News Roundup, May, 2024 to December, 2024 Uncritical reports of S2C and RPM breakthroughs

May, 2024

A May, 9th article on the Fox 23 News website entitled “Bixby senior diagnosed with autism graduating with straight A's.”

The senior in question, whose potential was unlocked by S2C, “is getting ready to start college.” The article claims that S2C is “also helping others with autism find their voice and passion.”

The article cites his mother as saying:

It’s a whole new world for him. He was in Special Ed with no future. We had no idea what we were going to do for him as an adult. Now he’s going to college, he’s planning a career, doing everything any normal 19-year-old would be doing.

Through S2C generated messages, the senior told reporter Scott Martin that “he’s excited to start college and his path of becoming a neuropsychologist.” When Martin asked him what made him decide to be a neuropsychologist, he purportedly spelled out on his letterboard “I want to help people with trauma like me.”

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.

June, 2024

A June 12th article in a local Long Island Newspaper entitled “Riverhead program helps people with nonverbal autism learn and communicate”

This article reports on the founding of a local Rapid Prompting Method center. While acknowledging that RPM and S2C are controversial, it reduces the controversy to concerns that “they have not been scientifically validated.”

No mention of concerns about facilitator control of messages or of message-passing tests.

A June 17th article in The Holland Sentinel, a regional Michigan newspaper entitled “Christian community for individuals with disabilities planned in Holland township.

The article features a young non-verbal autistic adult who is “ready to live on his own” and “who communicates using the rapid prompting method and a letter board.”

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for RPM or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it

A June 17th article on WBIR.com, an NBC affiliate in Knoxville entitled 'Spelling to Communicate' gives Knoxville man a voice.

The article cites the man’s S2C coach, an occupational therapist by the name of Kelly Howe, as saying that for people like her client, “difficulty speaking stems from a brain-body disconnect” and that the goal of S2C is “to develop his motor skills because… pointing is proving to be more reliable than speaking.” Howe adds: "With 26 letters you have infinite possibilities.”

The article does acknowledge critics who “question whether it’s the voice of the person pointing, or that of the person holding the board” and mentions the warnings by the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA) against its use. But it returns to, and concludes with, the family’s perspective:

I think to myself, 'They clearly have never held the board.' Because for me, that was it. I did not know what letters he was going to poke. I didn’t know his answers," said Jodie [the man’s mother]. 

A June 24th article in The Comet, a local British newspaper, entitled “Stevenage cyclists help non-speaking people to communicate.”

This article reports on how a group of cyclist raised more than £10,000 for a U.S.-based S2C charity. As it explains:

They were inspired by a non-speaking autistic family member, Thomas Watson, who found his voice through the charity's programme, learning to “talk” at the age of 24 by using a method called Spelling to Communicate, which transformed his life. 

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it

July, 2024

A July 14th article in Business Insider entitled “A pointing technique could help nonverbal autistic people communicate.”

The article opens with a description of a 25-year-old woman who has been subjected to S2C since 2020. While it acknowledges the concerns of S2C skeptics, it ultimately appears to side with S2C, citing an infamous 2020 eye-tracking study as validating S2C. (The article also mistakenly claims that the study was published in the highly reputable journal Nature; it was actually published in a much less reputable, pay-to-publish journal, Scientific Reports, one of many owned by the umbrella organization Nature.com).

Furthermore, the article suggests that the messages attributed to the 25-year-old S2Ced woman are truly hers, recounting how she accurately typed out, while her mother held up the letter board, "I have pain in the back of my mouth" and how it turned out that she needed to have her wisdom teeth removed. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that she could have made the source of her discomfort clear through body language, and that her mother could have picked up on that—however subconsciously—and—however subconsciously—cued the message that she attributed--to her daughter.

A July 18th article in Forbes entitled “Inside The Spellers Method’s Work To Get People Listening To Non-Speakers Everywhere.”

This article, which Janyce blogged about here, essentially functions as an infomercial for an offshoot of Spelling to Communicate known as The Spellers Method.

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C and its variants or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it

September, 2024

A September 9th Op-Ed in the San Diego Onion by Speller’s Method co-founder Dawnmarie Gaivin.

Gaivin’s opinion piece is mostly about the neurodiversity acceptance, but the second paragraph is essentially an infomercial for the Speller’s Method (a rebranding of S2C), hyperlinks included:

As co-founder of the Spellers Method alongside Dana Johnson, I have dedicated my life to helping nonspeakers with autism, Down syndrome and apraxia learn to spell and type to communicate. Our work has been showcased in the award-winning documentary “SPELLERS,” as well as the series “Underestimated TV,” both of which highlight the intelligence and untapped potential of nonspeakers once given reliable communication tools.

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C and its variants or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it

A September 19th article in a online news source for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania entitled “‘Opened a new world’: Autistic North Allegheny student breaks through with help of innovation.”

