2005: The Telepathy Tapes B-side part 3

Speaker: Arrest and Initial Confusion Plantin remembers when his first and only daughter was born. She was perfect, k: she hit all her milestones so she could speak as well as any two year old. But, at around 2 years old, his daughter slowly started losing skills that she had already learned and began to fall behind k: She was diagnosed at two and a half The doctors diagnosed her with regressive autism and severe dyspraxia. A motor function disorder that makes it extremely difficult for her to control her physical movements k: I don't have anyone in my family. This was a first, our first child, you know, I don't have any siblings or anyone in my extended family that's been touched by autism. So, um, we just had a very open mind, mom and and we just wanted to do whatever we could do to help our daughter. Exploring Alternative Treatments k: we just went down a path of trying everything, things like, you know, weighted vests, camel's milk, hyperbaric chambers, chelation, um, you know, everything from diet changes, really just doing everything. you know, leaving no stone unturned, doing everything we could to help our daughter and having a very open mind anything it took, we were going to try going to different, really great, um, psychologists and autism experts all over the East coast They tried everything, but they didn't hit a breakthrough until they discovered facilitated communication. k: mom discovered, um, facilitated communication with typing, and, went to this, uh, seminar that, you know, conveniently is these, these groups hold them in universities on the weekend. Javier: k: Javier: k: And so the facilitators holding out this board and, and I, you know, you notice she's kind of moving it conveniently. And suddenly she's talking about President Obama and all the great things he's done and Um, you know, it's like, wow, what, where is this coming from? And just being like, so excited about it. And this was in about fourth grade. Suddenly, Kevin's daughter could communicate. He and his wife asked the school if they could have a facilitator support their daughter During class time. k: And They stopped it cold. They said, we don't support this. You know, we tried sending it in our backpack to school and they said, we don't support this. We don't, this isn't legit And so that's, you know, that was frustrating, but, you know, we listened to the teachers But then, COVID hit. And suddenly, school started shifting to online learning. k: she'd always been in the special, uh, autism classes her whole life. Mainstream Success and Recognition k: And suddenly they were mainstreaming her into the, you know, regular kid class, whatever you want to call it. And she's typing and they're, you know, the aides holding her hand from home. And suddenly she's getting straight A's in mainstream class. And suddenly she is nominated for a PTA Poetry Award with a poem we thought she wrote. And, and it ended up getting like number two in the country. So at the time, I'm elated. Um, you know, this was a miracle. You know, I would, you know, obviously just as a parent would do absolutely anything to have my daughter to be able to communicate. And then to find out that she's this great writer. we have a writer on our hands here and she's talented and just absolute clouds parting, you know, life changing what I always, my number one wish, and so she's getting straight A's, she's nominated, she wins. Hanover County, she wins Virginia Poetry Contest, they get to reach, you know, the regional U. S. and all the way to the national, and she gets number two. She gets to follow, to the entire country, writing a poem about autism and children being bullied with autism By this time, Kevin and his wife were divorced. He lived in Florida, while his ex wife and daughter stayed in Virginia. Every weekend, Kevin made a long drive to spend time with his daughter. Usually, meeting up at a park k: I'm going up for my January visit to my daughter up to Virginia, and, uh, I pulled, we were dropping, she drops her off in a parking lot at the park, and all of a sudden, mom's not there, which is weird, and there's a police car, and he says, oh, we got a, you have your driver's license on you, you know, we got a suspicious person, and all of a sudden they're telling me, uh, can I, you know, I need to come with them and I'm, Oh, okay, why, what's going on? You know, I'm just like, what, you know, I, I'm trying to search my mind as to what possibly reason would they be detaining me, you know? Javier: k: I'd never been arrested in my life. the sergeant says to me, um, shows me a letter. You know, because we were pen pals. We were writing back and forth when I was in Florida emailing the letters. And I would reply back and she's doing all this fantastic typing and, and she's saying, dad, come back. Don't move. Why did you move? You know, I miss you and all these things. I'm feeling like a real jerk for moving, you know? And, uh, he says, did your daughter write this? And I said, yeah. Uh, he said, you, you think she can write like this? Javier: k: Javier: k: Javier: k: And so there was a complaint and it was, they say it was right in the module in seventh grade where they were talking about sex ed and within I think a few days of that is she made these, um, or, you know, the facilitator types that I had raped her, I had sodomized her for, since she was two, um, just real horrible stuff. On January 9th, 2021, Kevin Plantin was arrested and was taken to jail. Sergeant Payne, the arresting officer, charged Plantin With two counts of rape and two counts of sodomy. There are only evidence, A letter, supposedly written by his intellectually disabled daughter. But k: I've actually never. Exactly. But you know, that's the, that was the typing. And, uh, I said, look, man, I said to the cop, like, give me a polygraph. Like, I don't know what you want to hear from me or what, you know, but I, all I know is I'm innocent. I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know if, you know, it crosses your mind. Is it somebody else hurting her? Like what, you know, at that point I didn't know the word facilitated communication. Javier: k: Javier: k: And within like a couple hours, he's done with me and I'm going and I'm getting, I'm getting processed and I'm going to county jail in Hanover and I'm thinking this will be a two day thing or a, you know, two hour thing or a two and then eventually it's, Oh, this is going to be two weeks or, Oh, then I'll be out or I'll get bond. but this ordeal wasn't resolved in days or weeks. Kevin Plantin sat in a jail for 10 months, accused of raping his intellectually disabled daughter. You know, I wasn't planning on making a third installment to my telepathy tape series. After all, I already talked about the multiple false allegations made as a result of facilitated communication. But listing out cases is nothing like hearing directly from a parent who has been falsely accused. Kevin Plantin's story is devastating. He's a broken man. Not only did he lose his daughter, he lost his career, and he lost almost a year of his life. All at the hands of pseudoscience. ///INTRO/ I'm Javier Leyva, and this is Pretend. Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. in part two of my coverage of the Telepathy Tapes podcast, I discussed a case involving a facilitator named Janice Boynton.In the early 1990s, Janice Boynton was a facilitator for a non speaking high school girl named Betsy. During their sessions, Betsy appeared to describe being sexually abused by her parents. This led to both Betsy and her brother being removed from their home. After my episode came out, Janice Boynton reached out to me.

