STORY: " knew it was false," by reporter Michael MacDonald, published by the National Post on July 2, 2016.
SUB-HEADING: "It's about facilitation. You are believing what you hear from a third party. - Police transcript from the interrogation of man whose non-verbal, severely autistic daughter allegedly accused him of sexual assault.
SUB-HEADING: "Facilitated communication in spotlight in family's battle over sexual assault allegation."
GIST: "When the P.E.I. businessman arrived at the
group home in Charlottetown to pick up his daughter, two solemn RCMP
officers were waiting for him. He immediately assumed his daughter was dead. “In
those few seconds, I visualized a pile of bloody rags on the road,
which was her body run over by a truck,” he says, his voice shaking. The officers assured him the young woman was fine.
But his sense of relief fell away when the Mounties handcuffed him, saying she had accused him of sexually assaulting her. “I
said, ‘Obviously, there’s a mistake here, there’s a communication
problem,“’ he said in a recent interview. “I knew it was false.”.........The
Canadian Press is not identifying the family because of the nature of
the allegations and the young woman’s vulnerable state. She has severe
autism, is virtually non-verbal and has the intellectual capacity of a
two-year-old. Independent psychological
testing, later arranged by her family despite resistance from the
province and group home, found she was incapable of making the
allegations attributed to her. The
clinical psychologist who did the testing said it demonstrated that
questions put to the woman were actually being answered by group home
workers using a disputed method known as facilitated communication. The father was never charged. However,
a judge later concluded the province’s Health Department and the group
home acted in a “deplorable” manner by repeatedly ignoring the parents’
attempts to have their daughter’s communication skills independently
assessed. The P.E.I. Supreme Court, in a
decision released in March, found the actions of then-health minister
Doug Currie were unreasonable, and that his office failed in its
legislated duty to conduct an investigation.........The
case in P.E.I. is an echo of a disturbing trend that first appeared in
the early 1990s, when there was a string of cases of non-verbal people
apparently using facilitated communication (FC) to accuse family members
of sexual abuse. A subsequent study of
these cases, by London-based psychiatrist Elizabeth Starr, found that
not one resulted in a conviction because it could not be shown that
independent communication was taking place. “In
the meantime, families have faced stigma and humiliation, and have
incurred enormous legal bills,” Starr wrote in 1994. “What began as a
potential tool of empowerment and independence ... has become a tool of
devastating destruction when uncritically adopted.” The
woman’s parents, who are speaking out for the first time, say those
responsible for their agonizing ordeal should be held accountable for
their actions. More importantly, they say they want to make sure no
other family suffers a similar fate.
Their
daughter was diagnosed with autism when she was about three years old.
By the time she entered junior high school, facilitated communication
was among a long list of therapies they had tried. “Nothing
we had used up to that point was working, and we always tried whatever
we could,” her mother says. “Looking back on it, we wanted to believe.” First
introduced to North America in the early 1990s, facilitated
communication was initially hailed as a breakthrough for those unable to
speak or write on their own. The
technique involves an aide holding the user’s wrist, finger or arm as
they point to letters or type on a keyboard. The theory behind FC is
that the support calms and steadies the user, unlocking a previously
hidden ability to communicate. However,
more than 40 scientific studies have shown that, in all but a handful
of cases, facilitators unconsciously guided the hand of the FC user,
says Eastern Michigan University Prof. James Todd, a longtime critic of
the technique. Despite widespread skepticism within the scientific community, supporters of FC say the method works. The
Institute on Communication and Inclusion at Syracuse University in
Upstate New York – a leading force in the FC movement – says problems
with FC are typically caused by failure to adhere to best practices. The
institute, in a statement released last fall, said facilitators must be
taught how to confirm authorship. As well, the institute stressed that
FC is a training method used as a stepping stone to independent
communication. “The goal is always a fading of that (physical) support toward independent access of a device,” the statement says. However,
the woman in the P.E.I. case never graduated to that level. In 2001,
she was using FC when she moved to a group home at the age of 21. At the
time, the technique was used mainly for basic communication about meals
and other simple choices, her father says..........In
the fall of 2014, they say they were stunned when they were told their
daughter had apparently used FC to say she wanted to have sex with a
group home worker.
“I cautioned them
about facilitation,” the mother said in an interview. “I said, ‘Is there
a problem? Could there be something going on?“’ They were told not to
worry because the male staff member was married, she says..........A
police transcript of the interview says the facilitators offered
graphic details, saying the woman was forced to perform various sex
acts. But the parents say police failed to notice signs suggesting the interview was flawed. In
the video, the alleged victim rarely looks at her letter board as she
moves around the room, her parents say. And some of the facilitated
answers to basic, personal questions were wrong, including an answer to a
question about the name of the family’s pet dog. “She would do five taps and they would come out with a long sentence as to what she said,” her mother says. “We were horrified.” The
father was arrested after returning from a family vacation. During a
police interrogation that day, he denied abusing his daughter and
insisted the allegations did not come from her, according to a police
transcript. “It’s about facilitation,”
he told McQuaid, the RCMP’s lead investigator. “You are believing what
you are hearing from a third party.”