This article recounts how a North Allegheny high school student was opened up via Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) after his mother met a RPM practitioner who had previously used RPM with her own son. High school staff, initially skeptical, have “gone so far as to create two full-time paraprofessional positions to spell with Nick throughout his day, so that he can start getting an appropriate education.”

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for RPM  or for any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it

October, 2024

An October 5th BBC news article entitled: Tool promised to help non-verbal people - but did it manipulate them instead?

This article, refreshingly, is broadly critical of FC, citing Janyce and her experience, two prominent FC-critics (Dr. Howard Shane and Dr. James Todd), and the Anna Stubblefield Case. However, when discussing long-time FC user Tim Chan, the article falls into the all-too-common trap of assuming that FCed testimony about the virtues of FC is, in fact, first-person testimony, as opposed to testimony authored by the facilitator:

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

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

An October 6th segment on CBS news picks up KQED’s story of the boy with the symphony in his head, which I wrote about last spring.

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for the letterboarding method used by the boy and its variants (a variant of RPM or s2c) or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.

November, 2024

A November 1st article in the Vermont weekly newspaper Seven Days.

It reports on the death of Mark Utter, a nonverbal man with autism who was subjected to facilitated communication starting at age 30:

Throughout his childhood, Utter was labeled "mentally retarded" and treated as though he understood little, if anything, about the world around him. Years later, Utter would astound family members and friends by demonstrating that, in fact, he knew all along what people were saying about him and was capable of deeply creative and complex thoughts.

Purportedly inspired by the pro-FC film Wretches and Jabberers, he purportedly wrote a film called  I am In Here: A View of My Daily Life With Good Suggestions for Improvement.

According to his friend and facilitator:

Utter was deeply intuitive and attuned to other people's emotions… For example, he could always sense, without being told, when she had undergone an acupuncture treatment and would remark on its positive effects on her.

The question of whether this purported social intuition is actually a symptom of facilitator cueing goes unasked—and unanswered.

---

December, 2024

A December 26th article in a local Irish news website (Boyle Today) on the “Annual 5k Fun Run/Walk in aid of children and teenagers with Autism.”

It informs us that “All money raised will goes to RPM [Rapid Prompting Method] which pays for individual or group sessions with a practitioner.”

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for RPM or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.

A December 27th article in a local Tennessee newspaper (the Crossville Chronicle), entitled “FINDING HIS VOICE: Fairfield Glade man with nonverbal autism reveals tremendous verbiage through spelling to communicate program.

It reports on a “cutting-edge therapy,” later revealed to be S2C (Spelling to Communicate), has allowed a man who “does a limited amount of speaking and struggles to express simple thoughts” to be “eloquent and thoughtful in his writing.”

The article claims that there is “research pointing to a disconnect between the brain and body for individuals with autism” (there isn’t) and that “Spelling to Communicate addresses this disconnect by building the purposeful motor skills needed to point to letters, spell words, and ultimately express thoughts and ideas” (it doesn’t)

While his spoken language is limited to “short and often repetitive phrases” that communicate “ wants and needs,” the written language extracted from him via S2C contains “deep thoughts, demonstrate strong social skills. (Yes, according to the body-disconnect version of autism favored by S2C proponents, autism isn’t the social disorder it has been defined as being for the last 8 decades).

Beyond this, anticipating another development in autism news this year (see our last entry, below), one of his messages is this:

Time is showing that nonspeakers have capabilities of intellect created by a hand by a creator somewhere beyond this world. The life nonspeakers live is the miracle of spirituality existing on a tiny scale.

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.

A December 28th article in the Ohio news website Cleveland.com entitled “‘I’m free’: New communication method finally gives people with autism a voice.”

It describes how, for the first two decades, a young woman named Talia Zimmerman wasn’t able to communicate using more than a single word or two, and only for basic wants and needs: words like “water” and “ice cream.” But then her mother read the S2C-promoting book Underestimated and met a local boy who had purportedly been unlocked by it, so they did, too, at the rate of $85 an hour.

The article notes the evidence against “a related program, called Facilitated Communication,” and also acknowledges that S2C also has its detractors, including the American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA). It even quotes ASHA as saying that S2C “strips people of their human right to independent communication because the technique relies on an aide for prompting;” and Diane Paul, ASHA’s senior director of clinical issues for ASHA, as asking “why the letter board (or keyboard) needs to be held by the facilitator, and not placed on a table or easel.”

But then the article turns back to the mother, who is convinced it works: “This is the only thing that has worked,” she said. “You watch these young adults spelling – I don’t know what else people need.” It also happily attributes S2C-generated words to Talia, with no appreciation for the questions raised by the ASHA statement about whether they are really hers:

[W]hen asked recently how she felt the first time someone spoke to her as an adult, Talia… replied: “I felt a sense of relief. Someone finally believes in me. I’m free.”