Janyce Boynton: like in the case that I was involved with, it was also a false allegation of abuse, but only I was the facilitator.

Speaker: Looking back now, Janice Boynton realized that her involvement with facilitated communication led to the irreparable damage for the family being accused. But back then, she didn't realize that she unintentionally contributed to the allegations. Janyce Boynton: The Importance of Double-Blind Testing Janyce Boynton: And this was in 1991, 92, the, the. Double blind testing results were just starting to come out. It wasn't like now where there's a body of evidence that shows like in every single, I rarely say a hundred percent about anything, but a hundred percent of the, the reliably controlled testing show that the facilitators are, are controlling the messages a hundred percent of the time.

Javier: Yeah.

Janyce Boynton: you know, it's like, it's, it's one of those things that it has been proven that it doesn't work.

Javier: Right. It's like the only phenomenon is not the telepathy or the facilitated communication. The phenomenon is that it looks like magic and you could even fool yourself.

Speaker: But again, she didn't know any better. The courts were asking her to prove the validity of the testing. but all her training ever taught her was not to participate in any independent tests. Janyce Boynton: The Facilitator's Perspective

Janyce Boynton: the FC workshops tell you not to test, and they tell you they're out to get you, they're jealous somehow that, that we figured out how to work with these children and he hasn't, and, you know, that kind of mentality that the testing is going to be really, um, aggressive towards your student.

Speaker: It's not going to be fair. It's going to, it's not going to, it's going to be biased. there was this disconnect between what I was being told in the FC workshops and what I experienced personally. Javier:

Janyce Boynton: I had a real struggle in my head.

