe the girl's charges and had warned the prosecution that her statements should be validated independently.
- The girl's brother was interviewed by the police without notifying his guardian and without a parent or attorney present.
- The primary objection to FC is that the communication is usually that of the facilitator and not the person who is being facilitated. The court still treated the girl's statements as evidence of a crime, reliable enough to have the father thrown in jail for 80 days.The case was dismissed after the girl was unable to answer even simple questions when her facilitator could not hear the questions being asked.
- When the case was dismissed, the prosecution did not admit that they were wrong. Instead they said that the girl refused to testify because she was afraid.
Read more about Facilitated Communication and the case against the parents.
In November 2007, a man from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, was accused of raping his 14-year-old autistic daughter based on statements that she allegedly made through facilitated communication. Facilitated communication is a controversial and largely discredited technique that supposedly allows a non-verbal person to communicate through a facilitator who assists the person in typing out messages on a keyboard.
The man's wife was accused of knowing about the abuse but not doing anything about it. The girl's brother who has Asperger's Syndrome was questioned by the police without a lawyer or guardian present and was told by his interrogator that there was incriminating evidence that proved that the rapes had taken place and that implicated the brother in the abuse. The story told him by the police turned out to be entirely fabricated.
The man spent 80 days in jail, his wife was placed on an electronic tether, and both children were placed in foster care. The case was eventually dismissed; there was no physical evidence that a rape had ever occurred and the facilitator was shown to be the author of the allegations, not the autistic girl. The parents sued the school district, the police, the prosecutors, and the Michigan Department of Human Services. The police settled the suit for $1.8 million, while the others involved claimed governmental immunity.
According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, "West Bloomfield parents allowed to sue prosecutors over faulty sex-abuse case" by John Wisely, 8/29/13, an appeals court said "governmental immunity doesn’t shield Oakland County prosecutors, Walled Lake Consolidated Schools officials and staffers from the Michigan Department of Human Services from liability for their actions in the case." The parents' lawsuit claiming that their constitutional rights were violated may now proceed to trial.
The case was flawed from the start because of its reliance on evidence from Facilitated Communication. The Judge was especially critical of the prosecutors for allowing the girl's brother to be questioned: "'It was objectively unreasonable for Dean and Carley [the prosecutors] to subject (the brother) to an interview of this type without consent,' the court ruled."
The Court also found that Rebecca Robydek, a social worker with the state Department of Human Services who placed the children in foster care, could not claim governmental immunity. The court ruled that “Robydek’s actions are especially troubling in this situation given the multiple documented errors in the facilitated statement used as the sole basis for Robydek’s recommendation.”
The parents of an autistic girl settled a lawsuit against the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, police department last month for $1.8 million, according to an article in the Detroit Free Press.
Over three years ago, the father was arrested and accused of raping his 14-year-old autistic daughter based on accusations made through a widely discredited method called facilitated communication (FC). A facilitator, in this case a teacher's aide, guided the girl's hand over a keyboard while the girl supposedly typed out messages accusing her father of raping her repeatedly since she was seven years old. The father spent 80 days in jail and the mother was put on an electronic tether. The girl and her 13-year-old brother who has a milder form of autism were placed in foster care. The police, in a video-taped interview, tried to browbeat the brother into admitting that he too had been molested by his father. He was told that the police had video tapes showing this to be true, a story that turned out to be entirely fabricated.
In a related article, the Free Press reports that the parents' lawsuit against the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, the Walled Lake Consolidated School District and the Michigan Department of Human Services is still under consideration. Although the Oakland County lawyer argues for governmental immunity for his clients, the District Court Judge finds the facts in the case troubling.
The facts are indeed troubling:
- There was no physical evidence that a rape had taken place.
- The prosecution and the judge in the case accepted the girl's statements through FC as valid even though she functioned at the level of a two-year-old and did not talk. Even the prosecution's witness called to defend FC as a valid form of communication, did not believe the girl's charges and had warned the prosecution that her statements should be validated independently.
- The girl's brother was interviewed by the police without notifying his guardian and without a parent or attorney present.
- The primary objection to FC is that the communication is usually that of the facilitator and not the person who is being facilitated. The court still treated the girl's statements as evidence of a crime, reliable enough to have the father thrown in jail for 80 days.The case was dismissed after the girl was unable to answer even simple questions when her facilitator could not hear the questions being asked.
- When the case was dismissed, the prosecution did not admit that they were wrong. Instead they said that the girl refused to testify because she was afraid.
We may never know the motivation for the actions of the prosecutor's office, the police department, and the school district. At least the parents have some compensation for this travesty that almost destroyed their lives.
Here are earlier posts on this case. MSNBC in 2009 had a blogpost called "Dark shadows loom over facilitated talk" which includes the Michigan case. It also gives a general overview of the origins of FC.