The article proceeds to provide a description of how S2C works, noting that “autistic individuals typically have poor motor skills, which makes pointing at letters or using a keyboard very challenging,” but not the pointing at the larger letters of letterboards. (In fact, there is no evidence of motor-based inability to point in autism). It also claims that pointing to letterboards “pointing to a letter board uses gross motor skills, powered by large muscles” [it isn’t], and not fine motor skills, which are typically significantly impaired by autism.” (in fact, some individuals with autism have fine motor difficulties, some have gross motor difficulties, some have both, and some have neither).

Regardless Talia Zimmerman, has “progress[ed] to a keyboard, using a single finger to type words into a computer.”

The local S2C practitioners who work with Talia insist that they “are absolutely not prompting their clients.” One of them stated, as “the biggest proof” of this “is when they tell us something we don’t know.” She also notes that “The goal for every client… is independent communication, initiated by the client.” She makes no mention, however, of ever conducting a simple facilitator-blinded message-passing test.

Tellingly, the article notes that “Talia, as well as most participants in the program, are far more proficient at spelling when they’re working with their professional partners than with parents, siblings and others.”

The article also notes that it’s unclear “where Talia.. learned how to spell and acquired so much knowledge,” quoting her mother as saying “She’s never picked up a book, never surfed the internet that I’m aware of,” said Lisa. Her father speculates that “perhaps she learned about the Mona Lisa while watching a TV program with him on Italy.”

“She picks up information in ways that other people don’t,” he said. “I think her brain absorbs information at a greater depth than other people.”

The possibility that the information attributed to Talia through S2C is actually knowledge held by her facilitators, and not by her, goes unmentioned.

A December 30th article in Spectrum News entitled Nina: A Nonspeaker Who Found Her Voice.

A re-publication of author Debra Brause’s S2C-promoting piece in Psychology Today, which I blogged about earlier.

No mention of the complete lack of evidence base for S2C or of any of the many health, education, and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.

Last but not least…

Commencing September 3rd and still going, a podcast that assumes that RPM/S2C are valid and reanalyzes facilitator influence as telepathic communication.

It has ascended the ratings on Spotify to become one of the most popular podcasts in the U.S.

RFK Jr. and FC-Adjacent Beliefs: from chelation to Planet X to calculus in a day

With President-elect Trump’s announcement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services and, in Trump’s words, “go wild on health,” we are faced with the prospect of someone playing a role in U.S. health policy who has said that a certain variant of FC should be celebrated “like the 4th of July.”

Though on leave since campaigning for president and then campaigning for Trump, RFK Jr. has long been the chairman of the Children’s Health Defense. One of the key policy positions of the Children’s Health Defense—and of RFK Jr. himself—is that vaccines cause autism. As a recent New York Times article reports, RFK Jr. also believes in fringe treatments like hyperbaric therapies and chelation. It also turns out that he believes in Spelling to Communicate, or S2C (more on that later).

RFK Jr. isn’t an autism parent, but his fringe positions are shared by a number of people who are. They include J. B. Handley, vice-chairman of the Children’s Health Defense and founder of Generation Rescue, another anti-vaxx organization that also promotes fringe treatments for autism. They also include Jenny McCarthy, current president of Generation Rescue, and Handley’s and McCarthy’s many followers in the autism parent community. Naturally, those who believe in one non-evidence-based notion about autism are prone to believe in others, and the belief that vaccines cause autism is frequently accompanied by the belief that megavitamins, restrictive diets, chelation, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and/or fecal transplants can substantially alleviate autism symptoms, and that one or another variant of facilitated communication (FC/RPM/S2C or the Spellers Method) can unlock the communicative potentials of autistic individuals.

But parents (and other family members) who believe in FC/RPM/S2C are also committed to an additional set of beliefs: beliefs that are crucial to accounting for the language and content of the messages extracted from their children via FC/RPM/S2C. These include messages like this one, generated by a 12-year-old girl while being facilitated by her mother:

Doing fishlips to the audience is an expression of funny playfulness but can be misinterpreted as simple mindedness. (Zurcher-Long & Zurcher, 2014).

As another mother, reporting on her daughter’s FCed communications, tells us:

Emily was full of ideas and dreams, but the biggest one, the one she wrote about most frequently, was to visit London. We were astounded as she told us details of the city. She pictured Big Ben and the soldiers with enormous hats, she knew about the River Thames, and that tall red buses filled the streets. She was fascinated by Lady Di and knew all about her and her tragic death. We didn’t know where all this information had come from. We’d never told her anything about London. She told us she’d learned about it from watching the news; she’d been five at the time that Lady Di died. (Gilpeer & Grodin, 2021).

