From the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News:

Charges were dismissed this week in a Michigan criminal case that hinged on sexual assault allegations made by a 15-year-old girl through facilitated communication. The girl, who has autism, is nonverbal.

Her father had been accused of raping her, and spent 80 days in jail before prosecutors agreed to release him on bond. His wife had also faced child abuse charges related to not stopping the alleged rapes, but prosecutors dropped her case, too, saying the girl refused to testify. The couple has not been named to protect the identify of their daughter.

The case was controversial from its beginning because the 15-year-old girl, who cannot speak, made the claims through facilitated communication, a widely discredited method of communication in which a teaching aide helps such students type words into a keyboard. Experts testified that scientific evaluations of the method have proven that the teaching aide, consciously or unconsciously, authors the messages.

… Defense attorneys insisted the rape claims were nonsense because the girl couldn’t communicate independently. Over two days of hearings in January, the girl failed to answer questions correctly when asked out of earshot of her facilitator. Prosecutors noted the parents strongly advocated facilitated communication before the rape claims were made.

Earlier post: Facilitated communication at issue in sexual abuse trial

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 6:33 am and is filed under autism, criminal justice, intellectual/developmental disabilities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post