It’s been about 6 months since our last news roundup of FC/S2C/RPM, and we just finished our seven-part series on the Lower Merion trial, so we thought it appropriate to roundup and post the FC/S2C/RPM. news items that have come out since the turn of the year.
One
striking thing, overall, is how few of these articles are about the Telepathy
Tapes, briefly the number 1 podcast on Spotify, and perhaps still the more
popular podcast on non-speaking autism. I guess, for all their love of a
feel-good story, few journalists want to go quite as far as telepathy—except
(as we’ll see) in the context of critical, curious, investigative journalism.
So
here, in chronological order, is what’s come out since our last news roundup in
the way of feel-good stories about FC/RPM/S2C. I’ll follow these up with a few
news items were significantly more critical (yes, there were actually several of these this year!).
January, 2025
A January 10th article in Disability Scoop entitled Communication Method
Finally Gives Nonverbal Woman A Voice.
This
article presents the usual miracle cure story of someone opened up by S2C. The
person it showcases, Talia Zimmerman seems to have like what the DSM-IV called Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, now considered part of the
DSM-5’s “autism spectrum disorder.”
The
article characterizes S2C as a “relatively new communication method” (Elizabeth
Vosseller “invented it” a decade ago) and as “pointing at letters on a panel
held up by a trained practitioner” (as if there’s some special training,
specifically, in how to hold up a panel).
The
article is unusual in acknowledging that S2C is controversial: author Susan
Glaser mentions the warnings by the American Speech-Language-Hearing
Association (ASHA) against its use. But, as is clear from the title onwards,
Glaser simply assumes that S2C works for Talia Zimmerman, as well as for the
other non-speakers she mentions in passing.
A January 20th article in the Irish Independent entitled Non-verbal boy from Wexford
wrote letter to Taoiseach which touched hearts around the world.
As
authors Isabel Colleran and Gorey Guardian explain, the boy in question
used the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) to write a letter to Taoiseach Simon Harris [the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland] after meeting him during the official launch of Gorey Hill School [a school for students with autism]”
This
letter was “shared online worldwide because of its heartfelt message.”
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 January 23rd article in the University of Toronto
Magazine
entitled When Words Won’t Cooperate.
This
article discusses how a neuroscientist in the University of Toronto psychology
department, Morgan Barense, “aims to crack the mystery of non-speaking autism.”
Author Alison Motluk focuses on an autistic person named Isaiah Grewal, who, at
age 2, was not only non-speaking, but also not “responding normally when people
spoke to him.” This suggests that his language challenges included not just
speech but (as is common in profound autism) comprehension. Nonetheless, once
introduced to S2C, Isaiah began typing out the typical messages attributed to
autistic individuals who are purportedly “unlocked” through FC/RPM/S2C:
messages about his “freedom from prison” and about wanting people to know
“that I’m in here.”
Barense,
too, seems to have swallowed the FC talking points about autism: namely “that
many autistic people who don’t speak may be hindered not by problems of
intellect but motor control”, specifically “apraxia.” She plans to use fMRI
scans to “look for complex patterns of brain activity that reflect high-level
comprehension but do not require motor output. What she’s after sounds to me
like a really low-resolution signal that could easily be generated by noticing
changes in vocal prosody and recognizing the sounds of familiar words, as
opposed to actual comprehension.
Both
Barense and Motluk assume that Isaiah’s S2C-generated messages are his own and
treat them as reliable, first-hand testimonials about autism.
I asked what autism felt like to him. Via keyboard, he answered, “Like swimming underwater 24-7 because everything feels hard to control.” I asked what he and his friends talk about when they get together online. “We mostly trash talk,” he responded. Then, later, after I’d stopped laughing, he said, “We just like to hang out in the same space and eat pizza.
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 January 30th article in the Westfair Business Journal entitled Cohen Abilis Advancement
Center opening in Stamford.
This
center, author Gary Larkin reports, includes “enhanced space for Abilis’
Supported Typing/SteP program (“supported typing” being another term for
classic, touch-based FC).
No mention of the
complete lack of evidence base for FC or of any of the many health, education,
and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.
