[Music] these children cannot speak no one knows what's going on inside their heads they're autistic tonight on front line the explosive story of a revolutionary method of communication here was a means of expression for people who lacked expression here was a way that you could find out what people were feeling and what they were thinking Frontline investigates facilitated communication the theory the practice and the controversy my God it's really true this stuff is bogus it was just so clear and so unmistakable I was sitting there watching this what's 6times two tonight on front line prisoners of [Music] [Applause] Silence funding for Frontline is provided by The Corporation for Public broadcast tting and by annual financial support from viewers like you this is Frontline [Music] [Music] [Applause] every American child knows this song they can feel happy and they know what it is like to feel [Music] happy but to children growing up with a strange condition of autism like these at the Boston higashi School the words may not mean much at all something has gone wrong with their developing brains the children have a far way look generally they shun human [Music] contact the mysterious condition of autism affects close to 400,000 Americans most have little or no speech 80% are mentally while the condition can be treated there's no cure think any two numbers are multi until 3 years ago this was the generally accepted theory of autism but then a IAL and controversial new technique called facilitated communication took America by storm today thanks to facilitated communication Jeff Powell once written off as profoundly sits in class doing alra okay [Music] foil profoundly autistic Ben Lair can't speak but can type his thoughts to an audience of people feel like you need patient friends like Mike they fight for [Music] me Professor Douglas bin of Syracuse University thinks it the most important breakthrough in autism ever and is promoting it enthusiastically the theory of facilitated communication claims that many perhaps most autistic people are not but have intelligent Minds imprisoned in bad bodies are either for good go ahead delete did you want to delete that bin argues that autistic individuals like Ellen have many things to say but are unable to say them because her body will not do what her mind wants but with a little help or facilitation holding her hand wrist or elbow her body's often jerky movements can be smoothed out allowing her to type letters on a keyboard i n g when Douglas bin discovered the method during a visit to Melbourne Australia he realized that everything known about autism might be wrong I knew that I had seen something terribly important here was a means of expression for people who lacked expression here was a way that you could find out what people were feeling and what they were thinking and you know these were people who had a disability uh the very definition of which suggested that the people might not have feelings and certainly no ability to empathize with other people's feelings this was a disability the very definition of which was that people lacked imaginative ability well you know how do you do higher order mathematics without an imagination uh how do you write poetry without an imagination um so it's quite clear that this was a means of expression that was revolutionary the OD HEC center for the developmentally disabled in SKC New York runs a large autism program how are you doing with those before facilitated communication the staff never imagined that any of their non-verbal clients might be of normal intelligence but then speech pathologist Marian pitus heard about the new technique being promoted at Syracuse University pull it back together with her colleague Jimmy marusa she went to find out how it worked very good what's inside what are you going to get three of us went for the training first and we rapidly trained everyone in our program all three shifts and had many many clients typing at varying levels and with varying degrees of success but it spread very very quickly I thought it was wonderful at last we were going to we were going to help these people communicate we would find out what they really understood what's going on before they were just another person that I was helping with and teaching them some basic skills to help them survive out there but they here comes a person that can share their thoughts that can talk to me I can talk to them we can have a conversation that's relevant uh it was great it was really super I mean you couldn't ask for anything more all of a sudden these people that we always treated as low functioning were right up there with us huh put your hands down Ray paglieri the director of the autism program realized the enormous implications of the typed messages his clients were now producing I was thinking that certainly a large number if not all of the folks that we were working with May in fact have normal intelligence very nice we had people typing sentences paragraphs the like we were were thinking here we were going to redefine the whole notion of what autism is all about we trained uh the rest of our staff okay we literally were encouraging people to work with everybody in the program we were training as many people as we could training people out in the community I mean we're excited we looked at it as as literally a breakthrough technique so did the media prime time now from New York Diane Sawyer and now a story about Hope for decades autism has been a dark mystery a disorder that seems to turn children in on themselves against the world tonight however you are going to see something that has changed that call it a miracle call it an [Music] Awakening word of the new Miracle of facilitated communication spread rapidly parents told teachers and teachers told parents the system that carries matter from one place to another many schools