FCed messages, as these excerpts suggest, typically display sophisticated vocabulary and syntax, age-appropriate-to-advanced academic skills/knowledge, and remarkable awareness of current events, contemporary culture, and/or the pressing issues of the day. And yet FCed individuals, profoundly autistic as most of them are, typically don’t display sustained attention to spoken or written language. Nor, prior to being subjected to FC/RPM/S2C, do they receive much formal exposure to or instruction in grade-level academic content and skills: they are generally restricted to special education programs designed for profoundly autistic students. Therefore, those who believe (despite all the evidence to the contrary) that the FCed messages are being authored by the FCed individuals must also, necessarily, believe that these individuals have spent years sponging up tons of information—from history to politics to literature to physics— from sources other than teachers and academic settings, and in subtle ways that went unnoticed for years.

Then there are the practitioners. As with autism parents and family members, practitioners who profess to believe in one non-evidence-based autism treatment are prone to profess to believe in others—though it’s not always clear here that actual beliefs are in play. That is, while it’s reasonable to assume that parents truly believe in the efficacy of the treatments to which, often at great cost, they subject their children, it’s less clear what practitioners of non-evidence-based treatments actually believe—unless, perhaps, they are also autism parents/family members. Be that as it may, we often find FC practitioners expressing support for other non-evidence-based therapies, and peddlers of other non-evidence-based therapies expressing support for FC.

Of course, it’s not just the parents and the practitioners, but also many individuals in the broader community that surround the FCed individuals, who espouse these extraordinary beliefs in FC and FC-adjacent phenomena. RFK Jr. came by his FC-related beliefs by hanging out with J.B. Handley. Nor do parents, practitioners, and members of the broader community necessarily limit themselves to beliefs related directly to FC and other autism treatments. Once one starts believing in somewhat extraordinary things, those things can snowball into outrageously extraordinary things.

Let’s start with the somewhat extraordinary, and with the practitioners.

Besides the FC-adjacent, fringe “medical” beliefs of certain parents and associated quacks (anti-vaccine; pro-megavitamins, restrictive diets, chelation, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and/or fecal transplants), there are the FC-adjacent, non-evidence-based therapies of certain practitioners. We’ve already posted about the overlapping beliefs of practitioners of the FC variant of Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) and practitioners of Floortime, another non-evidence-based autism therapy. Also recently expressing support for RPM is a cohort of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) we haven’t mentioned here before: practitioners of a non-evidence-based autism therapy grounded in a purported phenomenon called “Natural Language Acquisition”/”Gestalt Language Processing” (or NLA/GLP—see here and here for critical reviews). NLP/GLP-based therapy, originating with SLP Marge Blanc, has become so popular in the last decade, despite its complete lack of empirical support, that multiple sessions of the American Speech Language Hearing Association’s recent conventions have been devoted to talks by promoters, many filled to standing room only. Within the self-published book that set it all in motion, released back in 2012, we find Blanc depicting RPM as a way for autistic individuals who speak in “gestalts” (echolalia), purportedly via their right brains, to produce more analytical or generative language, purportedly via their left brains:

At the age of eighteen, Will was introduced to RPM, and a year later on, he was composing his own stories by pointing to letters. Effectively bypassing his oral language conundrum, RPM offered Will direct access to his left-brain generative language in a way that was not reliable with oral speech.

Some of Blanc’s acolytes have also embraced RPM, as we see here.

The realm of somewhat extraordinary, FC-adjacent beliefs includes beliefs that parents are committed to holding in order to explain the sophisticated language and content of the messages extracted from their children via FC/RPM/S2C. Here are some of the sorts of claims made by parents, or seen in FCed messages or in news reports by credulous journalists.

1. Extraordinary, unfounded claims about peripheral vision. These claims, were they not totally unfounded (see here), could explain how many FCed individuals are able to type with their index fingers without looking at the letter displays, and how they may be paying attention even when they don’t appear to be looking. In reality, peripheral vision isn’t precise enough to allow one to identify letters, let alone to read words.

2. Extraordinary, unfounded claims about photographic memory. These claims, were they not totally unfounded (see here), could explain how FCed individuals are able to read books without looking at any of the pages for more than a fleeting moment.

3. Extraordinary, unfounded claims about such extraordinary hearing that one can identify words spoken outside of most people’s auditory range; and such extraordinary oral language processing abilities that one can make sense of multiple conversations at once. These claims, were they not totally unfounded, could help explain how FCed individuals, despite their minimal access to formal academic instruction, are able to soak up vast amounts of information on a broad range of subjects from the surrounding environment.

Here are some specific instances of these claims.

First, from a 2006 Time Magazine article about Hannah Chadwick, a woman supposedly unlocked through facilitated communication:

During the silent years, it seems, Hannah was soaking up vast storehouses of information. The girl without language had an extensive vocabulary, a sense of humor and some unusual gifts. One day, when Jacob presented her with a page of 30 or so math problems, Hannah took one look, then typed all 30 answers. Stunned, Jacob asked, “Do you have a photographic memory?” Hannah typed “Yes.”