February, 2025
A February 6th article in Yahoo News entitled Spelling to Communicate
fundraiser.
This
article announces an S2C fundraiser by the nonprofit Angelo's Angels for Communication to support families who
patronize the Mind Over Body clinic and to “raise
awareness about individuals who use letterboards as an alternative form of
communication.” (Both organizations are included in our list of organizations
supporting FC/RPM/S2C).
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.
April, 2025
An April 10th segment on WLWT News 5 Today (out of Cincinnati) entitled
Son of Cincinnati radio
personality defying the odds during Autism Acceptance Month.
This
segment features an interview with the “well-known Cincinnati radio
personality,” Q-102 radio's Jenn Jordan, whose autistic son is “using his
platform to defy the odds.” Her son is Jakob Jordan, and his platform involves
“communicat[ing] through spelling after being diagnosed with autism and
apraxia.” While Jakob sits in silence, Jenn, who is still unable to do S2C with
her son and didn’t bring along his S2C “communication partner,” does all the
talking. She characterizes apraxia, falsely, as causing a “brain-body
disconnect” and a reluctance to try new things. She also states that the
intellectual disability Jakob was initially diagnosed with was a “mislabeling.”
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.
May, 2025
A May 2nd piece on Jefferson Public Radio entitled Medford psychiatrist’s
research into autism and telepathy sparks debate over communication.
This
piece showcases Johns Hopkins-trained psychiatrist Dr. Diane Powell, whose name
should be familiar to anyone familiar with the Telepathy Tapes podcast: she’s
the podcast’s star scientist. While the piece focuses on Powell and on how she
came to believe that non-speakers are telepathic, it’s also, necessarily, an
article about RPM/S2C. That’s because a video-taped RPM/S2C session that
Dr. Powell has “watched countless times” is part of what convinced her—or so
journalist Justin Higginbottom suggests.
Like
the January 10th Disability Scoop piece, this article does acknowledge the
controversy surrounding RPM/S2C. Indeed, Higginbottom even speaks, at length,
with one of the directors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
(ASHA). But then Higginbottom returns to the usual RPM/S2C talking points
(non-speaking autism as involving motor skills deficits that are serious enough
that they require a communication partner), and also cites Heyworth et al’s highly problematic Presuming Autistic
Communication Competence and Reframing Facilitated Communication article in which it is
claimed that 100 peer-reviewed studies have validated FC/RPM/S2C (stay tuned
for a later post on that claim). Naturally, he also cites Jaswal et al.’s
highly problematic eye-tracking study.
A May 12th article on SILive.com entitled Legacy of Staten Island man
who died at 25 cemented with street renaming, as ‘The Changer’ honored.
Here,
author Faith Archibald describes how
[t]he corner of Annadale Road and Lorraine Avenue in Annadale now bears the name “Nick D’Amora ‘The Changer’ Way,” honoring Nicholas D’Amora, a 25-year-old Staten Islander who paved the way for non-verbal autistic individuals.
[D’Amora
died in May 2023 of a seizure—a common cause of early death in profound
autism.]
Archibald
explains that:
Nicholas D’Amora was non-verbal, and overcame challenges utilizing the spelling to communicate method, an innovative approach that his mother said enabled him to express himself and communicate with others.
It’s
interesting how, 10 years since its “invention” by Elizabeth Vosseller, S2C is
still being described as “innovative” (see also the January 10th Disability
Scoop article).
The
article then mentions Crimson Rise, one of the S2C-promoting organizations on
our growing list, which was purportedly
co-founded by D’Amora:
CrimsonRise
will also soon open the Nicholas D’Amora Center for Spelling and Advocacy.
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, 2025
A June 5th segment on NPR Weekend Edition entitled Two nonverbal actors star
in a new opera — with an assist from AI
This
article returns us to Jakob Jordan and discusses a musical in which he’s
co-starring. When discussing how Jakob communicates, author Jeff Lunden focuses
on the novel elements of the technology, which he characterizes simply as a
form of AAC, and on the supposed input regarding the technology by “the
non-verbal community.” He leaves out the fact that Jakob and other members of
the non-verbal community are being facilitated, and their communications
therefore likely authored, by their FC/RPM/S2C communication partners.