The
father was released on a promise to appear later in court to face a
sexual assault charge and a charge of sexual exploitation of a disabled
person. He signed an undertaking saying he would refrain from contacting
his daughter or anyone under the age of 18. As
the RCMP investigation progressed, there were signs the Mounties may
have had doubts about what they had heard through FC. An internal report
dated Feb. 12, 2015 – five days after the arrest – says investigators
wanted to conduct a second interview with the woman, this time with an
impartial facilitator. But that never happened. When
a speech pathologist arrived at the RCMP detachment on March 13, 2015,
the alleged victim was “unwilling to communicate,” McQuaid’s report
says, offering no details. An RCMP
spokeswoman said investigators sought advice from an expert, but Sgt.
Leanne Butler declined to offer details about the Mounties’
investigation, citing privacy concerns..........In
a terse email to his lawyers, the father said: “We are devastated at
this recent news. (My wife) is incapable of functioning now! They have
done a great job of destroying this family.”Their
lawyers moved into high gear, reaching out to experts to determine the
woman’s ability to communicate through FC. But they, too, ran into a
brick wall. The province repeatedly failed to respond to requests to have her skills put to the test, court records show. Finally,
on June 10, 2015, clinical psychologist Dr. Adrienne Perry – an expert
on autism and developmental disabilities at York University in Toronto –
conducted a series of tests to determine the woman’s abilities. Images
from a videotaped, 90-minute session clearly show how the woman rarely
looked at her alphabet board when pointing to the letters. Perry
estimated her eyes were focused elsewhere 90 per cent of the time. More
importantly, the psychologist found facilitator Jennifer Hendricken
couldn’t help the woman answer the simplest of questions, unless
Hendricken already knew the answers. At
one point, the woman was shown a small figurine – a pink pony – while
Hendricken was out of the room. When Hendricken returned, the woman was
asked to use FC to describe what she had seen. The
first facilitated answer was: “I seen a picture of a ball.” Asked
again, the answer was: “A picture of a kid.” After Hendricken was told
it was actually a pony, the woman was asked to describe its colour. The
facilitated answer? “Black.Other tests produced similar results. “Thus,
(the woman) was not able to convey any information about what she had
seen when the facilitator was unaware of the information and, further,
all the information that was produced through FC was false,” Perry
concluded. “(She) is incapable of
generating the communications that are being attributed to her.
Furthermore, validity testing of FC used with (her) demonstrates that it
is not (her) doing the communicating but that answers are being
generated by the facilitator.”......... Despite
those assertions, a Crown attorney filed a stay of proceedings in the
father’s case on June 26, 2015. But it would be another month before
Currie withdrew his protection order. The
parents were appointed guardians July 30, 2015, and reunited with their
daughter two days later in the group home’s parking lot. “They
never showed any remorse for their disgusting behaviour and ...
(there’s) still no apology from anyone at (the group home) or
government,” the father says. The parents later sued the Health Department to recover some of their legal costs. In
a written submission, the parents’ lawyers argued that the health
minister could not realistically claim he didn’t know that facilitated
communication is, in their words, a “hoax.” “Anyone
with access to an Internet connection can determine in a matter of
seconds that there is no more evidence to support the validity of FC
than there is to show the Earth is flat,” their court brief says. On March 9, 2016, Judge Nancy Key of P.E.I. Supreme Court awarded the parents more than $61,000. “The
minister of health refused to carry out his statutorily mandated
obligations to the detriment and great expense, both emotional and
financial, of the ... family,” Key’s decision says. “Even
a cursory review of the studies of facilitated communication would have
alerted the minister of health to the very real possibility the
communications of (the woman) were not her communications.” The
court did not take a position on the validity of FC, but the decision
clearly states that the technique did not work in this case. Had
the woman’s caregivers or the health minister followed the legislation
requiring an investigation, “it would have become clear very early on
... (the) communications were not the communications of (the woman) but
were the communications of the facilitators,” the decision says. The parents say their legal bills have exceeded $200,000. “Most
families would crumble, fall apart and be in a mental institution long
before this,” the father says. “The sleeplessness, the anxiety and
there’s a feeling that someone needs to be punished here ... There were
people who didn’t do their jobs, who were grossly negligent.” His
wife added: “Our objective is that we hope no other family ever has to
go through this. There’s a danger that still lurks there.”"
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/familys-nightmare-court-battle-prompts-pei-health-department-review/article30700315/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/familys-nightmare-court-battle-prompts-pei-health-department-review/article30700315/
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The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty
incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the
harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into
pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology
system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent
stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
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Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
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