Like many people with autism, Hannah is so acutely sensitive to sound that she’ll catch every word of a conversation occurring elsewhere in the house, which may account for much of her knowledge. She is also hypersensitive to visual input. Gazing directly at things is difficult, so she often relies on her almost preternatural peripheral vision.” (Time Magazine, May 7th, 2006).

Second, from Carly’s Voice, a 2012 memoir written by the father of an autistic girl with FC-generated excerpts he attributes to her:

We take in many sounds and conversations at once. (p. 322).

I listen to everything… If a TV is on and I am in another room, I still listen to it or if people are talking I like to hear what they are saying even if they are not talking to me. Like I say all the time, just because it does not look like I am paying attention does not mean that’s the case. (p. 343).

I have a photographic memory that allows me to look at an image or a page of a book and memorize it in seconds. (p. 383)

Third, from a 2020, FC-generated post on Autism Prophets and attributed to Darcy Reed, “a proud, non-speaking autistic woman who has been typing to communicate since she was a small child”:

In the long run, perhaps people will understand that those of us on the spectrum have more neurons than neurotypicals. That makes us receive information at a rapid rate. That’s why you frequently bore us. You talk so slow it’s hard to focus for that long with so many other things going on. It is a good thing for absorbing information. I wasn’t taught anything in school, but thanks to documentaries and a family of intellectuals, I am quite well educated.

In other anecdotes, minimal speakers with autism are said to have learned Spanish by overhearing their siblings practice Spanish homework; physics by overhearing the proceedings of a physics class through the cafeteria wall; and current events by listening to NPR. They are said to be extraordinarily attentive, despite appearances to the contrary: able to see what they don’t appear to be looking at and hear what we might assume is too muddled or out of earshot. They are said to be sponges for knowledge and to have extraordinary capacities for long-term retention.

These extraordinary beliefs about the preternatural cognitive capacities of minimally speaking individuals with autism naturally lead some parents and their surrounding communities into beliefs about capacities that are full-on paranormal. Telepathy is the most obvious one. It lets FC believers invoke some reason other than facilitator cueing for why FCed individuals sometimes type out knowledge known only to the facilitators—as has happened during message-passing tests in the rigorous studies that have uniformly invalidated FC.

Depiction of a message-passing test. The facilitator is blinded to what the facilitated person is typing.

In an earlier post, Janyce discusses claims of telepathy that appear in a 40-page, self-published, 1993 booklet by pop psychology author Paul Haskew and University of Wisconsin education school professor Anne Donnellan (Emotional Maturity and Well-Being: Psychological Lessons of Facilitated Communication). Haskew and Donnellan

claim their subjects have a “sixth sense” that allows FCed individuals to communicate either through facilitation or, in some cases, without speaking or pointing to a letter board at all. Haskew and Donnellan include examples where nonspeaking individuals form “special education ghetto” gangs to cause trouble for their teachers and classmates—all done by telepathic communication that transcends physical boundaries. The students don’t even have to be in the same room to “communicate” with each other.

As a result, as Janyce reports, these individuals, per Haskew and Deonnellan, have:

difficulty separating their own thoughts from those of their facilitators. This, the authors assert, leads some nonspeaking individuals to take on the identities of their facilitators and, in some cases, develop identity disorders or characteristics of multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder.

As Haskew and Donellan explain it:

It may be that a sixth sense is present in all of us at birth, but as speech and locomotion develop, the need for it fades. Still, many people seem to retain vestigial psychic abilities, especially at times of accident or trauma, and there is much anecdotal scientific literature describing those. For people with impaired communication capabilities the sixth sense may remain active and utilized. The speaking world is simply rediscovering it. (Haskew and Donnellan 1993, p.9)

For additional claims by Donnellan about telepathy, see James Randi’s piece in Skeptical Inquirer.

More recently, self-described medium and facilitator Mary Ann Harrington has this to say in her website’s introduction:

All those interested in using these processes must be warned of possible purposeful or inadvertent influence by the thoughts of their communication partners. As a proponent and user for over thirty years, due to what feels like a merging of our consciousness, or simultaneous knowing, or an emergent voice; it is still difficult for me at times to tell where their thoughts from my own, especially if I am vested in anyway.

I choose to refer to those who use the process as Qautists since there appears to be a extra-senspry [sic] quantum component to the process. Many but not all Qautists have a diagnosis of severe autism. However, many autistic people, who display less significant language impairments do not share the Qautists’ abilities; at least not to the same extent. Other nonspeaking populations such as some diagnosed with down’s [sic] syndrome also share their gifts. Is it channelling? Is it mediumship? I don’t know. I do know they seem to have access to my neurology and know all that I know. They suggest they can tap into multiple realms of existence to get information. There seems to be no limit to their knowledge or ability to access it. It is me, as their communication partner that limits their responses; I am the one who causes destructive interference if I have not been exposed to the subject matter. For example, the spellers can speak any language; but their partner must understand the language for them to bring it through.