embraced it at Edward Smith Elementary School in Syracuse children previously thought to be now sat in classes with their peers receiving age appropriate instruction studying math you got it studying biology plasma is correct PJ nice job maybe you can say what you want to point to a large group of individuals had in Bin's view been greatly underestimated simply because they could not speak or control their bodies once you show us and then you try to say that's good then you work on keeping that I had always believed that it was important to treat people as comp perfect even though they didn't give off the signs of it it to me that was just the the Humane thing to do that was the sensitive thing to do okay I'll give you high five the wonderful uh thing about facilitated communication is that once a person begins to communicate you can ask the person what's going on here excellent we got it right the words that emerged from the electronic communicators and letter boards spoke of loneliness of being trapped in a prison of Silence of slavery and of Freedom son for bin a simple technique had redefined an entire group of disabled people Jeff Powell for example is no longer seen by his teachers and peers as mentally he has become a celebrity at Baker High School in Syracuse they stress he's an academically gifted student who writes poetry for the school yearbook but some people had their doubts about facilitated communication Dr Howard Shane has devoted his life to helping disabled nonverbal people to communicate at Boston Children's Hospital he runs a center which finds technological solutions enabling disabled people like Tony bonfiglio who has cerebral py to communicate independently yeah he something right [Music] now we have this uh saying in our Center that no person is too physically disabled to be able to communicate the slightest movement um winking of an eye uh moving of an eyebrow uh sipping and puffing on a on a on a switch uh on a straw would control a switch um finding the that subtle movement is all you need to be able to control the the technology yes I have made many good friends thanks to computers thousands of non-verbal people can express themselves independently with such equipment available Shane questioned why should autistic people need another person to hold their hands bickland says autism is special last week I had uh conversations with several people one person said uh it slows me down it helps me by slowing me down when I'm not slowed down I get garbage I get unwanted words I get a lot of letters strung together that don't make a word uh when I'm slowed down I can type what I want but critics like Shane were amazed at the sophisticated output autistic children of five and six produced perfectly spelled sentences where had they learned to read and write a difficult question had to be faced was the typing coming from the autistic individual or from the facilitator the outcomes that were being reported were were just so far out of line with what anyone had ever found they're communicating in grammatically complete sentences the they're marking the tense correctly they spelling is accurate um they have insights that go far beyond their years understanding is so hard I long to see it real I just hope really hope it's not a lost ideal as I said many of the accounts uh coming from people with who are using facilitated communication as their means of expression uh have to do with loneliness I think it's rather obvious that the way in which uh these children learn to read was the way that most of us learned to read uh that is by being immersed in a language Rich environment uh you go into good preschool classrooms and you'll see words everywhere labeling objects labeling pictures uh you look at Sesame Street uh we're introducing words we're giving people uh whole words we're also introducing ing them to the alphabet on the other hand having said that it does seem to me that there's something unusual going on here when you see a number of children with autism who seem to have precocious ability that is they know a lot of words uh and very often you know quite uh long words you know how how is this is there something about the disability that allows them to focus in on language and to be able to put together uh uh words a very small number of autistic people Savant have spectacular abilities in narrow areas the 17th of December 1974 it was a thday the 10th of June 1917 it was a a sun day the 1st of March 20 44 a [Applause] be Noel only needs to hear a tune once and he's able to play [Music] it try try it [Music] now if such astonishing abilities existed for music and math why not for literacy as [Music] well to parents and professionals facilitated communication had given hope where there was none they flocked to Syracuse by the Thousand to learn from Douglas bin and his staff at the newly founded facilitated communication Institute welcome to the 1993 conference on facilitated Communication in Syracuse sponsored by the facilitated communication Institute at Syracuse University many parents had long to know what their silent autistic children were thinking had longed to have conversations with them facilitated communication appeared to be a dream come true she had been tested in the past and they said she had an IQ under 10 and I believed it was a little higher than that but not much higher and when I heard about facilitated communication I said granted it might work with some people but I doubt that and I'm sure it won't work with her it was a college student who started it with her and I watched her twice and I couldn't believe what I was seeing since then Sharice has typed 120 poems nine short stories she talks about everything she feels this past year in October 92 a wonderful person came into her life uh who had gone through Doug Bin's program here at Syracuse University and she believed in