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 June 10th article in The Oklahoman entitled G-O-S-P-E-L: Oklahoman's
ministry plans include his faith and his letterboard
This
article trots out the usual apraxia claims, but mixes into them some Christian
spiritualism:
Taylor is a non-speaker due to motor apraxia, he is on the autism spectrum ― and he's also taking seminary classes.
At 26, he is studying so that he may share the message of Christ with others, particularly members of the Speller Bros, his friends who are also non-speakers who communicate via letterboards.
"Jesus rescued me from my sin and gave me purpose in life — he wants to do that for everyone," Taylor said, spelling out his thoughts on his letterboard.
"I want people, really non-speakers, to know how much Jesus loves them."
Author
Carla Hinton quotes the pro-S2C International Association for Spelling as
Communication as claiming that S2C "empowers non-speakers to overcome
communication barriers posed by traditional oral communication."
But
even an article as spiritually focused as this one can’t resist the ableist
celebration of intact intelligence:
"People can know me and find out my thoughts. Before the letterboard, all people didn't see me. Now they know I am smart. It makes all the difference."
Now leaders of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina have suggested that Taylor enroll in the seminary's GO Certificate program. Crucially:
The program offers video-based theological education that students may take at their own pace.
Remote
learning has been, and continues to be, much more S2C-friendly than in-person
learning has been.
The
article notes, incidentally, that Taylor attended the Griffin Promise Autism
Clinic—one
of many S2C-providing clinics on our growing list.
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 June 23rd piece on local CBS News Boston entitled Nonspeaking Brookline teen
with autism Viraj Dhanda will attend MIT
The
real headline here is that MIT, like Stony Brook (see the January 23rd
article), will soon join our growing list of institutions of higher
education that have enrolled non-speakers whose communications are likely being
hijacked by their facilitators. That list includes Berkeley, Cal Lutheran,
Columbia, Harvard, Oberlin, Penn, Rollins, and Tulane, Vanderbilt, and
Whittier.
Once
again, we have the ableist rejoicing over intact intelligence:
Although Dhanda is unlike any other MIT applicant, his acceptance letter has proved those who doubted him wrong. Dhanda was diagnosed with autism at two years old. After a variety of therapies, adults believed he had low intellectual ability.
And
once again we have, in what surely is a new trend, a focus on the technological
details of the device rather than the communication-hijacking elephant in the
room:
[W]hen he was 10, it was suggested he use an alternative communication device. Now, at 19, he uses a Lenovo tablet with a regular keyboard to communicate. He types using only his right thumb and produces about eight to 10 words per minute.
Who
is the elephant in the room? Who really got into MIT? Video obtained by WBZ-TV,
“show[ing] the moment Dhanda was notified of his acceptance,” is suggestive:
"You got in!" his father yelled. "Oh my goodness! Give me a (fist) bump. I'm so proud of you. I'm so, so proud of you. I can't even begin to express it."
The
article reports that Dhanda's “favorite subject is math,” and that on the math
ACT (an alternative to the SAT) he scored a 35 out of a possible 36 on the math
section. This raises red flags about whether the ACT’s accommodations expressly
allow letterboards. I haven’t been able to find any mention of letters, boards,
typing, or spelling on the ACT website or in its accommodations document), but in a blog post on the pro-S2C I-ASC
website, Jennifer Binder-Le Pape lists the ACT as one of three examples of
testing companies that allow “laminated letter boards” and “CRPs” (the S2C
acronym for “communication partner”). (The other two tests listed here are
Pennsylvania’s upper school achievement tests and New York’s high school
equivalency exam). Perhaps Binder-Le Pape has heard about these accommodations
through word of mouth from the broader S2C community; and perhaps the testing
companies themselves prefer to keep mum about this.
Tellingly:
Dhanda plans to take a gap year before he begins taking classes at MIT in the fall of 2026. He and his father will move to Cambridge together.