Since I define the role of a facilitator or communication partner differently, I will refer to those people who assist the spellers with communication as Catalysts. The purpose, responsibility, and development of the Catalyst needs study. The Qautists are already there just waiting for us to catch up. It begins with determining, what is and what is not part of the process.

Harrington also proposes that the reason why “Qautists do not need to look at the keyboard, but Catalysts do” may be that “Qautists adhere to the Catalyst’s sensory system-see-through their eyes, hear through their ears…” and that “the Catalyst and Qautist [may be] entangled as one emergent field of awareness…”

Darcy Reed (see above) adds:

There is also a special area where the truth detectors in my intuition can tell what is true and can often read minds.

In addition, the first episode of a podcast called The Telepathy Tapes discusses facilitated non-speaking autistic individuals who are able to read their facilitators’ minds. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone on the show, including a self-proclaimed autism specialist by the name of Diane Hennacy Powell, MD, that the most likely explanation for this is facilitator cueing, not telepathy.

For another source sympathetic both to FC and to telepathy, see Olga Bogdashina’s 2011 book Autism and the Edges of the Known World: Sensitivities, Language and Constructed Reality (Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

Besides telepathy, beliefs about the extraordinary sensory skills of FCed individuals naturally lead some to ascribe exotic sensory processing to individuals with autism: especially synesthesia, which I’ve written about here and which is also reported on The Telepathy Tapes. Extreme synesthesia, of course, can be downright psychedelic, and a 2013 Los Angeles Times profile of a non-speaking boy subjected to RPM (Ido Kedar) contains this line: “Autism, Ido says, is like being on LSD.” Then there is unusual time perception: the ability not just to hear far away noises, but to see into the distant past. Here are some testimonials from Higashida, the FCed autistic boy credited with authoring the 2013 memoir The Reason I Jump, a book that many people have said—and some have told me personally—has given them a much deeper understanding of autism:

For us, one second is infinitely long—yet twenty-four hours can hurtle by in a flash. (p. 63)

We who have autism, who are semi-detached from the flow of time…” (p. 67)

[W]e are a different kind of human, born with primeval senses. We are outside the normal flow of time.” (p. 71).

[W]e are more like travelers from a distant past (p. 111)

From here, Darcy Reed’s report that “I remember everything, even past lives” isn’t too much of a stretch.

Nor is this statement from Maryann Harrington about the people she calls “Qautists” or “Quatists”:

In my opinion. Qautists do not learn everything from their environment or through direct instruction as suggested by proponets [sic]. They come in with a vast array of knowledge or at least access to it through access to it. How do the Quatists receive information from the Catalysts’ knowledge base, spirits, aliens, the akashic records, the Divine, or universal field of thought? Or whatever name you choose for the intuitive realms? Is the doorway of the subconscious to the superconscious mind wide open?

Finally, I nearly forgot these recent tweets from a father who has been facilitating his non-speaking son for decades:

As we descend down the rabbit hole, additional magical entities appear. Darcy Reed reports seeing UFOs.  The LA Times profile of Ido Kedar informs us that:

Ido says he can also see auras, emanations of color around people that help him gauge their temperaments.

His mother is blue, his sister is green and his father is greenish-yellow. Purple, he says, is the most open-minded color, brown the most closed off.

Brown is the color of my ABA teachers.

Sharon Smith of the Sharonsweb Autism Foundation and the mother of two non-speaking, FC-ed children, sells tickets for events that showcase her children’s paranormal abilities:

Explore the extraordinary world of energy and communication beyond words with Noah and Adriana, two nonspeaking individuals with autism. They demonstrate their abilities in mediumship, telepathy, and energy reading during this interactive session with Sharon's assistance.

(Sharon’s assistance of Noah and Adriana is via old-school, touch-based FC.)

Noah and Adriana are credited with authoring two chapters (chapters 4 and 17, respectively) of a book entitled The Ancestors Within. Here, they are described as

autistic non-speakers with extraordinary abilities. They are powerlifters, authors, mediums, energy healers and the list keeps growing!  In 2016 they began using facilitated communication. In 2020 they demonstrated telepathy and made friendship connections building their tribe to support and enhance each other.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 4:

Thoughts that come from someone else are your spirit guides. You are already in tune with your ancestors! This is the start of understanding what I do. You need to relax and listen to these voices or feelings. Trust your instincts. 

