Strange Country Ep. 170: Facilitated Communication

In the early '90s, facilitated communication was the big breakthrough. It was finally a way for nonverbal people to communicate their innermost thoughts while getting an assist from a facilitator. But then it started to become more clear that it was the facilitator who was actually communicating, and communicating some horrific allegations of sexual abuse, leading many upstanding organizations to denounce facilitated communication as a pseudoscience. Yet it still gets practiced. In this episode, cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about the story of Anna Stubblefield and DJ, and a "romance" concocted through facilitated communication. Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands Cite your sources: Boynton, Janyce. "Facilitated Communication—what Harm It Can Do: Confessions of a Former Facilitator." Evidence-Based Communication Assessment & Intervention, vol. 6, no. 1, Mar. 2012, pp. 3–13. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/17489539.2012.674680. Burke, Michael. "Double Talk: Syracuse University Institute Continues to Use Discredited Technique with Dangerous Effects." The Daily Orange, 23 Dec. 2016, dailyorange.com/2016/04/double-talk-syracuse-university-institute-continues-to-use-discredited-technique-with-dangerous-effects/. Connolly, Kate. "Trapped in His Own Body for 23 Years - the Coma Victim Who Screamed Unheard." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 23 Nov. 2009, www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/23/man-trapped-coma-23-years. DiGiovanni, Janine. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: The Mistress, the Wife and the Film That Got It Wrong." The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 30 Nov. 2008, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/30/diving-bell-butterfly-florence-bensadoun. Elliott, James. "Why Hasn't a Controversial Method for Autism Communication Disappeared?" The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 22 Aug. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/a-controversial-method-for-autism-communication/491810/. Engber, Daniel. "The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield." The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 20 Oct. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/the-strange-case-of-anna-stubblefield.html. Engber, Daniel. "The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield, Revisited." The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/magazine/the-strange-case-of-anna-stubblefield-revisited.html. "Facilitated Communication and Rapid Prompting Method." American Association of Intellectual and Development Disabilities, 9 Jan. 2019, www.aaidd.org/news-policy/policy/position-statements/facilitated-communication-and-rapid-prompting-method. "Facilitated Communication: Sifting the Psychological Wheat from the Chaff." American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/research/action/facilitated. Ovalle, David, and Kyra Gurney. "How a Teacher's 'Junk Science' Landed a Dad in Jail on Charge of Raping His Autistic Son." Miamiherald, Miami Herald, 8 Mar. 2018, www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article204034704.html. Palfremen, Jon, director. Prisoners of Silence. Frontline, PBS, 19 Oct. 1993, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOqIMT4YqnY.