Original subtitles

In the beginning, when I was first convicted,

I felt like Alice in Wonderland...

down the rabbit hole in this strange place

that doesn't follow any rules

that I'm used to or anything like that.

When I came out,

I remember I went to my hairstylist and...

...I just gave a big sigh and I said,

"Okay, you're gonna be my first experience

with experimenting with how much I say or don't say

about where I've been the past couple years

and where I've been is, I was in prison."

My inclination, I mean,

you know, here I am sitting here doing this is,

you know, I don't mind people knowing because,

you know, I'm not guilty of a crime, so...

No.

Derrick, let's go.

Are you ready to get up?

Good morning.

Come on. Come on.

I remember when they brought Derrick home

from the hospital.

And I was just disappointed like, "I got a baby brother?"

"I wanted a little sister."

And then when they brought him in the house and I saw him,

there was, like, an instant connection.

Everything was fine, you know. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I just remember that at a certain point,

he became very listless, he didn't move much.

He wouldn't wake up. You know, he slept all the time.

He wasn't doing what he was supposed to do.

Like he wasn't sucking, he wasn't holding his bottle.

And he couldn't hold his head.

I would ask the doctor, "Well, what's wrong with Derrick?"

And he said, "Oh, you're comparing him

to your older son? He'll be all right."

And I says, "No, something's not right."

Early on, Derrick had a series of seizures.

So then, they took Derrick,

they put him in a sound room,

and they would do the lights for his eyes to follow,

and he just wouldn't react...

or couldn't.

And that's when they told me that he has cerebral palsy.

Mm-hmm. And he would never, you know, be able to...

do as normal children would do.

Derrick visited a few psychologists,

they deemed him,

as the term they used, "mentally retarded."

Non-verbal with cerebral palsy.

You know, then not knowing what the heck that meant,

it just meant that Derrick can't walk, Derrick can't talk.

Yes. It's all gone.

It's all gone, you're done.

You're done. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Take your hand off your ears. What you want?

What's the problem? Hmm?

Okay.

You know the routine.

One finger, what's that? You signing me?

Eventually, the seizures started to subside,

but what his cognitive level was,

I didn't have a way of assessing that.

I know that he was listless for a point in time,

and then all of a sudden, there was an awakening of sorts...

where he was in the world.

Whenever we would lock eyes, like,

there was recognition there. I just began to see Derrick,

you know, develop his own personality

and kind of come into his own.

Oh, they were inseparable.

Derrick would come home after school,

John would run home, meet Derrick bus,

get Derrick in the house, call me, "Ma, we in the house."

At a certain point, I just threw him on my back.

Play together, get into mischief together,

you know, wherever I go, Derrick has to go.

Derrick's a character. You know, he loves to give hugs.

He just loves to smile a lot, you know.

You know when he's happy.

He used to do-- We call it "The Stevie Wonder dance."

You know, when Stevie Wonder is playing on the piano

and really, he's feeling the music,

and his head would sway side-to-side,

and so Derrick would do that from time to time too.

Especially in church when he is like

really feeling the music, he...

Sometimes, he's self-abusive.

We can be somewhere and then all of a sudden...

...he'd put his hand in his mouth

and start banging his head and his knee.

And I don't know why. Maybe he's frustrated,

but he can't communicate.

"So what is going on in your head, Derrick?"

Like, I really...

To me, that was the great mystery.

Camera's rolling.

Okay, everything's fine.

Tell me the story of how you met.

I'm pretty sure, or at least I'm hopeful

that I haven't been rewriting things in my head.

I don't-- Didn't wanna do that.

Like, you know, I see how easily it can happen.

Our next speaker is Anna Stubblefield.

The Director of the Philosophy Department at Rutgers.

Thanks, David. Is that one working? This one?

How's this one? Ah. That's better. Okay.

I was teaching

in the American Studies doctoral program

at Rutgers, Newark.

Race, class, gender, and sexual orientation,

and disability are inextricably intertwined,

such that none of these concepts would exist

as it does without the others.

And John was one of my students.

When I was doing my PhD at Rutgers...

When a person cannot understand...

...Anna Stubblefield was a philosopher of race.

And also had a class about disability studies.

Alongside theorizing about disability and ethics,

I also provide support

to people labeled with developmental disabilities.

I work with people who cannot communicate vocally,

to provide them with access to alternative forms

of verbal expression and to literacy.

You know, while I grew up with a disabled brother,

I was not familiar with disability studies,

and I think as an instructor, she was great.

And as a scholar, she was great as well.

The course was looking at the notion

of intelligence as a concept.

For example, the notion that if somebody can't speak,

it must be because they're too stupid

and there's just nothing in their head.

That just doesn't-- It's not the case.

It's not the case.

Lacking speech doesn't mean that you don't have anything to say.

It doesn't mean that you can't use language...

if somebody can just get you access to a way to do it.

Can you describe what your world was like

before you were able to communicate?

Can you describe that for me?

Somewhere along the course, we ended up watching this video.

Sue-- Okay.

The person that was in the video had autism.

I wanna go to grandma.

You wanna go to grandma's?

Wanna go to grandma.

Yeah, grandma is gonna come here.

Sue Rubin, she's somebody who's perceived by her parents

and everybody as severely intellectually impaired

and just not there.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

But then she's given access to a way to communicate.

When I was 13,

my mother said that she had seen someone

start to communicate using a keyboard in support.

It's called "facilitated communication."

As I began to type, my mind began to wake up.

Bye-bye.

The person that was in the video

used a keyboard...

...and eventually, became proficient enough to communicate

the complexities of her life.

She was able to do college-level work

and she graduated with a dual major,

et cetera, et cetera. And this was her story.

"I think I was lost..." W-A...

"In some way. I acted like my worst nightmare."

Y-E... Yes.

At that time, I never heard anything

about this facilitated communication.

After that class, John, he said,

"This woman in this film reminds me a lot of my brother."

"How she moves, how she looks, and then I see her typing

and she's going to college,

and we've always been told that my brother,

you know, basically, he should be institutionalized,

but we've always felt

that maybe there's something more going on there."

