The Washington Post disappoints yet again
After the Washington Post published its most recent feel-good story about Facilitated Communication, we sent them a letter about it. In fact, we were encouraged to do so by the journalist who wrote the story. But enough time has now elapsed that it’s pretty clear to us that the WaPo isn’t interested in what we have to say.
In a way, this is no surprise. If you go the the FC in the Media/news section of the website, you’ll see that, when it comes to articles promoting FC, the Washington Post is, by far, the hands-down winner. You’ve got to wonder what’s going on over there.
Here is what we wrote them:
To the editor:
Your recent discussion of facilitated communication (“It takes a woman with autism 25 years to find her voice”) promotes a discredited technique that hijacks the voices of people with disabilities.
For over 30 years, independent researchers in controlled authorship trials of Facilitated Communication (FC) have repeatedly and definitively shown that facilitators consciously or unwittingly control the messages—effectively depriving vulnerable individuals of their communication rights. FC is also associated with serious harms, including false allegations of sexual abuse, sexual assault, manslaughter, and maltreatment of people with disabilities. It is for these reasons, and not just the “potential Ouija Board effects” or “worry [that] it may hinder growth,” that the American Speech Language Hearing Association and the American Psychological Association, among others, oppose its use.
Stories of FC-based breakthroughs lead parents of minimally verbal children away from the evidence-based language interventions and assistive communication technologies that enable independent communication. Compared to FC, these take more time and effort and deliver results that are seemingly less impressive, but they are authentic rather than imagined. What parent, properly informed about FC, would choose an FC “miracle” over authentic communication? Newspapers like this one owe them and their children an evidence-based, fact-checked account.