Speaker: You're not supposed to test it, but this family is facing these really serious charges. and part of that is because I was one of the facilitators. The other thing, the other struggle I was having was I'm a, I'm a mandatory reporter and I would, what the, the, um, allegations weren't just coming out. with, when the person was, facilitating with me, they were coming out also with the other facilitator. And so, like, what do you do? We kind of struggled behind the scenes, like, what do we do with this information? Because if this was a speaking person, typically speaking person, we would move forward with calling the Department of Human Services, but this is through facilitated communication. So none of us thought to test. FC, we were, we were, we were like convinced that this was something new that was happening. We didn't know what it was necessarily, but we weren't doubting. We weren't doubting the, the communications we were giving her and facilitated communication the benefit of the doubt. So what if it was, what if it was true? What if she really was, being abused at home and we didn't move forward with it? So there's like these conundrums that people don't really think about

Javier: in your case, how, how did it work? Cause obviously you're, you're having sessions with her, multiple sessions. This probably didn't happen in the first session. You're probably built, some sort of relationship with your patient. And then like, describe to me that setting of like, what was she spelling and what did it take you by surprise?

Speaker: Because obviously you're not trying to put this thought in her head, but, but it came out, right? Yeah. Mm

Janyce Boynton: Yeah, no, it, it, it's, um, I don't know how to describe it. It's, it's kind of like an author. I kind of liken it to an author that's, that's creating dialogue and a, and a scene for their student. But you're also, you're also reacting to your own thoughts and the, and the, the environment around you.

Speaker: the guidelines tell you to look for unusual turns of phrase or, or Information that you wouldn't have like the facilitator wouldn't have said the, um, that kind of thing. So you're kind of looking to, to validate whether the communications are true or not. So swear words or, you know, whatever surprising information. Um, it could be anything, but in this case, I don't know who started getting the false allegations of abuse first. Um, the other facilitator or me, we talked, so people share information. That's, that's, um, Sometimes people say to test it. You have two different facilitators, but that's terrible because the facilitators share information.

Javier: Right. And you're confirming it.

Janyce Boynton: yeah, so you confirm we were confirming each other and we were talking, you know, what, if something's happening at home, you know, as soon as that seed is planted in your head. my case, she all of a sudden started hitting me. And so I took that a lot of the FC workshop is always all about trust, right?

Speaker: You, you have to trust the process. The student has to trust you. in that situation hit me. So in my head, I was thinking, well, maybe she's acting out, you know, it's more likely, it's more likely she didn't want me in her space. And she was tired of. Of, um, me holding the letterboard so she could poke at it. It's more likely that, but that's not where my mind went. My mind went, she broke that trust. Why did she hit me? Something, she must be acting out. Something's happening at home.

Javier: Did she actually ever spell that or was that just kind of, you knew something was wrong?

Janyce Boynton: it was sexual assault, yeah.

Javier: She would spell it like letter by letter. Oh, man, that must have been like, really intense, right? Because you don't, you know, you're, I mean, you're dealing with this, this child, right? And I can't even imagine.

Speaker: ultimately the court decided that they needed to test if this young girl was really the author of the allegations, Or if it came from Janice Boynton, her facilitator. You can actually watch the double blind test in the Frontline documentary When Betsy saw a cup, she didn't type cup. She typed hat. What the facilitator saw. Here we go. I'll take a look at this one. I want you to tell me what you see. Okay? When Betsy was shown a picture of a dog, she didn't type dog, but sneakers. After double blind tests confirmed that Betsy, the young girl, wasn't the one making the accusations, Janice stepped back and abandoned facilitated communication altogether. In fact, today, she has become one of its most outspoken opponents.

Janyce Boynton: so at first it was more guilt, you know, how do I fix something that I broke in the past?

Speaker: You know, like I hurt that family. It was, those are my actions. I also hurt myself and my career, um, by my actions, by not, By not, um, researching this well enough, so a lot of my early work was out of guilt and now I just think it's wrong

Javier: I mean, you did all the right things and I, and, and you're so like mature about it and like the way your approach is, you know, but there are some facilitators who, to me, it sounds like they're already have a conclusion.