We recognized that Derrick had a disability,

but we never thought that he was incapable

of doing any number of things.

I always knew that there was something there.

Like, right on cue,

at certain points, Derrick would say, "Ah, ah, ah."

You know, Derrick was paying attention.

Derrick wanted to weigh in on this discussion.

When we would go to get haircuts,

I would sit there and read the daily news,

and Derrick would be sitting next to me,

and so every so often,

Derrick would look over my shoulder,

and look in the newspaper, and--

Was it a mimicking behavior? Maybe.

But he has this way of appearing to be absorbing information.

And so, there were dozens of these kinds of moments

through our lifetime.

I love my brother to death,

and I always want nothing but the best for him.

And so I asked her,

"I'd love to hear more about facilitated communication."

"Who can I talk to?"

I told them the nearest place

on the East Coast

where there's support for facilitated communication

is Syracuse University, but it's gonna be too expensive.

So I said to John, "If you wanted,

I could at least just, kind of, do some initial stuff,

kind of see if it's working."

She was Ms. Anna.

You know, she could do great things.

She was gonna move mountains and...

I... accepted her at her word.

When I was a child, I came from an unusual family.

My mom did work with people

with a range of physical disabilities,

people with intellectual disabilities

who came to the house.

My mom had a T-shirt with a slogan,

"Labels are for jars, not people."

I found disability interesting because of that exposure.

And so I got my dad to,

you know, build me a pair of crutches

so I can, you know, pretend to be post-polio

or have cerebral palsy or something like that.

I'd, you know, tie a blindfold on

and spend all afternoon.

During her elementary years,

I taught her how to write braille.

At her request, I got her a blind pen pal.

She was interested in sign language,

and I think she may have learned some of that.

I was fascinated by the way in which, you know,

it's not really the impairment, it's the environment

that creates impairments for people.

Growing up, I got that message very powerfully,

how, in our society, it's like we want everybody

to walk through the same sized door,

and if you don't fit in that door,

there's something wrong with you,

and that doesn't have to be that way.

Welcome to the 1993 conference

on facilitated communication in Syracuse,

sponsored by the Facilitated Communication Institute

at Syracuse University.

I learned about facilitated communication

in December of 1990 at a conference.

Rosemary Crossley reported

on the work she'd done in Australia.

I had done some work with a girl named Anne McDonald

who had athetoid cerebral palsy.

Couldn't move her hands. Couldn't speak.

There was nothing.

We had a spelling board,

but because she had cerebral palsy,

her hands would move so much

that she couldn't actually hit a target.

I tried, what would happen if I supported her...

under her upper arm,

she could then move from the elbow

and do better in selecting items.

And it turned out that she could spell.

She was very smart. We gave her the page turner,

so that every time she hit a button,

the page would turn.

And suddenly, she could read books.

As soon as I heard their presentation,

I knew that's what I needed.

This is how to help all these kids

who I used to work with.

My mother was one of the first people

in the country who started doing training workshops

in facilitated communication.

When she came back and started using it,

she was videotaping everybody,

and I ended up being the one who ran the camera,

so I was there when she first started using it.

I was part of that moment.

To see people for the first time

be able to type out something... Being part of that was,

you know... ...was amazing.

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.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Cherise has typed 120 poems, nine short stories.

She talks about everything she feels.

We understood that people knew

what it was they wanted to communicate.

And we needed to just provide some means

to make that possible, physically.

When I met Derrick,

I'd been told he had cerebral palsy

and that was all.

He walks. He needs to hold on to somebody's arm.

Have a little support.

He can focus his gaze, but his eyes kind of go off,

his head turns.

If you're not used to that,

we see that as signs of lack of intelligence.

I've seen enough people like that in my life

to know that that's simply not true.

So, I don't register things that way.

So, I had just cut out some pictures from magazines

or drawn some pictures.

John and Daisy are in the room watching,

and I said to Derrick,

"You know, I'm gonna ask you some questions

and I'm not asking them because I don't think

you're smart enough or anything."

"I just wanna see what happens

when you try to point to something."

So I watched and he would kind of start moving his arm.

It would go a little ways,

and then he had this kind of muscle jerk reaction,

which turned out to be very typical.

You can see how hard he works

to try to have the least little bit of control over his arm

and it's slow.

If you've got cerebral palsy,

you might be able to get your hand

to something you're pointing at, but it might take you a minute.

How do you have a conversation like that?

So I had started with just a little support on his elbow

and that was it initially, that freed him up enough,

and then he could select which picture he wanted.

So, so far so good.

Then, I said, "Now what I wanted to do is

see where you're at with literacy."

So, I had cards that just had letters on them.

Kind of like doing Boggles. So you have A, B, C, and T.

You can spell cat, you can spell bat.

And when I asked him to spell as many words as he could

using these four letters,

he made a very good showing with that.

But it's one thing to reach your whole hand

toward a very large target.

It's an entirely different thing to get one finger pushing a key.

So I had this small,

very light-weight portable keyboard

with a small LED display called the Neo.

I ended up where I was keeping his fingers folded down

so that his index finger was isolated.

And the first thing I asked him to do was point to the letter H,

the letter T.

And he started making mistakes. So, he mixed up the A and the H.

And he mixed up the T and the F and the U and the V.

What I realized was that the alphabetical order

or letter board that I had set up

were all lowercase letters

and on the Neo, it's capital letters and so,

the difference between the A and the H

was one little line across the top of the A,

that sort of thing.

When he was making those mistakes,

I just said, "No. No, you're wrong."

You know, "I asked for the A, you hit the H."

"Here's the A here."

And then I went through some other letters,

and then I would go back.

He didn't make the same mistake twice.

So he was a really fast learner. Tell him once, he's got it.

It was, like,

the porch lights went on, and I was like,

"Wow, is he doing it?"

And I felt very excited about it.

She said, "Don't forget, you're traveling with him."

"You're taking him places."

"And when you're taking him, he's reading the signs."

And, you know, I'm Mama.