If
Dhanda is using his device independently, why does
his father need to move to MIT also? To modify, slightly, what my
son said when I told him that his alma mater had admitted an autistic
non-speaker who is facilitated by his mother into its graduate program
in neuroscience, “Someone’s going
to be getting a degree in math from MIT.”
A June 26th article on the University of Minnesota
Center for Genomics Engineering website entitled Celebrating Emelia: Science
for All
Emelia,
11 years old, is described as “bright, bold, and brilliant,” and as having “a
rare genetic mutation known as DDX3X.” She is also subjected to S2C. Steph
Kennelly, the author of this article and also the program manager for the Center for Genome Engineering,
dismisses the (extremely high) association between DDX3C and intellectual
disability, and claims, falsely, that the autism associated with DDX3C
causes—you guessed it!—a brain-body disconnect.
Steph
Kennelly characterizes Emelia’s S2C-generated output as—you guessed
it!—extraordinarily insightful, in particular in her insights about the
genetics research happening at the Minnesota Center for Genomics Engineering.
And, despite the fact that Emelia’s S2C communication partner comes up
repeatedly in another report about Emelia, namely, Episode 7 of the Telepathy
Tapes,
Kennelly systematically omits any mention of a communication partner in this
article—even as she acknowledges Emelia’s participation in the Telepathy Tapes.
No mention, as
well, 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, 2025
A July 3rd piece on Local 12 News (Cincinnati) entitled My world has opened up':
Son of local radio host changes life through tech, therapy
This
takes us back once again to Jakob Jordan, his S2C-generated output, and his
brain-body disconnect.
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 July 13th episode of Vermont Public Radio’s Rumble Strip show entitled Mark Utter's beautiful mind
This
episode is a tribute to a facilitated man who died this past October. Here,
once again, autism is characterized not as a cognitive disorder, but as a
disorder that locks people in:
Mark Utter was born with a form of autism that made it impossible for him to say what he was thinking for the first 30 years of his life.
Purportedly,
Mark was able to learn language just by listening to words, but was only able
to express himself through old-school touch-based facilitated communication.
People, purportedly, didn’t realize that he was taking in everything all the
time.
Host
Erica Hellman acknowledges that some agencies recommend against FC, but instead
of saying why, tells us that “This is not a story about the controversy; it’s a
story about Mark.” She goes on to assure us that Mark had a number of
communication partners, that they only lightly touched his elbow, and that they
had no control over which letters Mark touched. And she quotes Mark as saying,
through FC, that “this light helped to focus him both physically and mentally.”
In
other words, like most people, Hellman doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. But
as a journalist, she might (like all the other journalists mentioned above)
have better informed herself about the power of subtle cues, the fact that
having multiple communication partners doesn’t validate FC, and the circular
reasoning involved in using FCed messages as evidence that FCed messages are
valid.
Instead,
she informs us that Mark had paranormal abilities: he could apparently move
backwards in time, and can also “condense” time. Through his facilitator, he
apparently typed “I can move back in time because of the way my mind holds
information.” Earlier I wrote about a synesthesia
meme that seems to have penetrated the world of FC/RPM/S2C; I’m now wondering
whether another meme is afoot: one about being unstuck in time, like Billy
Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five. Here are two quotes from
the FC-generated memoir attributed to Naoki Higashida (which I originally
blogged about here):
For
us, one second is infinitely long—yet twenty-four hours can hurtle by in a
flash. (Higashida , p. 63)
We
who have autism, who are semi-detached from the flow of time…” (Higashida , p.
67)
No mention of the
complete lack of evidence base for FC or of any of the many health, education,
and advocacy groups that have expressed serious concerns about it.
A July 16th piece on Good Things Guy (A South African news
website) entitled How an ID Application
Became a Beacon of Belonging for a Non-Speaking Autistic Son
This
article, the first pro-FC/RPM/S2C news story I’ve seen from this part of the
world, describes how an autistic non-speaker applied for a South African ID
Card using S2C—and how this application was “met with nothing short of
heartwarming kindness, patience and inclusiveness.”
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.