Speaker: And they're going to go for that conclusion. And the training, too, seems like it's oriented to find signs. And if you're already thinking, Oh, okay, you know, hitting could be a sign of distress, right? Like, you're just confirming a lot of pre existing The Psychology Behind FC Belief

Janyce Boynton: Well, they also tell you in the workshops that, that this communication is new to the person and it's probably the first time that, um, they've been able to express themselves and to expect disclosures because, um, this might've happened to them five or 10 years ago, but now this is the, all the first time that they've been able to tell you.

Speaker: So I think the facilitators are primed, or at least they were. Back when I was using FC, um, to expect this kind of communication,

Javier: Mm hmm.

Janyce Boynton: um, so you're going to, you're going to find it, you know, if, if, if this it, because it's all, I think the conversations are all just happening in the facilitators heads,

Javier: but I guess going back to 1991 or 92 and this happened to you, would it have been a lot easier if you would have just refused the double blind test?

Speaker: I mean, for your career, for, you know what I mean? Like, cause that must have been devastating.

Janyce Boynton: yeah. Oh, it was terrible. Yeah, no, it was terrible.

Speaker: when we return, we're going to look at the origins of facilitated communication, and we're also going to talk about the major U. S. university that continues to support it. Facilitated communication has been repeatedly proven to be unreliable, with clear evidence showing that the facilitator, not the person being helped, is the one controlling the messages. Experts agree that facilitated communication has no scientific validity. if facilitated communication is such an embarrassment for the scientific community, then who is giving this practice legitimacy? While doing research for this series, I kept running into the same place over and over again, Syracuse University.

Janyce Boynton: Syracuse University is ground zero for facilitated communication.

Speaker: Despite the overwhelming evidence, Syracuse University is still teaching and sharing information about facilitated communication through what they call the Center of Disability and Inclusion. so how did this disrespected university get tangled up promoting pseudoscience? It all started with Professor Douglas Bicklin of Syracuse University.

Janyce Boynton: N.

Speaker: G.

Janyce Boynton: they had been using, facilitated communication in Australia for about eight years before Bicklin brought it to the United States.

Speaker: And it was actually debunked But Professor Bicklin and Syracuse University promoted it anyway. Bicklin believed that facilitated communication was a game changer in the field of autism. Janyce Boynton: Two? Tonight on Frontline, Prisoners of Silence. This is a clip of Professor Bicklin from the groundbreaking Frontline documentary that exposed the flaws of facilitated communication. I knew that I had seen something terribly important. Here was a means of expression for people who lacked expression. Here was a way that you could find out what people were feeling and what they were thinking. But the Prisoners of Silence documentary told a different story. The documentary used double blind tests to show that facilitated communication just doesn't work. It proved that the facilitator was unknowingly moving the person's arm to create responses based on what the facilitator knew, Not the autistic person. Janyce Boynton: caused a lot of, um, angst, I think, with the people in Syracuse University. They kind of went underground for a while. They changed the name of the Facilitated Communication Institute. but despite the controversy, Syracuse University continues to legitimize facilitated communication, even today

Janyce Boynton: And then they, they've sort of come back. It's never gone away from Syracuse. They've always promoted it.

Speaker: they know. with FC. They know the problems with queuing and authorship, but they just don't bother to test it.

Javier: But this is a respected university giving facilitated communication credibility, right? And has the university ever addressed this to your knowledge?

Speaker: Janyce Boynton: they haven't responded to any of the, uh, in any meaningful way to the, criticisms. what's interesting is that the speech language department at Syracuse University is against facilitated communication. And at one time they shared. I shared, shared a department with the people that were promoting FC and they, the speech department split off from that department because of facilitated communication. And they even have a, on their website, they have a, or did, but they had a statement right on their, on their. Home page of the speech department that says we don't support FC or supported typing or,

Javier: Yeah,

Janyce Boynton: you know, so that says quite a bit.

Javier: Yeah, for sure. And, um, yeah, I see it here. It's on the arts and sciences that Syracuse. edu says communication science and disorder statement on facilitated communication. We affirm, you know, all individuals have the right to communicate and they support, you know, evidence based practices and they support ASHA's position on facilitated communication.