facilitative communication and she said do you know Stacy right and I just I cried I couldn't believe it I said no no you're wrong this is my kid she she's learned six signs her whole life this can't be true but she kept she kept at it she said Kathy she's telling me this and she's telling me that and you've got to see it so one day she came over to the house and uh she said Stacy I know you're excited after all these years you must have something you want to tell Mom and she and Stacy types up I love you Mom speech pathologists social workers and teachers felt just as passionately that FC had changed everything it's changed the theory of autism alone and that's pretty significant because we what we've known as autism is almost completely different it's almost like the the label or term itself needs to be redefined because there are certain words that that are under autism under the dsm3 there's this this this and this while we find that once we open this world for the kids they are social now they are appropriate they do have language they do understand l lead and Advocates claimed FC didn't just work for autism but for Down syndrome and other forms of mental retardation as well by 1993 thousands of parents teachers speech path ologists and care workers have been trained as facilitators the foot soldiers in a new social movement what he doing but some families had their doubts about the numerical technique like the gerardis from Pike New Hampshire whose 17-year-old son Matt is autistic was about 2 years ago when someone mentioned that Dr bin was giving some seminars on this facilitated communication the speech and language teacher at Matthew's school was there and she just couldn't wait to get back and start with Matthew Matt who could then only recognize about 50 words went to school and his teachers began using FC in the classroom almost overnight his academic work improved dramatically Cathy gerardi became suspicious of his new academic achievements he was taking all kinds of Shakespeare literature Romeo and Juliet and he was in algebra class although he didn't fear that well in algebra but English diagramming sentences um the work that he was coming home was absolutely incredible incredible I mean um getting A's in some of these classes that I know I would have a hard time getting A's in what seemed especially odd was that Matt wouldn't facilitate with his mother at that point I was frantically trying to communicate with him at home you know I'm saying gosh if he's talking to these people why isn't he talking to his mom you know he and I have been best friends bu and buddies I mean I'm his life and he's mine you know surely we can be able to communicate and absolutely got nothing as a matter of fact he would take his board and and bring it and put it in his bag put in his closet and say finished you help yourself wow while the gerardis got on with their life reconciled that FC didn't work at least for them Matthew's School continued using it enthusiastically one day at school Matthew and his facilitator special education teacher Susan Rand had a conversation but it wasn't about Shakespeare later that day Susan Rand wrote down the conversation and reported it to the authorities she handed me a piece piece of paper actually two pieces of paper and um said these are the things that he said and I just scanned through the paper and I was just in shock of some of the language that was on the paper and I I said it's impossible it's absolutely impossible and it was at that point she made it very clear to me that this was real it was real that they had a warrant from my husband's arrest and um they were going to send Matthew to the hospital for an exam they were telling me that Matthew may have to go to a a home and um a foster home and I I told him I said there's no way he's going to go to a foster home I said he hasn't been anywhere else except our home there's no way he's going to go to a foster home and I was told that I may have no choice in the matter there may not be no choice and it was at that point that I realized I had no control Jerry gerardi a pharmacist at the veterans hospital was working late that day and knew nothing of this until he arrived home I got home about 9:30 I pulled into my driveway and Kathy came rushing down the driveway and started to talk to me she immediately told me not to go into the house that there was a warrant out for my arrest that allegations were made that I had sexually abused Matthew and I was not not allowed near Matthew nor was I allowed to go into the house forced out of his home Jerry gerardi spent the next 6 months living at a friend's house his family life destroyed because of the letters on the board despite the fact that there was no other evidence of abuse the school the social services and the police all believed that the words had come from Matthew yet Jerry gerardi protested complete innocence I told Kathy there's got to be something wrong it has to be happening someplace else we have to call up the Autism Society in Washington and find out if they had any literature on facilitated Communications and allegations of sexual abuse when she called them up they immediately sent us materials and in this these materials it showed it was happening all over the country there were cases in California in Texas in Georgia in Indiana in Oklahoma in New York the accused included parents teachers care workers some like Jerry gerardi had been forced to leave home some ended up in jail some parents had their children taken away this is what happened last January to a family in Southern Maine Betsy Wheaton a 17-year-old autistic girl began using FC at school in 1992 one day using a letter board Betsy and her facilitator wrote that everybody in her family her father mother grandparents and brother were sexually abusing her Betsy and her brother were immediately put in foster care while