Tell me what my sons can do.

I was elated.

I mean, I always knew that there was something there.

And so in a way,

it somewhat confirmed what I'd already knew.

And the school that he attended,

the Essex County Day Training Program,

they had did some remarkable things with him.

They were able to get him to the point where he can,

you know, walk on his own.

But there was this question of intellectual capacity.

And so, to have this revelation

that Derrick can do these things,

it was just like, "Wow."

I knew it was there. I'm just happy for him.

You know, he's... You know...

Okay.

One day, when Derrick came

and I just asked him, you know, "Did you do anything

particularly interesting this week?" And he typed "GM."

His spelling was very, very creative in the beginning.

And I said, "Hmm, you know, did you play a game?"

"Was this some kind of game?" "No."

"Gym. You go to the gym?" "Yes." And then Daisy popped in with a,

"Oh, yeah, his Day Program had gone to a health club

and he had walked on a treadmill and he really enjoyed that."

At that point, Daisy had stepped outside the room.

And I said, "You know what, it's occurring to me

that I never actually asked you what you like to be called."

"Your brother told me your name was Derrick,

and you came in, and I've been calling you Derrick."

"Tell me, what do you want me to call you?"

And he typed D-M-A-N.

And I was looking at that

and it didn't look like any name that I recognized.

Daisy came back in the room at that point and I said,

"He typed D-M-A-N. Does that mean anything to you?"

She said, "Oh, he had this really great teacher

back when he was about 13 years old."

"He used to call him D-Man." "That was the teacher

who got him out of the wheelchair

and got him walking."

So I said, "Is she right?" Then he said, "Yes."

So, I called him DMan from there.

That was a really important moment,

being able to tell people what you wanna be called

is this important emotional aspect of life

that we take away from people when they can't speak.

DMan and I saw each other several hours a week.

And over the course of the year as he speeded up,

as his spelling got a little better...

it went from a couple-word answers...

to five-word answers...

to a whole sentence, to a couple of sentences.

So by the end of a year,

we could really have a decent conversation.

And he could then be more expressive

and more detailed about what he had to say

and that was real progress. That's huge.

I didn't really feel like

I was getting to know him as a person

until he got to that stage.

Somewhat early on, Anna had started saying

Derrick had the intellectual capacity to do high-level work,

and to put sentences together,

and do all these different things.

I was like, "Whoa, this is great."

She told us, "Because Derrick was hanging around you all

for so long, and listened to your conversations,

and you went to movies, and you would watch TV,

and so he's absorbing all of these things,

and so that's how he built his body of knowledge." And...

And without, you know, going through a peer reviewed...

...assessment of those assertions.

I was like, "Okay. I'll buy that. Cool."

One of the things that really bothered him

was that he hadn't had the opportunity

to get a formal education of any sort.

His brother was getting a doctoral degree.

So, he had watched his brother and the whole process

and he really, really, really wanted to have that also.

So there was a course being offered on Saturday mornings

at Rutgers Newark.

It was an African American literature course.

And that looked really interesting to him.

I guess the idea

was for Derrick to go to a class,

possibly write papers, or at least,

be able to show the work that may put him in line

to then go and pursue a BA.

I was getting towards the end of my PhD program. And so,

you know, this kind of thing, you know, Black scholar.

My baby brother was developing--

Said he was gonna be a Black-- Could be a Black scholar.

I felt great.

I sat in the class with him

and provided communication support for class.

We ended up finding him a student

who would facilitate DMan for doing part of the homework.

Her name was Sheronda Jones.

Sheronda met with him outside of class

for several hours a week, so he could read the book

and then at least take a crack at writing the essay.

She had never taken this class. She never read the books.

She just provided the support.

He wasn't doing 400-level writing.

But he was correctly identifying characters and plot elements.

He clearly had read the book and understood the book.

From 1619, when 20 of us

were sold by a Dutch ship...

One day in class, the professor started it out

by showing a film on the entire African diaspora.

And DMan wrote something.

He wasn't expressing himself as articulately

as I knew he was capable of.

And I was typing back to him because we were in class.

So I typed back.

I mean, what if he said it this way,

wouldn't this be better?

And he typed, "I know what you're saying

but just read it the way I wrote it."

And I said, "Okay. Fair enough."

And then we got called on right at that point.

I couldn't resist.

I was sort of editing slightly as I read,

which all it did was make it worse.

Screwed up the whole thing.

But I got to the end and the discussion went on.

He typed,

"Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do that again."

I can tell DMan mad. This was DMan furious.

And I typed back, "I'm so sorry."

And he said, "I'm not mad, but don't ever do that again."

Because, you know, I did speak for him and that was wrong.

Needless to say,

I never did it before, and I never did it since.

But he was pissed.

About a year after DMan started typing,

my mother was organizing this panel with other FC users

for the Society for Disabilities Studies Conference,

and she asked if he wanted to be part of the panel.

I like to arrange at conferences

that people with disabilities can actually do some presenting.

What I had noticed was that

in terms of the FC community,

Derrick was the only African American.

And so this is a very White space

and in a way Derrick was a...

a pathbreaker, a trailblazer, the Jackie Robinson of FC.

The panel was on the right

to communication clause

and the UN convention on disability rights.

But I said to him, "Don't worry

about the official topic of the panel."

"Just write something about the right to communicate

or what it means to you to be able to communicate."

We wanted to be able

to refer to some of the literature.

I was getting books for him, Steven Pinker,

this neurologist who’s written

about language being very hardwired.

I got him some Piaget.

It wasn't much, but it was to give him a taste.

So, he was reading the books,

we were talking about things.

What he wrote for the panel was very impressive to me.

It was less than a page but he had a choice of words,

a way of phrasing things. It really struck me.

I just became more and more aware that, you know,

this was a man who was very insightful and very thoughtful.

He spent a lot of time sitting around

and he was sitting around thinking,

and give him some ideas and something to work with,

and he was just digging in and seeing stuff.

That is what I--

I mean, that's what I like in my friends.

That's honestly, what I like in men.

