What Happens when FC-Generated Allegations of Abuse Get to Court?

Today, I want to discuss the topic of false allegations of abuse made by facilitators using FC. I’ll return to my review of the Rogan/Dickens interview in upcoming blog posts. And, while it may seem like I’m taking a sharp detour away from my critique of Dickens and The Telepathy Tapes, FC-generated allegations of abuse were discussed in the podcast a couple times, though it was not a featured topic.

Image by Harry Shelton

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, false allegations of abuse have plagued FC since its inception. Founder Rosemary Crossley and eight of her trained facilitators were involved in some of the first false allegations of abuse cases in Australia. (See Paul Heinrich’s articles below). As “touch-based” FC evolved into the “no-touch” forms of FC we’re seeing today (e.g., Spelling to Communicate/S2C, Rapid Prompting Method/RPM, Spellers Method), proponents convinced themselves that the false allegations of abuse had stopped. They have not.

I suspect people think that these false allegations of abuse cases can’t happen with S2C/RPM (or other “no-touch” forms of FC) for a couple reasons:

1. Proponents believe that with the so-called “no touch” forms of FC, the facilitator can no longer cue their clients. To them, the FC-generated messages are “independent” because the individual being subject to the technique reaches toward the letter board without their (overt) physical assistance. However, as we’ve seen from critiquing Dickens’ telepathy test videos, facilitators can (wittingly or unwittingly) cue their clients in a variety of ways, including auditorily and visually, and with minimal touch.

2. At the beginning of FC’s popularity (in the early 1990s in the United States), facilitators were primarily educators, not parents. Most of the early false allegations of abuse cases, therefore, involved educators bringing allegations against their students’ family members via FC-generated messages. (See the 1993 documentary “Prisoners of Silence”).

   In contrast, many of today’s facilitators are parents, which, as we’ll see in a moment, changes the dynamic of the false allegations of abuse claims. While it’s possible the number of educator-to-parent false allegations claims have reduced since the 1990s, we’re finding that the cases involve parents bringing FC-generated false allegations of abuse charges against other parents. Often, these cases involve divorced couples with one parent (usually the mother) believing in FC and acting as their child’s facilitator accusing the other parent (usually the father) of abusing their child. But any family member, caregiver, friend or educator who expresses doubt about FC is in danger of being falsely accused. Based on these cases, it seems to me that FC/S2C/RPM is being weaponized by facilitators (hopefully unwittingly) with the goal of gaining sole custody and/or guardianship over the child.

Image by Nadine E

Now, before I get a bunch of hate mail, I’m not saying that allegations of abuse by parents or educators (or anyone else) shouldn’t be thoroughly investigated. On the contrary, I firmly believe that the children’s safety should be the number one concern of investigators. But when FC/S2C/RPM is being used by facilitators as the primary means of conveying these accusations of abuse (often with no medical signs of abuse or other evidence), then the first step by police, DHS workers, and/or representatives of the court should be to coordinate with speech/language pathologists or others who are trained in evidence-based techniques, test design, and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) to set up reliably controlled authorship testing to determine just who is controlling the FC-generated messages. Because, based on the existing controlled studies into FC authorship, the odds are that it’s the facilitators (100% in most studies), not the individuals being subjected to FC who are controlling letter selection.

Guardian ad litem Phil Worden from “Prisoners of Silence” (Palfreman, 1993)

Our regular followers know that I advocate for authorship testing regardless of the content of the FC-generated messages. I talk about it in nearly every blog post I write, but in these cases, authorship testing is vitally important. Guardian ad litem Phil Worden explained his concerns in the documentary “Prisoners of Silence” when he was hired to look out for the best interest of the children involved with the allegations of abuse case I was involved in (as a facilitator):

I was most worried in my heart about were we going to do justice in this case? If the communications were 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 this 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 I-- 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? (Prisoners of Silence, 1993)

I have a lot of respect for that man and, honestly, I don’t know why this approach hasn’t been adopted in every FC allegations of abuse case, especially considering that FC was thoroughly discredited by 1995.

But despite the large body of scientific evidence against FC and the dozens of statements opposing FC/S2C/RPM by major speech/language and autism organizations, when these cases get to court, we’re seeing a variety of outcomes. Unfortunately, not all are favorable to the falsely accused.

1. In my case, and, I hope, in other cases as well, the guardian ad litem (Phil Worden) got the court to order reliably controlled testing before the final decision was made about the veracity of the FC-generated abuse allegations claims. Quite rightly, the charges against the family were dropped when testing showed that I, not my student, authored the messages. (Links to my 2012 article below).

   Note: One problem with this approach is that current-day facilitators faced with court-ordered authorship testing prefer to drop the abuse allegation claims rather than participate in the testing. As we learned in Katharine’s series about the Lower Merion School District S2C case, current-day facilitators are being told that it’s “unethical” to participate in such testing. (Links to her series below). Personally, I don’t think facilitators should be allowed to weasel their way out of reliably controlled testing, especially when it involves major life decisions (e.g., allegations of abuse, guardianship, medical issues, educational or housing issues). If they’re confident enough to accuse someone of abuse in a court of law, then they should be willing to back up their claims by submitting to reliably controlled authorship testing.

2. Lawyers and/or judges decide that they can determine (on their own and without requisite training in speech/language development in individuals with autism or augmentative and alternative communication). I’ll use a Northern Cyprus 2025 false allegations of abuse case I just learned about to highlight this problem. In this case, a father was falsely accused of abusing his son by his ex-wife who acted as facilitator using a touch-based form of FC. I’ll write a separate blog post specifically about this case, but will highlight a few key points in today’s blog post.
   