the case was investigated the court appointed a local attorney Phil Warden as Betsy's legal guardian Warden realized that this was more difficult than the usual abuse case before considering whether the allegations were true the court had to decide a more fundamental question was Betsy the author of the allegations or had they come from her facilitator I was most worried in in my heart about where we going to do justice in this case if the communications real and she was being abused the idea that on a legal technicality we might send the children back would be just absolutely horrible on the other hand if these were not real Communications the idea that all this would happen to these family and these children on a bogus idea was also unacceptable so to my mind the stakes were extremely high on both sides and it was very important that we reach a quality decision based on the truth and so you know what I was looking for was a clean simple and fairly quick way to just solve that one narrow question were these communications coming from the children all the parties agreed to invite an expert in communication to come and assess Betsy they chose Dr Howard Shane from The Boston Children's Hospital be Dr Shane how are you nice to meet you okay folks what I'm going to be doing now Shane had devised a double blind test like this to objectively determine who was authoring the messages Betsy or the facilitator who transcribed the allegations he showed both a series of pictures and asked them to type what they saw Betsy sure you looking at when both Betsy and her facilitators saw a picture of a key the letters k e y were typed now but Shane wanted to discover what happened if each saw a different picture okay when Betsy saw a cup she didn't type cup she typed hat what the facilitator saw here we go I'll take a look at this one I want you to tell me what you see okay when Betsy was shown a picture of a dog she didn't type dog but sneakers what the facilitator saw okay okay want take a look at that one when Betsy was shown a boat she didn't type boat but sandwich what the facilitator saw okay here's the next one it was just devastating to watch because what you saw was the words being typed out were the words the facilitator had sing and it was just it was just so clear and so unmistakable I was sitting there watching this and say my God it's really true this stuff is bogus what I found was that whenever the pictures were different I always received the type message that was seen by the facilitator so that was pretty strong evidence that Not only was Betsy not communicating but the messages were being absolutely totally directed and authored by the facilitator on Betsy Shane then tried a message passing test he took Betsy out into the corridor and showed her an object out of sight of her facilitator come on Betsy now I'm going to show you something take a look at this you take this now what is that give it back to me we're going to back in I want you to tell everybody what I showed you when we went back into the room she was unable to type the word key I then took another key out of my pocket and said with the facilitator present what is this and she immediately typed key so again it suggests that when the facilitator is aware of the information we get uh the answer but when the facilitator is unaware of the information we don't get an answer the only logical conclusion of the test was that the terrible accusations had been authored not by Betsy but by her facilitator the wheatens are now reunited the facilitator devastated by the test results stopped using facilitated communication and persuaded Betsy's school to stop using it as well after using FC for over a year the OD heex Center and connect began discussing whether they should do their own test of facilitated communication my first reaction was why would we ever want to test it it's working we there were things that people that individuals who typed with me typed that I didn't remember consciously being aware of so I thought well that's proof enough why should we need to test these people it's their communication all right find the one that's the same let's put it right in front of you but just and thinking about it I then I wanted the research to be done because I thought it would prove once and for all without a doubt that it was these people communicating and that we were not influencing them in any way shape or form I was convinced that it would prove their communication a team of psychologists and facilitators led by Doug wheeler devised a rigorous double blind test well this is what we had in mind it's a just a simple T device the table split down the middle uh myself as a researcher I can stand back here and I'm pretty much out of view of the the facilitator and autistic individual sat side by side with a screen divid iding their visual field sometimes they were shown the same picture sometimes different ones they tested 12 clients facilitating with nine staff members many who were trained in Syracuse they ran dozens of Trials the results were shocking we literally really didn't get one correct response I mean it was unbelievable really given given you know our prior belief systems about the whole thing we had we ran 180 trials there were 180 trials where valid communication could have been demonstrated and none none did we had overwhelming evidence for facilitator control that was the main finding it's a woman and it began to Dawn on us that the impact on the facilitators was going to be uh traumatic um their belief had grown to such an extent and was continuing to grow at that point where it really had become an essential part of their belief system an essential part of their personality and people would use phrases like FC is my whole life uh FC is my life uh these people were dedicated they spent their own money doing training they spent their own money to