You know,

I'm the kind of nerdy intellectual girl

who wants a nerdy intellectual guy.

You know, you could find you really enjoy talking to them

and, you know, you share taste, but you also disagree on things,

but you learn from it.

I mean, we were just having those kinds of experiences.

But, you know, I was married.

My marriage wasn't terrific, but I wasn't, in any way,

thinking about going outside the relationship.

I wasn't shopping around. It was nothing like that.

At the time, if you'd asked me,

"how do you feel about DMan?" It's, "Yeah, he's my friend."

I just really, really liked him

and I really, really enjoyed his company,

and I was really impressed by him.

In March of 2011,

I invited DMan to speak to an undergraduate class

where we were talking about disability issues.

So, students were asking him questions

and somebody asked him about,

you know, what his hopes and dreams were

and he talked about going to college

and maybe being a writer someday,

which was kind of where he was heading.

And then somebody else in the class said to him,

you know, "What about love, what about relationships,

is that something that you hope for?"

And he typed, "I want that more than anything

but that doesn't happen

for people with disabilities like mine..."

And... in that moment,

I mean what I wanted to say was... ...I almost,

you know...

...I-- You know, "You can have that with me."

I started thinking about,

"Okay. Well, wow, if this is the way I'm feeling,

okay, I've got to think about this."

And I didn't-- I still didn't want to say anything to him.

I was like, "Okay, I've gotta figure this out."

I mean, I had my husband and my kids.

I mean-- Okay. I'm in love with DMan.

I realize this now but...

I'm not gonna say anything.

I have to sort all of this out. It was awkward.

Then I saw him about a week later,

and I found myself saying that I helped the other people

that I do facilitated communication with

because I believe so strongly that

everyone has a right to communication.

And-- But I said,

"I do what I do for you because I love you."

And he typed... he typed, "I know."

"I love you too."

And... ...I said, "I know."

He'd asked me to kiss him and I did.

And then he said, "Kiss me again."

And I did. And he said, "So, now what?"

As things went along,

Derrick started going on the speaking circuit, I guess.

Going to these conferences and all.

And there started to be some tension.

We were driving to this event,

in suburban Trenton somewhere,

and my mama's playing gospel music...

...and Anna goes and turns the station.

And puts on classical music.

Derrick doesn't wanna hear this, he wants to hear that.

She had ejected my gospel music.

So I hit it and it went back to play.

Derrick loves gospel.

He goes to church, he hears the music.

That assumption that he prefers

a high culture of classical music

and not the low culture of gospel,

I mean it was just too much of a leap.

There were different things that--

One day, when we broke for lunch,

I was cutting up his chicken,

and she rolled over to the table and said,

"What are you doing giving him meat?"

"He's a vegetarian."

I said, "Nobody sent me the freakin' memo."

There was another time

she's working with Derrick on the computer.

I said something to the effect of "Derrick...", just jokingly,

"...I can't wait to get home so we can just get a beer,

and kick back, and just relax." And then on the keyboard,

he said something to the effect of,

"Well, I don't like beer. I like red wine."

I just thought that to be hella peculiar.

Derrick does not--

He doesn't even like Communion wine.

If you're in a giving care frame of mind,

you don't see the person you're supporting

as somebody who's in a position to make their own decisions,

who has their own ideas about how they want things done.

Okay. Okay.

You wanna give them some control

to develop into a person

who has a good sense of themselves.

Come on.

So that part is...

a harder adjustment for parents or teachers

who've been in a, "I'm taking care of you" mode.

Turn your feet. Turn your body. Now step off. Thank you.

And...

My mom kept telling me, you know, Anna was saying that,

you know, she's too mothering, she's smothering Derrick.

Derrick doesn't want all of this help from her that, you know,

"You can't be Mom all the time."

And all these different things

that it seemed to be breaking my mom down.

And then to add to that, this idea that,

"Oh, Derrick now wants to live independently."

DMan had wanted to look

into a more independent living arrangement.

Moving out of his mother's house

and moving into supported living situation.

There was an organization that was able to provide

supervised housing for Derrick.

Derrick would have individuals looking out for him

twenty-four hours a day.

He would take classes. He would get his degree.

As my mom was telling me this, I thought,

"Where's this money gonna come from for this?"

"'Cause it's not gonna be free." And I just kind of saw that as,

all right, you're getting a little too personal here.

Now, you're looking into Derrick's support

and I just wasn't comfortable with that.

I said, "Anna, if he's gonna move into a place,

he's gonna move in the basement,

where John lived before John got on his own."

"Derrick is not going anywhere."

"You need to cut the apron strings."

I said, "How am I gonna cut my apron strings

when Derrick cannot walk, talk, or do anything on his own?"

"See, that's where you're wrong. Derrick can do it."

"You're opening up a whole new world for him."

The ways in which she talked to my mom,

you know, not mothering the proper way.

And saying that Derrick doesn't like this

and wants this, or "Daisy, you need to let him be a man."

It just kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Part of it might just be a level of self-consciousness on my part

because I remember growing up in late '80s, early '90s,

and, you know, when my mom and dad

separated and then divorced,

the idea of single parenthood was resonant.

There was all these studies about, you know,

children of single-parent households

just don't do well and,

you know, invariably was framed around,

you know, "Black women aren't good parents."

You know, "There's things that Black women

can't teach their sons."

And all of that was kind of in my ears.

Now, I think it's important to recognize that my mom,

prior to all of this,

was affiliated with a number of organizations

that were headed by women of color who are advocates

for people of color or with disabilities,

who otherwise may have been overlooked.

For Anna to make certain assumptions

about my mom's expertise

or her decision-making and those kind of things,

it just has those racial undertones and overtones.

It wasn't, like, you know,

"Nigga, get in the back of the bus," kind of racism.

It wasn't that, but it was more like making assumptions

based on the idea that some people might be inherently...

...deficient.

Anna was just ignoring the past 30-some-odd years

and everything that my mom has done

to get us to this point, right?