   To the judge’s credit, a message-passing test was conducted during the trial. The test involved asking the facilitated individual to respond to three different questions that contain information unknown to the facilitator. The message-passing test failed, indicating that the person being facilitated was unable to spell out answers to questions that the child knew but the facilitator did not. However, the court ordered a second judge to observe a separate FC session after which the (second) judge decided the messages were real.

   
   Note: I want to point out here that facilitator cueing can be broad and easily detectible, or it can be subtle, depending on the skill of the facilitator and/or the amount of practice the facilitator/client has had. That’s why reliably controlled testing by qualified personnel is important. Observers new to FC often look at the client or at the letter board during letter selection and miss seeing the facilitator’s movements and (sometimes) facilitator cueing is so subtle that it can’t be detected with the naked eye. (See An FC Primer to learn more about facilitator cueing)
   
   In this case, even though the facilitator was using a touch-based form of communication and could visibly be seen moving the child’s arm toward the letter board, the court based its ruling on the (second) judge’s observations. There was no attempt to record the FC session and analyze it to make sure that the letters called out by the facilitator were the ones touched by the client (e.g., often facilitators call out the letters they think fit the target word being spelled even when the person being facilitated isn’t looking at the board or touches in the spaces between letters). And because the second judge believed the communications to be “real,” the court ruled in favor of the prosecution. The father of the child (the ex-husband of the facilitator) was found guilty and received a sentence of 30 years in prison. As I understand it, the case is currently on appeal.

3. In the final scenario I’ll discuss today, people falsely accused of abuse via FC-generated messages suffer the ramifications of the accusation even if charges are eventually dropped. For example, Kevin Plantan spent 10 months in jail before the charges were dropped. Stuart Vyse wrote about Plantan’s experiences in an article called A life Shattered by Pseudoscience, so I won’t go into great depth here, but his story follows the pattern we’ve seen in other cases: the facilitator (Plantan’s ex-wife) believes in and uses FC with their child and the false allegations of abuse charges were brought against Plantan based on FC-generated messages. Plantan’s case is unique in that even though he was released from jail and his record has been expunged, a family court judge now refuses to accept that the FC-generated allegations of abuse were false. Plantan continues to fight for the right to have shared custody of his child, but he’s continued to suffer for something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. (See also Tyler Layne’s article Dad jailed after being accused through controversial autism communication method. He’s fighting for awareness).

I’ll close here because I know this blog post is long, but I hope that by sharing this information that readers will begin to understand how devastating false allegations of abuse cases can be. The stakes are high in these cases—for everyone involved—and I’m urging people to help raise awareness about the dangers of FC/S2C/RPM and the importance of testing for authorship before taking on faith that the FC-generated allegations of abuse are true.

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References and Recommended Reading

Boynton, J. (2012). Facilitated Communication—what harm it can do: Confessions of a former facilitator. Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 6:1, 3-13. DOI: 10.1080/17489539.2012.674680

Layne, Tyler. (2025, July 16). Father warns of ‘junk science’ that led to sexual abuse charges later dropped: ‘A terrible situation.’ 6 News Richmond.

Vyse, Stuart. (2024, August 19). A Life Shattered by Pseudoscience. Skeptical Inquirer.

Series reviewing the Joe Rogan/Ky Dickens Interview

Review of Joe Rogan’s interview with Telepathy Tapes host Ky Dickens: The Stuff of Conspiracy Theories, Fantasy, and Urban Legends (Part 1)

Review of Joe Rogan’s interview with Telepath Tapes host Ky Dickens: The Stuff of Conspiracy Theories, Fantasy, and Urban Legends (Part 2)

Review of Joe Rogan’s Interview with Telepathy Tapes host Ky Dickens: The Stuff of Conspiracy Theories, Fantasy, and Urban Legends (Part 3)

Lower Merion School District S2C Trial

Expert witness Dr. Katharine Beals shares court documents and her insights about the court proceedings. The court, on appeal, ruled in favor of the Lower Merion School District. The school district was sued by parents of an individual being subjected to S2C. The parents wanted the school district to use S2C during all school activities, but failed in their attempts to require the school district to use a discredited/unproven technique.

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial: Part 1

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial Part 2

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial Part 3

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial Part 4

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial Part 5

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial Part 6

Spelling to Communicate Goes on Trial Part 7

Reviews of The Telepathy Tapes Podcast can be found on the Podcast page of our website here.

Coverage of the Australian “Carla” case involving FC founder Rosemary Crossley and eight of her trained facilitators.

Heinrichs, P. (1991, March 10). Experts slam disabled ‘charade', Sunday Age (Melbourne, Australia), Late Edition, pp. 1

Heinrichs, P. (1992, February 16). Suffering at the Hands of the Protectors. The Sunday Morning Herald.

Heinrichs, P. (1992, February 16). State 'tortured' family – 'tragic'. Sunday Age (Melbourne, Australia) Late Edition, pp. 1

Heinrichs, P. (1992, February 23). 'Tortured' family may call for probe on facilitated evidence. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 8

Heinrichs, P. (1992, February 23). More families take on CSV 'zealots'. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 7

Heinrichs, P. (1992, April 12). Taxpayers will foot bill for 'Carla' case. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 11

Heinrichs, P. (1992, May 17). US courts to rule on disability method. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 9

Heinrichs, P. (1992, May 31). 'Carla' case prompts overhaul of system. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 10

Heinrichs, P. (1992, September 6). New ordeal for 'Carla' family. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 7

Heinrichs, P. (1992, September 13). Carla payment hope. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 8

Heinrichs, P. US courts reject facilitated communication. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 7

Heinrichs, P. (1993, January 17). 'Carla' cost may force family to sell home. Sunday Age, Melbourne, Australia, Late Edition, pp. 6