buy Canon communicators um the dedication was uh was phenomenal and we and we had evidence that these people were all controlling the typing and we were cons we knew it was unconscious we knew these people had no idea they were controlling it that that was clear so uh yeah we began to be very concerned it was devastating to to see the data just there in black and white in front of you it was mind-boggling there was no arguing it it was clearcut um to see the look on Doug's face seated across the table from me someone who I work with with whose opinion I trust whose work I trust I knew you couldn't argue I couldn't argue with those results it was it was devastating to look at it and see it there in black and white in front of me it's like taking your best friend and going out and uh they're getting hit by a car and they're dead I had the same effect it's just like going through the death process I mean all of a sudden you're slapped with this thing it's not there it's a belief it's something that's ingrained to me I believe this this is I centered a lot of things around this and now all of a sudden no it's not okay life at OD heck returned to the way it had been before facilitated communication the clients learned the life skills they would need to survive outside no longer were they expected to express their thoughts and wishes in complex sentences was like something had been taken away very very suddenly and I didn't know what to replace it with it took took me I think months before I could talk about it with some people without breaking down in tears a copy of the OD HEC report was sent to Douglas bin in Syracuse I think that test has severe problems I mean one you're putting people in what might be described as a confrontational situation that is they're being asked to prove themselves uh as I pointed out confidence appears to be a critical element uh in the method uh if people are anxious uh they may in fact freeze up in their ability to respond they may lose confidence they may feel uh inadequate if there was a bias it was a bias in terms of proving that it was real I mean we selected cards that people experienced in their everyday lessons we ensured that the individuals participating were paired with the facilitators they had the most success with uh we tried to make the setting As Natural as uh as it could be uh we encourage people to bring the reinforcers that they use in their oral normal everyday lives uh turn total control over in terms of say to the facilitators if the person wasn't comfortable that day they they could stop it whenever they wanted to more studies came out the results of this case study demonstrate quite clearly that the subject was not able to communicate using the facilitated communication techniques no client showed unexpect Ed literacy or communicative abilities when tested via the facilitator screening procedure even after 20 hours of training considerable evidence was found of the facilitators influencing the attempts at communication none of the 23 participants demonstrated authorship there has been no instance in which a participant has successfully identified an object through FC these results suggest that the communications previously reported from individuals with autism may have been influenced by facilitator co-activity FC had claimed to unlock expressive literacy and non-verbal autistic individuals under controlled scientific conditions that literacy vanished to date over a dozen studies involving hundreds of children and researchers in three different countries have reported negative findings but bin remains unconvinced a number of these Studies have asked people to name objects or name pictures it turns out that uh for people with Autism and some other developmental disabilities uh a number of people experience very severe word finding problems such that you ask uh people to label an object and they can't do it they may be able to describe the object even State what it's for uh but quite typically they in fact come out with a different name of a different object but researchers asked was it possible that a child who can write poetry and do Algebra would be unable to label a cup and they questioned why autistic individuals who had appeared on national television and addressed crowds at Syracuse conventions would all be so nervous that none of them would get a single answer [Music] right despite mounting evidence most supporters of facility ated communication especially parents like Maryanne Kalin who wrote this song about FC were undaunted they had invested their hopes and dreams in FC and had their own proof that it worked at least for their [Music] children my validation that it was Stacy who is communicating came a few weeks ago now my husband has his attitude about her and he's found out that if he does this it absolutely makes her laugh she she just goes crazy he wiggles his nose so now when they greet each other it's like this and so now she's in love with Dad and I've been trying to teach her how to type out dad and I will admit that yes I am taking her hand and I am going d a d and I'm please States let's learn how to do dad and she won't learn dad but one day Dad wasn't in the house and she came came home and she's looking around trying to find out where he is and so she goes uh uh uh and she gets her bored and she starts pointing at the board and I said what do you want to tell me what do you want to tell me and she typed out I Ms no oos I said what are you saying and it's simple it's shorthand I miss NOS we have been trying to teach her the word for dead and has created her own word for [Music] Dad I don't need any more validation my son has given me a lot of information uh much of which uh I didn't know a lot of it been about what he wanted and it's turned out that that's what he did want he asked even for a trip to Hawaii and he sat for good as gold on the