And so, I had it in my mind,

we're gonna have a long conversation,

we are gonna have to really set some hard, fast rules,

or we may have to just kind of begin to draw things down.

DMan and I had debated on several occasions

whether we wanted to say anything to Daisy and John

about the change in our relationship.

We knew we were gonna tell them eventually.

So, it was more just,

we were enjoying that kind of initial beginning

of a romance when it's very private,

and it's very intimate, and it's just the two of you,

and it changes when you start sharing with family.

But we had started figuring out ways that we could,

you know, try to spend time together.

And it was a Sunday.

DMan and I had made plans

to go to the film festival in New York

where there was a film being shown

called Wretches & Jabberers, which was about FC users.

Daisy wanted to go to church that morning

and in thinking about locations and stuff

for eventual romantic rendezvous,

we definitely didn't want to use,

you know, his mother's house.

But, you know, here we are at the house and she's not there

and it's difficult for him to kiss.

So, we wanted to practice. Like anything else,

it was a physical challenge for him.

I could tell that he is very tense

and every time he tried to sit back,

he would kind of pop up again and I said, like, "Talk to me."

"Obviously this is not working for you, what's going on?"

And he typed, "I really, really love being with you,

and I wanna be doing this

but I'm just really overwhelmed right now. I need a minute."

And I said, you know, "Fine."

"Take all the time you need. Of course."

So he scooted himself down the hallway

and I got a glass of water, I was just giving him some time.

And I said to him, "Look, you know, you're the one

where this is all a brand-new thing for you,

you've gotta call the shots.

You've gotta, you know, I don't--

I don't wanna do anything that makes you uncomfortable,

I don't wanna push anything faster,

I don't know what's gonna work for your body and what isn't,

so you tell me."

I was figuring at that point that,

like, the moment had passed and that was all right.

And he typed, "May I touch your breasts?"

And I was like, "Wow. Okay. I didn't know where that..."

You know, "That wasn't what I was expecting."

"Okay." And then he typed,

"Take your shirt off all the way."

I was like, "Okay." So, I did that and then he said,

"Take the rest of your clothes off."

And, "Okay," so I did. And...

then he said, you know, "I've dreamed about this."

It seemed to me that what he was doing

was taking control of the situation.

He was like really ordering me around... ...and,

you know, but that was kind of cool

because I wasn't necessarily anticipating

that element of the relationship.

He said,

"I long to hold you the way that men do."

I said to him, "Look, I feel held."

He said,

"Do you think that it would even be possible

with my cerebral palsy for us to make love?"

And I said, you know,

"I have no idea, but there's only,

you know, there's only one way to find out."

We had this meeting scheduled for Memorial Day,

for DMan to talk to Daisy and John

about the independent living counselor.

And DMan brought up or I brought up,

I don't even remember,

you know, should we also use this opportunity

to tell them about the change in our relationship?

But I said to him,

"Look, if Daisy and John did get upset about this

and chose to separate us,

technically, that's a violation of your rights,

but it would be very hard to challenge them on that."

He said to me...

"...They would never do that to me."

"They love me too much."

We all sit down

and there just seem to be this awkwardness about it,

you know. If we're gonna talk about business,

let's talk business. But she seemed--

And she looked to Derrick and said,

"Do you want me to tell them?" And so I'm like, "Tell us what?"

And then, she grabs Derrick's hand

and on the keyboard comes up, "We are in love."

So he typed, you know, "Anna and I are in love."

"And we, you know, had a--"

"We have a physical relationship."

And John said something about, you know, that, like,

"Do you use protection?" And DMan said, "Yes."

She said, "Yes. We have made love."

And I was like, "What?" "Yes, we've made love."

"He's a man in every sense of the word."

And what I did, I sat on my hands...

and I said, "You did what?"

You know, they asked me about

where things were at with my husband

and, you know, I told them,

I really did wanna be with DMan permanently to marry him,

that I hadn't talked to my husband yet,

but that I was going to very soon.

And there was a moment that was part of the conversation

where he asked me to kiss him.

I found that a little awkward, like, I didn't really want to.

In that moment, it's just like,

you know, but he insisted, so I did.

I tried to be civil.

John had gone somewhere

and I think he went down to throw up.

I was shocked.

I didn't really know what to make of it at the time,

but I felt myself getting so angry

and rage-filled that I left. I went downstairs,

I paced the floor a bunch of times.

I looked at the cracks in the wall.

I remember I had to let my anger subside.

I said goodbye to DMan and Daisy was there

and she, you know, came in and gave me a big hug

and said, you know, "We'll get through this."

"We'll figure this out."

I was heading out the door and just saying goodbye to DMan

and I said, you know, I said to him, like,

"Good call, love, hon." You know,

that it was a good choice to tell them.

And I left. And, you know, I was feeling fine.

John called me the next morning

about ten o'clock in the morning.

And I think, I knew something was gonna be wrong

when I saw he was calling.

He said, "Daisy and I don't want you to see DMan

until you and--

She and I have a chance to sit down and talk."

We sort of scheduled the meeting then she pulled out,

then John or Daisy got back to me and said, you know,

"We just don't wanna meet."

That was when-- Then I started calling Daisy.

She would talk to me on the phone.

I would kind of address her concerns

and talk about things.

And then she stopped returning my calls.

Right.

One of the things that happened

with the facilitated communication

was that part of the sessions were for us,

Mom and I, to also practice with him.

And so, Anna would be there with him

and, you know, a sentence will come out.

"All right, John, you try."

And so, I would try to and I would get nothing.

You know, eventually, he would apply pressure,

I may get two words but it wouldn't make sense.

And then when my mom would try, nothing would happen.

See all these marks on my arm, that was Derrick's facilitating.

He would grab me and pull my hand.

You know, take my hand away from his.

The coaching from Anna was, you have to keep trying,

you have to keep practicing,

you have to anticipate what he's gonna say.

And that was one of those, like, "Hmm."

That's when, I guess,

my own doubts started to creep in,

and that's when I started looking for the video

that I initially saw in the classroom,

to see what in the world am I doing wrong?