This is a comment from a well-informed reader about a Michigan abuse case against the father of an autisitic teenager where the judge was prepared to allow testimony from the girl through facilitated communication. This is referring to a post on January 30, 2008, Judge allows autistic girl's testimony using facilitated communication:
When the judge said he found "nothing scientific" about facilitated communication, he was not saying that FC was not valid. He was making a legal judgment that facilitated communication was not a technique that might be subject to a general scientific test. For instance, a method for measuring the concentration of salt in water would be "scientific."
When the judge denied the defense a Daubert hearing, he explicitly ruled that FC was a form of "interpretation" like translating Spanish into English, and was thus legally immune from a general scientific evaluation. In other words, the judge was accepting the validity of FC as a technique even though FC objectively differs from interpretation in several significant aspects. (A court in Kansas had taken the same position around 1993). The defense would have to attempt to undermine the veracity of the accusations themselves as though they were genuine statements made by the girl. In doing this, judge was adopting a position advanced by Phipps and Ells in an article in the Nebraska Law Review--a position that legal analyst Brian Gorman described as "bad science and bad law."
It is significant that the judge adopted as "guidance" the only two cases in which FC was allowed into court rather than the many in which it was not. Doing so might have been the only way for him to rescue the prosecutor's case, which was not going well. Ironically, one of the cases the judge selected as "guidance" eventually resulted in the dismissal of the charges against the falsely accused parents and a $750,000 settlement in their favor. Of course, now we know that all the charges were dismissed. However, it is important to note that the prosecution never admitted any mistakes. In fact, its excuse for granting the dismissal, that the girl typed out that she was too afraid to testify, was really just a despicable parting shot against the parents. It also did not ring true. If the authorities were willing to coerce the younger brother as they did, what was to prevent them from pressuring the girl to testify. The reality is that they had nothing but bogus accusations to go on, and would have had to face a very well-prepared defense that had actual facts on its side.
The Detroit Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson devoted two columns (here and here) to the recently dismissed abuse case against the father of an autistic girl. The 14-year old girl, who is unable to speak, accused her father of rape. She did this using facilitated communication in which a school aide assisted her in typing out messages on a keyboard. Testimony obtained through Facilitated Communication has repeatedly been shown to be unreliable as evidence in court. Messages obtained through this method have been shown to originate with the facilitator rather than the autistic person.
The girl's younger brother, who has a milder form of autism called Asperger's syndrome, was also drawn into the case when he was questioned by an investigator without his lawyer present and under circumstances which were considered by experts to be inappropriate and damaging to the boy.
Videotapes were made of the interrogation and excerpts are available on-line.
The 13-year-old brother was questioned by a police detective in early December 2007 after his father was arrested for allegedly raping his sister; his mother was charged with allowing the abuse to happen. The boy and his sister had been placed in foster homes. The interrogator, a police detective, appears to have ignored Michigan child abuse laws which prescribe rules for questioning juveniles in sexual abuse cases. The rules warn investigators to avoid threats, promises, and leading questions, but the investigator used all of those things during his interrogation. As Brian Dickerson reports:
For nearly an hour, Detective Joseph Brousseau had grilled the boy about accusations that he and his autistic sister had been sexually molested by their father.
No, the boy insisted, he'd seen nothing to support the detective's lurid suspicions. Three times, he offered to take a lie detector test.
But Brousseau hammered away, challenging the boy's honesty, his manliness, his loyalty to his disabled sister.
Again and again, the detective told the boy his body language betrayed the burden of a terrible secret.
"What if I told you that one of those videotapes confiscated from your parents' house had you in it?" the detective asked suddenly.
The 13-year-old straightened. "Was it me doing something sexually?"
"I don't think I'd be bringing it up if it wasn't," Brousseau answered. "That's what I'm trying to tell you -- it's going to come out."
If it were merely what it purported to be -- the disclosure of a deviant father's treachery -- the videotaped exchange would be excruciating enough to watch.
But the truth is a good deal uglier than that.
Charges have been dropped. In fact, prosecutors now concede, much of what Brousseau told the boy during his Dec. 4 interrogation was a fabrication.
The damage to the family and especially to the disabled 13-year old brother in this terribly flawed case is incalculable, but a lawsuit by the family is a possibility.
The Detroit Free Press, on March 11 and March 12, 2008, reported that a judge has dismissed all charges against a West Bloomfield, Michigan man who was accused of raping his 15-year-old autistic daughter. The accusations were supposedly made by the girl through a highly controversial method called facilitated communication. The girl, who is unable to talk, was assisted by a teacher's aide in typing out messages on a keyboard. At a hearing in February, the girl was unable to answer any questions in court when the teacher's aide was prevented from hearing the questions being asked. Experts testified that in cases like this, the messages are consciously or unconsciously those of the facilitator and not the autistic person.
The case against the girl's mother for not stopping the rapes has also been dismissed.
While defense attorneys said there was never any basis for believing the abuse had occurred, the prosecutors said they decided to ask for a dismissal in the case because the girl refused to testify. Assistant prosecutors said they met with the girl four times. In one interview, the girl said, through her teacher's aide and by pointing at yes-no cards, that she was afraid of her father and did not want to testify. The interview was not taped, however, and there was no written record.