plane for 5 hours to Hawaii and occasionally he tells me something I didn't suspect effect like at the restaurant a few weeks ago he said he typed out look at her main m n e well I looked and the waitress had a [Music] ponytail parents attitudes to the scientific studies were summed up in a statement typed by Jeff Powell and read by his facilitator Sue harns regarding recent controversy about facilitated communication we are extremely angry about the well-to-do critics who are giving a dog a disheartening review we are the ones saying the words and we are questioning the expertise of you and your compassion for autistic students and please encourage us and Doug to be able to become a part of your world and get the hell out of our world [Applause] but there was now too much at stake whether FC was true or false had become a matter of great public interest FC networks had been established in 38 States millions of dollars of public money were being spent providing facilitators in schools and adult centers you got it Michael nice job good plans were being made for people to take their facilitators to college and even into the work place all this had happened without any public debate again from public prosecutors to special Educators from social workers to parents in their enthusiasm to adopt facilitated communication they had chosen to overlook a number of things about FC that simply didn't make sense Skeptics wondered how thousands of autistic people could have taught themselves to read and write just by watching television and why should disabled individuals who can point by themselves need someone to hold their hands to type regret and most significantly they point out why is it that most of the time most of the autistic individuals are not looking at the keyboard no it's certainly true that a touch typist can type without looking at the keyboard Connie chisari star graduate of the Katherine Gibbs School can type 100 words a minute without looking she has memorized the layout of the keys but before starting she registers her hands in a home position this is her reference Frontline wanted to see if she could type with one finger without looking despite her intimate knowledge of the keyboard board she can't nobody can without a reference it's just impossible you can't be a one-finger typist and not look at the keyboard you you just can't get oriented you don't have a home position and when you watch children who are you FC facilitated communication users they may not be looking at the language board look the board but the facilitators are not taking their eyes from it they're fixed on it what's 6 * 2 good okay space what's 12 * 12 + one we carried the one remember what's 12 + 1 excellent give me five okay plus one you carries the one how are you what's 12 + one what's 5 * 5 Doug bin admits that typing without looking is impossible so what's going on in the Syracuse schools problem it's not good technique it's very sloppy and I think it really raises questions about that particular uh typing and as well it should and what we need to do is to harp on uh facilitators to monitor eyes it's it's a lot for people to manage but I think we have to do it but does the facilitated communication Institute practice what it preaches in the conference last May anet Schubert arguably the most expert facilitator in the world gave a seminar on the importance of clients looking at the keyboard doing are able to work with less support is there anything you want to share with me about it yet minutes afterwards she was in the corridor talking to a man with his eyes closed and a letter board moving around in the air and even when Doug bin was present we filmed Jeff Powell typing while looking at the ceiling something bin concedes is impossible as bin admits this is a serious matter if the autistic individuals are not looking the and the facilitators are effectively putting words into their mouths scientists in Australia had warned bin of such dangers this videotape especially concerned them Rosemary Crosley the founder of FC is facilitating with a head injury victim in a coma to make a very important decision about where he will live because the man is in a coma his head pointer barely moves throughout the tape by drawing a line on the screen it is easy to see that Rosemary Crosley is ever so slowly moving the board I don't think they're doing it consciously but they're absolutely manipulating these individuals and they're communicating for them and I don't think that that's uh uh I don't think that's acceptable I don't think that other people have the right to communicate for someone else the scientific evidence suggested that far from unlocking the minds of autistic individuals FC tapped the unconscious thoughts of the facilitator the process Skeptics say is not unlike what goes on with a Ouija board as letters are built up hypotheses are formed about what comes [Music] next the facilitator who attributes the output to the autistic individual is unaware they are controlling the typing the autistic individual becomes so sensitized to respond to Tiny cues that they become an amplif fire for the facilitators unconscious you TT do you ever have a nightmare that instead of liberating people FC might end up enslaving them yeah that that worries me that worries me that that people would be in some way um you know that people are being influenced there there's over there there's interpretation of things that you know uh we see that happening and it troubles me it troubles me I think it's terrible did he you in your mouth no did he toes but what explains the high number of facilitated abuse allegations While most courts have refused to accept FC as genuine communication earlier this year a judge in Witchita Kansas allowed a non-verbal autistic boy to give testimony through FC did he your butt yes yes yes why the facilitator is making these allegations