And that's when I stumbled upon the Frontline documentary on FC.

Some people had their doubts

about facilitated communication.

Dr. Howard Shane has devoted his life

to helping disabled nonverbal people to communicate.

You must be Doctor Shane.

How are you? - Nice to meet you.

In 1990, I got a call from a prosecutor

in Western Massachusetts

because someone was being facilitated

and while being facilitated, he mentioned that

his aid in his group residence was sexually abusing him.

And the prosecutor wanted to be sure

that this individual

was actually independently communicating.

When you have somebody hold your hand,

it obviously brings up the question every time,

"Well, are they being influenced?"

How can you be sure that these individuals are actually,

you know, independently communicating

or they aren't being facilitated and really being influenced?

I went on to design a protocol

that would enable me to determine

who was authoring the message.

Okay, folks. What I'm gonna be doing now...

Shane had devised a double-blind test like this.

He showed both a series of pictures

and asked them to type what they saw.

Betsy, make sure you're looking at it.

When both Betsy and her facilitator

saw a picture of a key,

the letters K-E-Y were typed.

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.

Now, take a look at this one. Okay.

When Betsy was shown a picture of a dog,

she didn't type dog, but sneakers.

What the facilitator saw.

Okay, here is the next one.

Later work that I did and others have done,

seems to indicate that facilitators were doing this,

thinking that they were giving people

the ability to be able to communicate.

I don't think that they are intentionally

trying to create a false message.

They believe that this is coming

from the person who is being facilitated.

The scientific evidence suggested that

far from unlocking the minds of autistic individuals,

FC tapped the unconscious thoughts of the facilitator.

I just remember thinking at the time,

you know, Derrick was writing those papers,

what I find interesting in hindsight,

is that a lot of it revolved around this idea of,

you know, now I have a voice.

Now, I can speak and talk and-- Whereas I was trapped,

now, I have this freedom.

And a lot of it revolved around things

that just, in my estimation, were not...

about Derrick.

And so, to me, it was just like, this whole FC thing is bogus.

I never got any vibe off of John or Daisy

that they didn't 100 percent believe

that what DMan said was DMan's words.

I had been careful in the beginning

to make sure that I wasn't influencing him,

but there were so many... so many situations

that he was telling me information I didn't know.

And in the beginning, I was checking it to make sure

that I wasn't influencing,

and the fact that we had arguments and disagreements

and so on and so forth.

I mean, he very clearly had his own mind.

He more than proved himself.

The homework assignments that DMan had typed with Sheronda

and she hadn't read the books.

I mean, had John come and talked to me

I had all of this proof

that I could have shared with him to reassure him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right.

All right, so, it's...

Okay.

At the time, we weren't trying

to pursue any kind of legal thing,

we just wanted her to leave us alone.

But then one day,

the director of Derrick's Day Program got an email from Anna

and the gist of it was,

"Daisy and John have not allowed me to see Derrick,

but Daisy and John don't know

what's in Derrick's best interest,

but we as people who work

with people with disabilities do."

And at that point, I just thought,

You know, if she's gonna go to these lengths

to try to get to Derrick behind our back,

there's no telling what she may do,

and I need to take steps necessary to put an end to this.

And so, I made an appointment to meet with the dean.

I remember going into her office,

and I started to tell her what was going on.

She kind of froze and was, like, took a deep breath,

and was somewhat in disbelief.

I don't think I had taken opportunity to kind of...

let myself release this emotion.

I just sat in that office... ...and I don't think

I've ever cried in front of a White woman before,

but I just broke down...

...and she basically said to me in so many words,

"John, make sure you get a lawyer."

I got a phone call one day from Daisy. And she said...

She said, "He's been biting his hand a lot more,

he's really unhappy."

So she said, "I'm just trying to understand

what happened between the two of you."

To me, it sounded like, "Oh, maybe this is an opening,

you know, maybe they're seeing he's unhappy

and they're reconsidering,"

and so I was happy to answer her questions.

You know, again, that feels kind of weird

to talk about with your lover's mother

but, you know, whatever,

if it kept the conversation going

and if she was listening...

I found out later that that was...

That phone call had been setup by the police,

and they had coached her on what to say,

and it was being recorded.

The date is August 22nd, 2011.

This is regarding Special Victims Unit Case No. S 11-0141.

The target of the investigation is a one

Marjorie Anna Stubblefield.

The consenting party is a one Daisy P. Johnson.

The crimes investigated

are crimes of the sexual assault nature.

It was a Monday

and I was teaching class in the afternoon.

So I pulled into the parking lot,

and I was approached by two people in plain clothes.

And they said, "We're with the Essex County

Prosecutors Office

and we need to ask you some questions."

And the only thing I could think of

was something about a student.

You know, I'm wondering what's going on.

And then they said, "Do you know somebody named Derrick Johnson?"

I was like... "Okay."

You know, and that was starting to penetrate that--

"Wow, okay, this is..."

So then I had to make a decision on the spot

about how much do I say?

But I figured, you know what, I didn't do anything wrong.

I talked to them for about two hours

and I told them the whole story,

that we were in love and all of that stuff.

I just didn't actually say the words

that we consummated the relationship.

They drove me back to the parking lot at Rutgers.

And there was a person I didn't know

who identified himself

as a representative of the Dean's Office.

He handed me a letter and the letter informed me

that as of this moment,

I was suspended from my teaching duties at Rutgers.

I was not allowed on campus.

And while I was there,

they had gone to my house with a search warrant.

My now-ex-husband was there,

so he's found out that I'm under investigation.

This is Detective Christine Wachowski

of the Essex County Prosecutors Office.

I'm interviewing Ms. Sheronda Jones.

Ms. Jones, did there ever come a time

that you got involved with Anna Stubblefield?

Yes. My professor suggested her

because I work with children

with mental and behavioral disorders.

So, she figured that it would probably be a good connection

because she talked about working with facilitated communication.

Can you tell me a little bit about

about the facilitated communication?

What kind of process is that?

Um, it's pretty much me being an arm for DMan.

