For Tim Chan, who is unable to speak, facilitating communication is “a lifeline” that allows him to do things he once thought impossible, such as socializing, or studying for his PhD.

“I was assumed to be incompetent and ignored or dismissed,” says the 29-year-old, who was diagnosed with autism as a child, using a text-to-voice tool in his Melbourne home.

Facilitated communication involves someone guiding a non-verbal person’s hand, arm, or back so they can point to letters or words on a special keyboard.

Mr Chan’s facilitator is his mother Sarah, and, over the past 20 years, her support has been “faded” by her gentle touch on the shoulder, which he says keeps him “centred”.

Advocates say it is a miraculous device that gives a voice to people with disabilities.

But a growing group of experts, families, and even former facilitators want it banned, as research indicates that the likely author of the messages is the facilitator, not the communicator.

They cite criminal charges made by non-verbal people using this method that have been dismissed by courts and investigators.

The debate has sparked accusations of ableism, ruined legacies, inspired a new Louis Theroux documentary, and sparked an international conversation about the power dynamics between people with disabilities and their caregivers.

Facilitated Communications was created in 1977 by Australian disability advocate Rosemary Crossley, who died last year and left a complex legacy.

To those who knew him, he is remembered as a champion of “people with little or no functional speech.”

But others say his communications invention – and his formidable defense – was misguided and harmful. Despite widespread criticism, it is still used around the world.

The first notable subject to use facilitated communication was Anne MacDonald, a non-verbal Australian woman suffering from cerebral palsy, severe intellectual disability and no control over her limbs.

At the time, Crossley claimed that McDonald – then 16 – could communicate by pointing to magnetic letters while Crossley supported him with his upper arm.

Despite having no formal education and being institutionalized since the age of three, within a few weeks McDonald was able to pronounce and write complete sentences.

Some of Crossley’s colleagues expressed surprise that MacDonald, who had never read, could suddenly write eloquent prose, and cite literary references, when his hand was held by the highly educated Crossley.

Questioning was the institute’s leading pediatrician and psychiatrist, Dr. Dennis Maggin, who would not validate Crossley’s communication theory without independent testing.

McDonald later accused him, with the help of Crossley’s supported typing, of trying to kill him by suffocating him with a pillow. Murder investigators dismissed the claims, but his career never recovered.

His son, lawyer Paul Maggin, says, “My thoughtful, introspective and well-intentioned father faced hell.” He said that “any right-thinking person” could see that the allegations were made by Crossley.

Crossley also had her initial doubts about the technique, writing at the time: “I didn’t know whether I was subconsciously manipulating (Anne) or imagining the movements of her hands.’ ‘

McDonald – who left the institute and moved in with Crossley – began using this method with other facilitators. She also earned a humanities degree and co-authored the book Annie’s Coming Out, which was turned into an award-winning film.

But despite all these accomplishments, McDonald’s mother Beverly “never believed” that her daughter could communicate: “I asked her questions and got nowhere,” she told ABC in 2012 after her daughter’s death.

For Marlena Katyn, accessible communication has allowed her to “connect and say whatever I want.”

The 33-year-old Gold Coast native selects words using a keyboard. Its facilitator Burt, or a text-to-voice tool, then reads them out loud.

Speaking to the BBC with and without Burt, Ms Catin says it is “frustrating to be constantly tested for validation” and that “communication is more about humanity than science”.

She finds it worrying that some academics and disability advocacy organizations have launched a campaign to discredit what she says has been an effective way for thousands of people around the world.

But experts have uncovered different findings using ‘double-blind’ experiments.

In this method the facilitator and communicator are separated and given different prompts, such as a picture, to study before coming back together to take the test.

In over 30 empirical studies, non-verbal individuals ended up typing the prompts shown to the facilitator, meaning there is no solid evidence that messages written using facilitated communication are as effective as those written by a person with a disability. Are.

“The science just isn’t there,” Howard Shen, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, tells the BBC.

The courts have also reached the same conclusion.

A host of parents and caregivers have found themselves on trial over allegations — often sexual abuse — uncovered by convenient communication.

Professor Shen has testified in 12 such cases – including the case of Jose Cordero, who spent 35 days in a Miami jail and months after being accused of sexually abusing his seven-year-old child through a facilitator. Till then he was stopped from meeting his family. Autistic son. The case was dropped citing lack of credibility in smooth communication.

Professor Shen says, in every trial he has been involved in, the trial proved that the author of the allegations was the mastermind, or “he refused to participate in the trial altogether, citing concerns”.

But one of the most high-profile facilitated communications cases – now the subject of a Netflix documentary – raised questions about whether the method could be used to provide proof of consent.

In 2015, university professor Anna Stubblefield was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault for raping a 33-year-old man with severe mental disability and cerebral palsy. The man’s facilitated communication testimony was ruled unreliable under New Jersey’s trial for scientific evidence.

Two years later, an appeals court overturned Stubblefield’s conviction and ordered a retrial on the grounds that not allowing him to use convenient communications as a defense was a violation of his rights. In 2018 he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to time served.

He says the relationship was consensual and the two were “intellectually equal in love”. Professor Shen’s controlled tests concluded that the man had the intellectual capacity of a six-month-old baby.

Testifying in Stubblefield’s case, Eastern Michigan University psychology professor James Todd argued that the university at which Stubblefield received his training bore some responsibility for the crime. He said that Syracuse University is “promoting communication over clear and established science” and urged it to “abandon and reject” the technology for its “dangerous harms.”

Syracuse University, one of the only universities with a convenient communications facility, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The BBC contacted five different academic experts on facilitated communications around the world to talk about the technology. Everyone refused.

At least 30 medical associations worldwide oppose facilitated communication. Many, such as the UK’s National Autistic Society, warn that it is “ineffective” and capable of causing “significant harm”.

Other opponents include the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Speech Pathology Australia.

These organizations cite peer-reviewed evidence indicating that the technique is discredited pseudoscience and flagged its risks to people with disabilities, their families, and the facilitators themselves due to potential false accusations.

Clinical psychologist Adrienne Perry warns that non-verbal communication “makes the person a ‘screen’ for the facilitator’s hostility, hopes, beliefs or doubts”.

For speech trainer Janice Boynto—who provided him with communication training at the University of Maine—the discovery was shocking.

She was facilitating the communications of a 16-year-old non-verbal autistic girl who accused her father and brother of sexual abuse through Ms Boynton’s facilitation. Professor Shen was called in to conduct a double-blind test with the pictures.

“It turned out, even though I believed in smooth communication, I was the author of all the answers,” Ms Boynton told the BBC. “It was irrefutable. You didn’t even realize it.”

It left her feeling “terrified, confused and devastated”.

“I believe most facilitators are honest,” she says. “They want to believe it’s true.”

Today, Tim Chan says such criticisms are “extremely damaging”.

“We begin to doubt our ability to be a person in our own right,” he says through his mother’s facilitation.

They have never done a double-blind trial.

“Testing a person with non-verbal autism will make them very anxious. They process information differently,” says Ms Chan. “It’s possible that there is some subliminal signaling going on. I don’t know,” she adds.

Professor Shen and academic experts in speech, communication, psychology and developmental disabilities say the technology should be banned. “I recently worked on a case where someone was in jail for a year and there was no trial before the case finally came to light,” says Professor Shen. “When the trial showed that the charges were false he was released.”

But facilitated communication is still practiced in some special schools, disability centers and institutions in the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia.

One reason for this, says Professor Shen, is that families and facilitators “believe so strongly” that their child has hidden skills.

“They need to accept kids for who they are – rather than what they want them to be.”