In subsequent posts, I will
elaborate on several of these articles: the ones on neuroscientist Morgan
Barense, psychiatrist Diane Powell, musical star Jakob Jordan, and Telepathy
Tapes star Emelia.
As
I mentioned, this year was also distinguished by a few articles critical of
RPM/S2C, which warrant a short roundup of their own.
April, 2025
An April 23 article in The Cut entitled “I can hear thoughts.”
Here,
journalist Elizabeth Weil meets some of the families involved with the
Telepathy Tapes and describes what she witnessed first-hand, including
purported instances of telepathy that are highly unconvincing. Weil also
consults with a mentalist who points out instances of subtle cueing in the
S2C-generated communications in the Telepathy Tapes videos.
June 11, 2025
A
piece in the i Paper (A UK paper) entitled Our autistic son was
manipulated by speech therapists who put words in his mouth
This
piece reports on how the parents of a non-speaker were told by staff at his
son’s residential school that their 24-year-old son could communicate via a
letterboard via a hand-over-hand method that looks just like FC, but which they
claimed was different. They called the method “co-construction support” and
stated that, unlike FC, it was “initiated by the student taking the support
worker’s hand.” This sort of initiation, even if it truly happens, doesn’t rule
out facilitator control over letter selection.
Apparently
impervious to this possibility, the school told the parents that their son had
communicated that he didn’t want to come home for the school vacation. The
school also attempted to revoke the parents’ guardianship, claiming that “your
son has the capacity to make decisions about consenting to his own care,” and
that he “had expressed a wish to live in a different town after college.” To
contest this, the parents “paid £23,000 to have Alex independently
re-assessed,” confirming his severe intellectual disability and highly limited
language skills and emotional development age.
The
parents had been skeptical of FC all along. They found the literacy, sentence
structures, and vocabulary allegedly coming from Alex, which included such
terms as “mental health,” “reassurance,” and “multidisciplinary,” to be “highly
improbable,” and suspected facilitator control. Especially because they
were unable to replicate the hand-over-hand FC with Alex when they tried it
themselves.
July 16, 2025
A
piece on Richmond 6 News entitled Dad jailed after being
accused through controversial autism communication method.
This
piece recounts yet another instance of false abuse allegations generated
through FC (see our FC and the legal system page). Many of them,
including this one, involve estranged spouses, one of whom acts as the child’s
FC facilitator, and the other of whom, in this case, the father, is skeptical
about FC.
The
article recounts how the father, Kevin Plantan, was arrested out of the blue
“for alleged sex crimes against his own daughter.” Journalist Tyler Layne
reports how Plantan’s daughter was introduced to FC in 2020 and later, at the
age of 14, produced a typed letter through FC that “accused him of sexual abuse
dating back several years.” As Layne quotes Plantan:
"[T]hat was enough for them to arrest me and charge me with four mandatory life sentences of rape and sodomy of a child 13 or under.”
Plantan
was promptly jailed for 10 months. But, as Layne reports, when the judge
ordered a message-passing test, and the prosecutor learned that the test had a
100% fail rate, she became skeptical, and the mother “felt the risk would be
too great” and decided to drop the charges.
This
seems to be the typical outcome in such cases: whenever message-passing tests
are allowed at trial, charges are dropped, and/or previously unaccepted
settlement offers are accepted. In fact, I’m aware of no instances since the early 1990s of
message-passing tests actually making it to trial.
Interesting,
the article reports that the teachers at Plantan’s daughter’s school had warned
against FC as non-evidence based, and that
the school's speech-language pathologist tried supported typing with the child "on multiple occasions" over two years but the attempts were "unsuccessful" and the student could only type "strings of letters."
This
makes me wonder how often, when the person doing the facilitation isn’t either
a highly suggestible individual, a true FC/RPM/S2C believer, or a parent who,
like Jakob Jordan’s mother, still isn’t able to do S2C with her son, the
resulting messages are gibberish.
Readers
can read more Plantan’s story in Stuart Vyse’s recent piece in Skeptical
Inquirer.
REFERENCES
Higashida,
N. & Mitchell, D. (2013). The
Reason I Jump. Random House.
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