I would hold his arm up...

...while he would type out whatever thoughts that he had

on a communication board. He pretty much read the books.

I didn't know any information about the book.

I can't tell you what he read.

And he typed out the information.

One of my roommates was in the class with him

and they pretty much wrote some of the same things.

Today, we're conducting an interview

with Ms. Karen Moore.

What do you do at the university?

I teach African American literature.

And how do you know Ms. Stubblefield?

Well, she wrote to me.

He was not in my class last semester

so it must have been 2010.

And when you say "He", that's Derrick Johnson?"

I only knew him as DMan. I didn't know

that was his name. - Okay.

And Anna would assist with?

Well, you know what that situation is.

They say that, you know,

the students are saying what they want to say

while she's guiding the hand, so.

Did he participate in the class?

He did. She-- He-- She-- He-- I guess would--

I don't know that I really believe

that that actually happens but...

So--

So, he would... he would-- She would,

you know, write whatever it was that he wanted to say.

She'd raise her hand and she'd read it.

He would never have verbalized anything or--

As far as I know, he can't talk.

Okay. - Yeah.

I got a call from my assistant saying that

the Special Victims Unit in New Jersey was calling.

Asked me if I would be willing

to provide some assistance as an expert.

As it was described to me, I'd never encountered any case

that mirrored these particular circumstances.

I had never seen anything like it.

In this case, the question to me was,

"Could you evaluate Derrick

to understand his best level of communication?"

From everything that I read,

there was a consistency to the extent of his disability,

but I went in with an open mind.

I met him when he was brought to the prosecutor's office.

He was accompanied by his brother and his mother.

I already knew that he had no speech.

So, I proceeded to introduce different types of materials

for him to indicate,

pictures, photographs which are very realistic.

It was difficult for him,

you know, I really didn't get very much from that.

And he was able to pick up some objects,

but not when I said,

you know, "pick up the spoon or pick up the cup."

I did an interview of his mother

based on everything that she had observed

and she certainly was a very good observer.

I found that he was, you know,

functioning at a pretty low level.

His way of telling you that he wanted something to eat

was he would scoot over to the refrigerator

and tap on the refrigerator, that's very functional.

But to move from that

to pointing to a picture of the refrigerator,

that's a greater level of abstraction.

And in all the years he had been in these different programs,

he had never moved from the physical

to that type of communication.

I spent two or three hours with him.

He spent a lot of time just moving around the room.

He liked coat hangers. So if he saw a coat hanger,

he would go over, and he recognized that.

He liked to slap them on the floor.

So I just basically reported what I found.

I made a determination that what I was observing

was consistent with what the medical record had indicated

for, you know, over 20 years of his life.

There was no one in the 20 years

who saw some sparkling of, you know, something different.

I was actually looking forward to the trial

as finally this nightmare is gonna be over.

I knew she was not guilty of anything.

I'm not guilty

of what they were accusing me of.

If the accusation is I have some weird perversion

that makes me want to molest helpless,

intellectually impaired people, that's simply not the case.

This whole thing is framed in terms of consent

and his ability to consent

because I'm the one who's accused of assault.

It's all... As if it was all coming from me,

which is really not fair to him because he seduced me,

and he deserves some credit for that.

Here's this guy who is so physically impaired

and he...

...got me to fall in love with him and with his words.

The judge kept taking things away

and taking things away in terms of evidence.

I knew that DMan was the author of what he typed.

I wasn't influencing him, but at the end of the day,

I didn't have anything except my word for that.

There was a morning the prosecutor said

we're gonna bring DMan into the courtroom.

It was Daisy who walked him in.

I had to say who he was and, you know, I was his mother.

And the fact that he could not walk by himself independently,

I just walked him in front of the judge

and then around by the jury stand.

It was horrifying to me

that a human being had been basically made an exhibit.

I know with DMan

there are ways of walking with him

in which he looks less handicapped.

And his mother walked DMan

in a way that made him look as handicapped

and incapable as one could possibly manage.

She turned around again and she turned--

Always putting her body in between him and me.

And walked him out.

What we didn't have on the jury

was anyone with significant physical disabilities,

or, you know, that understanding

of a disability rights perspective on the whole case.

At the end of the day,

it was just be myself and tell my story,

and hopefully the jury would see that guy over there

is this wonderful, intelligent man

who I was in love with.

I wouldn't have fallen in love with him

if he was somebody that wasn't capable of consent.

I wouldn't have fallen in love with him

if he wasn't interested in reading books

and talking about ideas.

If somebody has an interesting engaging mind,

and a good heart, and a beautiful soul,

it shows through, and you love the person,

and so you love being close to them,

and you love the body that they're in

because that's the body that they have.

Was there any moment,

either during your time with Derrick,

or during the trial, or now, where you had doubts

about what might have occurred between you two?

Never.

Her attorney came

and he was making me to be the villain,

and he said, "Well, how do you feel

about her being his lover?"

I said, "No." I said, "She's not his lover."

This whore done laid down, raped my son,

and I had to compose myself because...

that's my son.

Days and nights, I walked through hospital corridors

not knowing what was wrong with my son.

Not knowing his medical condition.

Him having seizures.

And for that moment, I almost lost him.

I did.

I really did.

Because who does that?

Who does that?

And then go criticize me...

make me look like I'm nobody. I don't understand.

Who does that?

I don't think that

Anna Stubblefield truly recognized

how she devalued my brother and also devalued my family.

It's one thing to...

hear Anna Stubblefield say, "Derrick and I love each other."

Just like...

But as the details of what actually transpired unfold

that she was in her office, she had this mat on the floor,

and then you recall that moment or that day

where I was changing Derrick's diaper

and I saw these abrasions on his back.

Strawberries, like somebody's dragging you across the floor.

And we couldn't figure out

where the heck these things came from.

We called the school. "Did Derrick fall down?"

"Did something happen at the school?"

"Did somebody hit my brother?"

And they're like, "No, there was no--"

"Nothing happened. We don't know."

