Anna Stubblefield Verdict Is Announced
Sex offenders aren't usually women, but there are notable exceptions
Today in Disability History, the verdict was announced on a very controversial trial. Anna Stubblefield, a white college professor, was found guilty of two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault of a disabled black man only known as DJ (one count for each time they’d had sex) and sentenced to 12 years in prison for each count, to be served concurrently.
Image Description: Scales of justice sitting on a wooden tabletop
DJ was in his 20s when his family approached Anna, approximately 10 years older than him, about teaching him how to express his thoughts using FC (facilitated communication). Because of spasms caused by cerebral palsy, DJ couldn’t walk unassisted, dress himself, or even sit in one position for very long. He had to wear diapers, and he couldn’t speak. Assessments showed that his IQ was very low.
Stubblefield was professor of ethics at Rutgers-New Jersey, whose academic interests included how IQ was a tool of oppression rooted in white supremacy, didn’t believe that DJ has as low an IQ as everyone believed. She used her FC certification to unlock DJ’s communication abilities:
Starting with her hand beneath his elbow, she helped him point at pictures, and then at letters, and eventually at the buttons of a Neo, a hand-held keyboard with a built-in screen. With his hand in hers, she helped him type out words after 30 years of silence. - New York Times Magazine, Oct 2015
DJ’s mother and brother were unstandably thrilled to have him communicating with them, but also a little suspcious. DJ wouldn’t type anything when they tried to facilitate, and his brother Wesley was concerned that personality coming out in DJ’s words contained too much of Stubblefield’s personality and and not enough of DJ’s. This tracks with even FC creator Janet Crossley’ questions at one point about whether she’d actually stumbled on something, or whether she was subconsciously moving the client’s hand and/or reading things into letter sequences that weren’t there.
However, FC not only became accepted, it took the disability world by storm in the late 80s. On Prime Time Live, Diane Sawyer called it a “miracle” and an “awakening” for non-verbal autistic children.
That is, until 1991, when FC started to produce sexual assault allegations - 60 by the end of 1994. Researchers started to test in earnest whether FC could be trusted, and dismissed it as pseudoscience, dangerous in that the it’s the supporter’s thoughts that are actually expressed (albeit unintentionally)
Stubblefield kept believing, though, and as she and DJ prepared an essay for a conference on FC, they acknowledged their developing romantic feelings for each other. They discussed the implications (Stubblefield’s marriage being the least of them) and decided to move ahead, hiding their relationship from DJ’s family. Eventually, though, Stubblefield told DJ’s brother and mother that they were in love. DJ confirmed this for the family, but only using the facilitated communication. After a period to process the shock, DJ’s brother and mother told Anna that she wasn’t to see him again.
Heartbroken, Anna continued to contact the family, trying to get them to let her see DJ. She promised that in five years she would leave her husband and marry DJ. She appealed to the director of DJ’s day program, prompting the family to go her Dean at Rutgers, and then the police.
In August, 2015, the trial started, and she was found guilty on Oct 2, 2015. She went to prison for two years, and then there more developments.
The Issue
No one’s saying that intellectually disabled people can’t have sex, because some of them certainly can - they understand what’s happening and can therefore legally grant or withhold consent. The state was arguing that DJ’s disability either prevented him legally consenting, despite Stubblefield’s insistence that he could and did, or made him powerless to stop her, and the jury agreed, based on what was presented about facilitated communication and whether it actually works, and assessments by doctors of whether DJ could consent to sex. Stubblefield’s defense team argued that they didn’t hear the whole story, though - a prohibition on the use of FC during the the trial made it so that the team couldn’t present the findings of its expert witness on whether DJ could consent.
The verdict was overturned on appeal in 2017 precisely because of the prohibition on FC in the original trial. There was almost a second trial, but Stubblefield pled guilty to a lesser charge, acknowleding that she knew at the time she and DJ had sex that she knew he couldn’t consent. She didn’t have to return to prison, but is on lifetime parole, had to register as a sex offender, and is paying a $4 000 000 settlement to the family because of a civil lawsuit.
This would be a disturbing story even if FC was 100% effective and supported by all the experts, and DJ was conclusively able to consent. The fact that Stubblefield got into a sexual relationship with a student (an especially vulnerable one) should on its own have been grounds for termination and trial. But she doesn’t seem to think that she did anything wrong. And if FC is indeed the communicator being manipulated to express the faciliator’s thoughts - was this not just Stubblefield talking to herself, in a sense?
I want to know why she did this, why she thought it was okay. But I agree with Judge John Zunic that we’ll probably never know.
Although there are still some institutions that practice FC, the following had rejected its use as of 2022:
American Academy of Child and Academic Psychiatry
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
American Psychiatric Association Council of Representatives
American Psychological Association
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Association for Behavior Analysis International
Association for Science in Autism Treatment
Federal Trade Commission
Heilpädagogische Forschung
Institute on Disability (IOD) at the University of New Hampshire
University of Northern Iowa
International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
New York State Department of Health
New Zealand Ministries of Health and Education
Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network
National Board of Health and Welfare, Sweden
Speech-Language and Audiology Canada
Speech Pathology Australia
Swedish Autism and Asperger Association
Victorian Advocacy League for Individuals and Disabilities Inc.
Let’s hope more join the list.
Please note that this is only a brief summary of what went on this case - The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield goes into it in much more detail, but may be upsetting for some readers.