on behalf of the child I don't know um whether they've been abused themselves uh I don't have any any sense of that maybe they've been persuaded if you look at the uh the literature from um Syracuse University they're suggesting that 10% of make that 133% of the the children in their initial study had alleged that they had been sexually abused now if I attended a conference and I was told that 133% of the people in the initial study had been sexually abused I'd go home and wonder well maybe my students are being sexually abused so maybe this maybe the idea is being planted Syracuse University is now in the position of having an Institute dedicated to researching teaching and promoting a technique that all the scientific evidence says is not real the university even has seven students doing research thesis on facilitated communication a well-meaning social movement aimed at giving voice to a group of disabled individuals has developed into a bitter controversy which some critics have dubbed the cold fusion of Human Services they ask why millions of dollars were spent on a technique without first proving it worked and if unproven why did thousands of autistic children waste Precious Years sitting in advanced classes instead of more appropriate education these are also the questions families like the gerardis are asking would she bite say don't bite families whose lives have been turned upside down by FC after nine Court appearances Social Services carried out a controlled test of Matthew which proved he wasn't capable of authoring the accusations against his father last February the prosecutor dropped the case and the family was reunited to continue with their lives the facilitator left the state but the school continues to believe in FC no one has ever apologized in fact to this day we still sense that the administration at the high school will never admit that they were wrong they want to continue to to say that facilitated communication is successful if a new drug had just been discovered it wouldn't be something that would be just thrown out into to the market it would take years of studies before this medication would be marketed it's the same way facilitated communication should be treated I mean why should that be thrown out in in people's lives uh devastated because it's they're trying it out on on us guinea pigs okay go ahead go I think a lot of parents are grabbing at STW and I'm hoping that facilitated Communications is going to be the answer for them and I think they've been blinded by it and I I feel for these people these parents that believe in it because I certainly can understand where they're coming from but until we face it head on and do more scientific investigations of it then these poor parents out there are going to be are going to be in the dark over over what's actually happening to their child I know for myself I wanted so hard to believe that it was real that I wasn't able to listen to objective thinking about it because it grabs you emotionally right here and once you're hooked I mean you are hooked it you just I don't think I was capable of rationally thinking about it because I had Clues even before we did our study um that there was facilitator influence taking place in other places people had done studies in Australia and I said oh we that doesn't happen here we aren't using the same we aren't using it the same way we aren't holding letter boards in the air we have them down on the table so therefore that Limits The Influence that could be taking place while I was dead wrong it was amazing to me to see how willing people are to abandon their beliefs and adopt a new belief without verification and and do that virtually overnight that because it happened to myself and when I think back on it if I had just thought about the literature on autism and and thought about the studies I was familiar with I would have known that that the phenomenon of FC was illogical that it probably couldn't exist but I was so caught up in the emotionality of it and it just taught me a lot about human nature despite everything Douglas bin and the Syracuse facilitated communication Institute remain committed to FC they believe that time will prove them right I don't say I'll refuse to accept any amount of evidence I've never said that what amount of evidence would you accept John what I've said is we already have some evidence that this is for real I think the challenge is can we demonstrate it for you know each person who's using it that's the challenge it's very easy to fail in one's attempt to demonstrate something it's usually more difficult to be successful so it almost doesn't matter how many instances of uh failed studies we have what we need with any one individual are instances where the person uh succeeded when he gets to the letter that he wants he hits the switch as he just did hot I know it's really hot in here isn't it oh thanks Tony and Tony just told us he's hot now uh Tony's been coming I've tried to find a middle ground I don't know what the middle ground is year or so either it works or it doesn't work it doesn't work so we have to abandon it abandoning it means that we just go back to come back to where we are come back to [Music] [Music] reality one day the mysterious condition of autism will be understood and researchers may find a cure until then as the the evidence against facilitated communication accumulates a painful question remains whether parents and those who care deeply about autistic individuals are choosing to see them as they would like them to be rather than respecting them for who they are [Music] n [Music] [Applause] funding for Frontline is provided by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual Financial support from viewers like you Frontline is produced for the documentary Consortium by wgb Boston which is solely responsible for its content this is PBS