Moms of children with nonverbal autism may have a harder time with this because those children attract more spirits and energy than other children. It may appear chaotic and overwhelming. Your energy is often really overpowering to them, and you interrupt the natural flow that these children are used to hearing in their heads. Just know they hear you, and you don’t need to raise your voice. Understand they sense your frustration and your fear.

And here is an excerpt from Chapter 17:

I am Adriana. A manipulator of energy. A keeper of time. A watcher of the spirit realm. What your world would consider an adult with autism. What does that mean? I don’t know what it means to you, to me it means that I’m halfway in this universe and I’m halfway out of this universe.

Grandma Chandra, another non-speaker facilitated by her mother, has her own website, where we learn that:

[She] reads Auras from the Quantum Light Field, heals through the Light codes and frequencies within her Holographic Fractal videos. She works with Sacred Geometric forms, high vibrational essential oils, apps and her healing green laser that are all personally encoded for each client. Grandma is an Indigo Eiyanni who came to Gaia to help with Ascension through her products and readings. She is a multi-dimensional being who communicates with many people around the globe telepathically sometimes in Light language thru her videos and audios. Like the Whales and Dolphins she is clairvoyant, clairaudient and clairsentient. As the Whales are the Keepers of the Akashic Records, Grandma Chandra has full access to these Records.

For some parents and their surrounding communities, the paranormal is specifically religious—a connection to profound autism that dates at least as far back as the so-called “holy fools” (mostly of the 14th century): certain individuals with autistic traits recognized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church (see Donvan and Zucker, 42). Some 6 centuries later, a particularly striking account of the autism-paranormal-religion trifecta is found in a 1997 article entitled “What does the soul say? Metaphysical uses of facilitated communication in the Jewish ultraorthodox community” (Bilu & Goodman, 1997). Bilu and Goodman write that starting in the early 1990s FC “was transformed in the Jewish ultraorthodox [Haredi] community into a mystical device through which autistic children disclose otherworldly messages” and that the children “were perceived as mediums susceptible to supernormal agencies.” Their feats include “fluent communication in foreign languages… communication during states of deep coma, absorbing written material and conducting complex calculations at enormous speeds, and knowledge of Divine Truth”, and “based on the experiences of their souls in the afterworld, [they] are cognitive of his [God’s] omnipresence and guidance.” According to one of the group’s publications:

all the brain-damaged know without exception that they had lived in this world before, know their former names and parents’ names, and know the sin for which they came into this world in such a miserable form.

Here is an excerpt of an interview cited by Bilu & Goodman of one of the facilitated non-speakers:

Q: Why did you come into the world in this form?

A: There is no suffering without sin, and I sinned in forsaking study of the Torah.

Q: Why have so many troubles been occurring recently?

A: Because of [the prevalence of] the “evil tongue” and sexual relations with menstruating women.”

Reading this, I wondered why no one has cited profanity and sexual relations during menses as one of the reasons for the dramatic rise in reported rates of autism that took off around this time.

Several decades on, the non-speaking, FCed prophets in this community are still active, as we learn from a 2016 article in Israel 365 News entitled “The Planet Nibiru and the Apocalypse.” This article focuses on the FCed prophets’ prophecies about a purported planet alternately known as Nibiru or as Planet X. According to scientist and author Zechariah Sitchin, this purported planet comes from beyond Pluto and passes through our solar system every 3,600 years. The article—written in 2016—reports that about 50 years ago (circa 1966), Sitchin decided that in about 50 years (i.e., 2016), Nibiru would come close enough to earth to cause “extensive damage to Earth’s land masses and death to millions.” Sitchin died in 2010, but in late December 2015, according to the article, three non-speaking prophets, Menachem, Daniel, and Binyamin, described via FC-generated messages “a picture of apocalyptic devastation from which only the Land of Israel remains unscathed.”

In his recorded FC session (December 23, 2015), Menachem suggested that “world leaders are preparing for the inevitable doomsday collision by preparing elaborate bunkers” and that, in words generated by FC, “the people who are outside, those who have trust in Hashem (God) – they’ll be saved.”

In his recorded FC session (December 27, 2015), Daniel prophesized that (via FC-generated words):

The effects of ‘Nibiru’ will be giant tsunamis with waves 100 meters high, earthquakes, tornadoes, erupting volcanoes, there will be a hit to nuclear reactors that will cause radioactive contamination like in Fukushima, Japan. And there won’t be electricity, and there won’t be clean water, and there won’t be food – it will be a very difficult situation. We in Eretz Yisrael will be like in Noah’s ark.

Finally, in his recorded FC session (December 30, 2015), Binyamin prophesized that (via FC-generated words):

“And I say to you: there’s going to be a huge disaster. A huge disaster, really.  Hashem (God) – He’s the only one Who can destroy the world that He Himself created. It will be a huge disaster, and this disaster will destroy two-thirds of the world. And it will leave Eretz-Yisrael (Land of Israel) complete… Now you want to know how it will happen… I don’t know exactly, but from all the possibilities I’ve heard, the matter of the star – it seems to me the most real.”