According to the attorney for the girl's mother, when the girl was reunited with her father, she ran into his arms and could not stop hugging him. The girl had spent four months in foster care and her father 80 days in jail.
In a separate civil case that sought to remove both the girl and her brother from their parents, a judge ordered the children returned to their parents.
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."
It is hard to tell what is motivating the prosecution to continue with this case [see posts from 1/24/08 and 1/30/08] involving a 14-year-old autistic girl who has accused her father of rape. The girl cannot talk, but she uses a highly controversial communication technique called facilitated communication where a facilitator guides the hand of the girl over a keyboard and assists her in spelling out messages. Defense experts who testified at a hearing last week said that the communications are from the facilitator, not the girl, and that the technique has no scientific validity. The judge agreed that the technique is not scientific, but will hold another hearing on February 22, 2008, to determine the girl's competence. He did not disallow the use of facilitated communication.
An article in today's Detroit Free Press says that the girl's mother is asking a Family Court judge to remove her daughter from the school she is attending, because she is afraid the school and prosecutors are trying to influence the girl by coaching her. The article also reveals more about a hearing last week where even the prosecution's witness doubted the reliability of the communications from the girl:
[The Assistant Prosecutor Andrea] Dean sat red-faced during one hearing last week while an expert witness she had called, Dr. Sandra McClennen of Eastern Michigan University, voiced concerns about the prosecution's case, saying investigators ignored pleas to verify the claims with a second facilitator
...
Under questioning, McClennen said protocols call for abuse claims to be verified using a second facilitator who is unaware of the allegation. But after she explained the protocol to a social worker on the case, a West Bloomfield Police officer returned her call.
"The gist of it was, 'We don't want your services,' " McClennen testified.
The girl's father has been in jail since December 1st and the mother is free on bond with charges of neglect and witness tampering. This story is being reported by Free Press staff writers John Wisely and L.L. Brasier.
In Oakland County, Michigan, the father of a 14-year-old autistic girl was arrested for allegedly raping his daughter and the girl's mother has been accused of doing nothing to stop it. This was communicated by the girl, who does not talk, through the use of facilitated communication, a controversial technique where the person types out answers to questions on a keyboard while a facilitator holds the person's arm or wrist. (See the previous post from January 24, 2008).
On January28, 2008 a hearing was held to determine whether the girl's testimony would be permitted. The hearing was closed to the public and reporters, but reporters were able to view the testimony without sound from outside the courtroom. A demonstration was conducted to show the unreliability of facilitated communication. The facilitator, an aide from school, was briefly asked to leave the room while the girl was asked a question. Then the aide came back into the room to assist the girl in answering the questions. The girl was unable to answer any of the questions she was asked (such as what is the color of your sweater? and what is your brother's name?) when the facilitator did not hear the question.
Experts, including Howard Shane from the Center for Communication Disorders at Children's Hospital in Boston, testified that facilitated communication is unreliable and that scientific studies show that it is the facilitator who is doing the communicating, not the person with the disability.
Although the judge found "nothing scientific about facilitated communication at all", he will allow the girl to testify using it and will rule on her competency next month.
The Detroit Free Press reported on December 18, 2007 that a Bloomfield Hills couple has been charged with sexual abuse against their 14-year-old autistic daughter based on statements the girl made through Facilitated Communication. This controversial technique, which is intended to allow people with a variety of disabilities to communicate by typing out messages or pointing to pictures, involves a facilitator who holds the person's hand or wrist allowing the person to use an extended finger to type or point.
The girl in this case cannot speak, but was alleged to have said through a facilitator, an aide at the girl's school, that she was repeatedly raped by her father. The girl's 13-year-old brother has Asperger's syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. The brother, who is able to talk, reportedly said that he saw his father nude in the house and showering nude with his sister. There is no DNA evidence to back up the charges of rape. The only physical evidence comes from a nurse's report that the girl's hymen showed three "nonacute tears", indicating that there might have been sexual assault.
The controversy over Facilitated Communication involves the degree to which the communication is that of the facilitator rather than that of the disabled person. According to the the Detroit Free Press article, even advocates of the technique from the Facilitated Communication Institute at Syracuse University in New York have said that "...the use of facilitator boards has not met scientific standards of reliability for courtroom use."
From information known about this case, there appear to be inconsistencies in the record involving the autistic girl's communications through the facilitator: She claimed to have been repeatedly raped by her father since she was 6-years-old although her hymen shows only nonacute tears; she said that her parents visited her at the house of the family's rabbi where the girl is now living, and said they would be taking her to South Africa - the family's rabbi states that this did not happen and that she was never alone.
A second article about the case in the Detroit Free Press from December 19, 2007 says that the Family Court Judge has allowed the mother to have supervised visits with her son over the objections of the Oakland County prosecutors who want to terminate the parents' custody of their children. A hearing on custody is scheduled for February 5, 2008.
For more information on this topic, try a Google search for "Facilitated Communication abuse allegations".