Prosecutor was trying to figure out what happened

and the story comes out, "Oh,

something happened in the office."

And I mean, this woman,

140, 150 pounds-- I don't know how much she weighs,

but she's much heavier than him.

Derrick is light, he's five-three, five-four.

And she was exerting so much force on him

that his back was being drug across this mat

and it was leaving scars.

That woman did not give a damn about my brother.

I didn't think I was gonna be convicted,

but I wear contacts,

and that morning when the jury came back,

I did put my glasses in my purse.

It was my one little concession to,

if I ended up in prison, I needed my glasses.

I think by the time the verdict actually came...

I was expecting it.

When the jury read the conviction,

I started saying out loud to the judge just, you know,

"Please, let me take care of my daughter," you know,

"Just please, let me take care of my daughter."

Never doubted her. No, not for an instant.

I mean, I watched her interact with people her whole life

and she is...

as compassionate a person as I've ever known.

And there's no way-- I mean, she's never harmed anybody.

And there's certainly no way she would've harmed DMan.

Do you think she believed that he was typing?

Yeah, in her wicked mind. In her wicked mind.

The State versus Marjorie Anna Stubblefield,

indictment number 13-1-44.

We are here today for the sentencing

of Marjorie Anna Stubblefield.

Yes, Your Honor.

The victim's brother, John Johnson,

would like to address the court.

His mother would like to approach

and stand with him while he addresses the court.

That's fine.

Good afternoon, Your Honor.

Good afternoon.

"Thirty-four years ago, a doctor said

my brother would not live to see his third birthday."

"Those doctors and the devil are liars."

"My brother, since then,

has grown to become a loving person."

"He is a beautiful brother, and he is a beautiful son."

"I don't think Anna understood

the depth of pain she caused my family."

"She tried to lay claim to him and rename him."

"She tried to supplant Derrick's life."

"A life steeped..."

Take your time.

Take your time.

"A life steeped in the history

and culture of his God-fearing,

Southern-rooted African American family."

"She tried to supplant that

with some version of life she thought was better."

"We need to disenchant ourselves from the notion

that Anna Stubblefield is some tragic shero."

"Anna is not Sandra Bullock and this is not The Blind Side."

"Derrick is not some poor Black kid from the ghetto

that needs someone to save him."

"An able-bodied woman raped a disabled young man

that could not consent to sex. You were wrong, Anna."

"You committed a crime, there is no gray area."

"In closing, thank you, Your Honor,

for helping bring this ordeal to a close."

I have read and received letters

from the former husband of the defendant

who wrote a very compelling impact statement.

"I believe that Anna is a pathological liar

and narcissist."

"She will stop at nothing

to fool the court and seek vindication

regardless of the emotional and financial expense

to her family or the primary victim's family."

"Clearly I am distraught,

but this, and the impact on my immediate family,

I leave it to the wisdom of the court

to determine a just sentence."

Miss Stubblefield, please stand.

As to count one,

first-degree aggravated sexual assault

where the victim was physically helpless

or mentally incapacitated,

I sentence you to 12 years in New Jersey State Prison.

As to count two,

I sentence you to 12 years New Jersey State Prison

concurrent with count one.

After you are released from prison,

you are placed on parole supervision for life.

I never thought that she was a predator.

She truly believed that what she was doing

was in Derrick's best interest.

She thought that he deserves the opportunity

to have a life outside of,

you know, living with his mother.

But I think that given what I observed

and what I learned from his record,

I think that it would have been a false life with Anna.

I think that she was a unfortunate victim

of a methodology that's very problematic.

However she interpreted what was going on

and whether she actually had those conversations with him,

I don't know. But she-- You know, from my perspective,

she was having conversations with herself.

And, you know, I mean...

...I don't know where do you even go with that.

When I first came out of prison,

I managed to pick up a waitressing job,

and then there was some publicity around

when I did the plea bargain and I was sentenced in

and one of their customers complained

and so they let me go.

So I was doing that kind of thing for the first year,

and then-- Well, I do have,

you know, what's now, kind of part-time work.

I'm working at home, nobody knows me,

and so, you know, that's okay.

But it's, you know, it's not teaching.

That was my whole identity. That was everything.

I don't know what DMan's life is like now.

As far as his mother and brother,

I think they had to really decide

that he wasn't intelligent, and he wasn't typing,

and it was all a fraud and a hoax.

A friend of mine

who is another-- Who's somebody else

who uses facilitated communication who...

who'd knew DMan and was friends with DMan.

And he said, "Look, I--

If I was DMan, I would rather have,

you know, had the relationship with you and lost it

than never to have had it in the first place."

So I hope that he's right, you know.

But... yeah.

People don't think that there was damage done.

Yes, there was.

And it's still going on.

I had to put him on medication.

Because he...

masturbates.

He has this urge

and, you know, it's like a itch that he can't scratch.

And it's hard enough to give him a life

without him going through that.

And she did that.

Because if you don't ever strike that match or do whatever,

how will you ever know?

Showing all your muscles, huh? You good?

Ready?

One of the tough things about this whole process

is that there was this idea

that, "Oh, he can do all these wonderful things."

And then to have to--

Looking at everything that was taking place

then say, "But he can't."

You gotta walk like...

All right.

In a sense, I kind of felt

as though I was diminishing his value,

you know, Derrick can't do that.

...pick 'em up and put 'em down. Pick 'em up.

Going through that process of having to recognize that,

"Damn, he is really disabled." And that's fine.

He can't do all other things that other people can do

and that's perfectly fine

because we're gonna be all right, regardless.

Okay.

Oh, you're gonna show 'em that smile?

Yeah, say, "Here I am!"

Did psychiatrists determine

that Derrick was deemed incapable

and incompetent of taking care of himself?

Well, I knew.

I knew.

And knowing, and accepting it, and just embrace him.

Just love him for who he is.

No matter what or how...

strong he gets, he's still my child.

He will always have that younger mindset.

And I-- You know, he is 40 years old

and that's where we are.

You good?

And I don't love him no less, and I don't love him no more.

He is my baby. He is my baby.