The article assures us that claims about Nibiru’s existence and destructive forces have been “repeatedly debunked, as recently as February 2014, March, 2014 and July 2015.”

Pastor Paul Begley, host of the TV show The Coming Apocalypse and owner of a YouTube channel with more than 240 million subscribers, reports on Menachem’s, Daniel’s, and Binyamin’s FCed prophecies in a video posted 8 years ago—but he, unlike Israel 365 News, does so with utter credulity.

Of course, the world always seems to be about to end, which takes us back (or forward) to the incoming administration and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. While RFK Jr. holds several FC-adjacent beliefs—i.e., in the efficacy of hyperbaric therapies and chelation and in vaccines causing autism—and is a close associate of J.B. Handley, who holds both FC-adjacent and pro-FC beliefs, how do we know that Handley’s FC beliefs have infected RFK Jr.? We know it from a 2021 episode on the RJK Jr. podcast, itself recorded shortly after the publication of JB Handley’s S2C miracle cure book, Underestimated. Here’s what RFK Jr. had to say about Handley and his S2Ced son:

For the first 18 years of his life he [Handley] believed his son was mentally retarded… and at one point he called me and explained this new process that had just been created by these incredibly intuitive teachers who developed this ability to communicate with people who are non-speakers on… whiteboards [sic] and what he told me then which is one of the stories told in the book is this extraordinary discovery that these children have absolutely exquisitely functioning minds and that their difficulty is motor coordination, particularly in small skills. So they aren’t able to communicate not because they're not having very sophisticated and profound thoughts… but because they can't force their tongue which has all these nerves and muscles in it to actually articulate that and their bodies are completely out of their control… The book describes this incredible discovery of a loving father, devoted father that the son he’s known for all these years is actually a complete person… who is probably smarter than any of us. He learned to do calculus in essentially a day. And his calculus teacher said I can’t teach him anymore. We need a college level teacher because he’s too fast.

It’s a later point in the same podcast when RFK Jr. tells us that S2C should be celebrated “like the 4th of July.”

Not only has RFK Jr. swallowed hook, line, and sinker the FC-proponents’ non-evidence-based overturning of the longstanding diagnostic criteria autism—and of eight decades of autism research—and their magically transforming of autism from a socio-cognitive disorder into a motor disorder; he has also so thoroughly bought into the claims by FC-proponents that FC (S2C in particular) unlocks preternatural brilliance that he thinks it’s possible for an FCed person to learn calculus in a day.

For those who either avoided calculus or don’t remember what it involved, Wikipedia provides a list of topics covered. Here’s the first question on a sample AP calculus exam:

Not even Newton and Leibnitz, the two inventors of calculus, learned calculus in a day. Neither did Einstein. A gigantic number of people are scientifically illiterate and believe in non-evidence-based and supernatural phenomena; hardly anyone thinks anyone can learn calculus in a day.

What all this means is that a future advisor on America’s healthcare, in addition to believing that S2C should be celebrated like the 4th of July, holds one of the most extraordinary of all of the many FC-adjacent beliefs.

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References

Bilu, Y., & Goodman, Y. C. (1997). What does the soul say? Metaphysical uses of facilitated communication in the Jewish ultraorthodox community. Ethos, 25(4), 375–407.

Blanc M. (2012). Natural language acquisition on the autism spectrum: The journey from echolalia to self-generated language. Madison, WI: Communication Development Center.

Donvan John & Zucker, Caren, 2016. In a Different Key: The Story of Autism. Crown.

Fleischmann, A. (2012). Carly’s voice: Breaking through autism. Touchstone (Nashville, Tenn.).

Gilpeer, V., & Grodin, E. (2021). I have been buried under years of dust: A memoir of autism and hope. William Morrow.

Handley, J. B., & Handley, J. (2021). Underestimated: An autism miracle. Skyhorse.

Higashida, N. (2013). The reason I jump: One boy’s voice from the silence of autism. Hodder Stoughton.

Zurcher-Long, E., & Zurcher, A. (2014, July 4). Emma Zurcher-Long & Ariane Zurcher Present - My Body Does Not Obey My Mind [Video]. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xDuIlRrtb8

See also:

https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/a-magician-cannot-dispute-fc-or-can-he

https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/do-fced-individuals-have-telepathic-superpowers?fbclid=IwY2xjawGa8rRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbzhQjXouiNI4K41pLJC9j18c0R9PcICgFTjerecYuTIF7TYFqajBEy6aA_aem_b1zPL5y2xp-9JfvoJgqKPQ

https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/another-side-effect-of-fc-alternative-facts

https://www.facilitatedcommunication.org/blog/peripheral-vision-perfect-for-detecting-facilitator-cues