Speaker: So they were clearly trying to separate themselves from From, uh, I guess they're calling themselves the Disability Inclusion Center, right, at

Janyce Boynton: Right, it's changed, it's changed names, uh, rebranded several times over the years.

Speaker: CON'T Kevin's story so, what happened with Kevin Plantin, who we heard from at the top of the episode? A grand jury ultimately indicted him on two counts, on two of the four original charges. One count for sodomy and one count for rape Luckily, Kevin had friends on the outside who stood by him, like his friend Brad. k: he was blown away because he's like, Kevin, all these cases are just like yours. And it's been happening since the nineties. we suddenly had articles that I'm being mailed to in jail, and, and print, you know, Brad's printing things out, and, uh, and he's, uh, researching this, and I'm reading about this, and I'm like, well, the good news is I'm not alone. And we know exactly what this is I'm talking to my lawyer saying, okay, I'm reading all about these double blind tests. That's all we got to do. He's like, he's like, well, what if, what if the test goes the wrong way? He was like, afraid to do the test. I'm like, dude, Do the test. I'm, I'm facing four mandatory life sent, you know, sentences here. I'm like, we're doing the test. I'm innocent But Kevin's attorney wasn't so sure. k: the judge. in Hanover had been my family court judge for 10 years at that point. So this guy knew me really well. I knew him really well. Kevin Planton's new attorney made the case that facilitated communication is bogus and unreliable evidence. And he had all the studies to back it up. k: maybe the judge is going to listen. But the argument fell flat. the family court judge, was a believer. k: And he said, I've been familiar with FC since 1965 and it hadn't really been developed until the nineties. It seemed like logic and reason was not enough of a defense. It was Kevin's daughter whose guided words swayed the court. k: She testified against me before I was indicted Using facilitated communication, of course k: and it's the last time I saw her, that was four, four years ago, four, you know, going on four and a half years ago and, uh, And just used FC and the judge said, you know, the lower court judge sat there and hook, line and sinker. He, that was it. Case closed for him he believed this and he thought it was real. and I'm still not getting Bond and I'm, and then it's like, okay, see in three months. So, you know, turned into a 10 month ordeal

Javier: my audience is just going to be shocked because I did tell them a cases like that, but to hear from you, it hits differently, right? Because you are a real person. You're telling your show, your story. And this, I mean, you never expected that day in the park to turn out the way it did.

Speaker: And now, you know, and, and I think about you being in jail for 10 months, was it? k: yeah,

Javier: Yeah, 10 months.

Speaker: Life in Jail: Struggles and Survival

Javier: People in jails and in prison don't take kindly to people accused of molestation, especially somebody with disability. I mean, how was your experience in jail?

Speaker: k: Yeah. So my life became two things kind of, and this was a privately run jail, which a lot of people don't even know about. That's a whole nother

Javier: That's a whole other

Speaker: k: right? Series of Javier: k: Javier: k: Javier: k: it was tough. I mean, half my battle was just surviving jail day to day. And then half my battle was, uh, my case, I was naive. I thought, well, I've never been convicted of anything. I'm innocent. I'm fine here. I'm safe. No one's going to mess with me. Right. But of course, they also can look you up and see what your charges are. And just, you know, kind of like in society, you, you are what your job is. In society, right? Like, what do you do for a living? You know, I'm this, I'm that. Well, in jail, your, your kind of identity is your charges, Kevin Plantin says that he spent most of his time in jail in solitary confinement, k: So once I realized, okay, they're going to put you in the hole, but at least to get your own cell. That's what I did. I lost 66 pounds and then just that's your body. And then, you know, what happens to your mind is. Just, um, you become very strong mentally, um, but it takes a toll on you, you know, I'm still dealing with that, and then of course, because it's COVID you're, you're locked in your cell, 23 plus one for 10 months. You're not even getting out. And then when you're getting out, you're getting out by yourself because, because of COVID. So it was really like,

Javier: Very lonely. And,

Speaker: k: yeah, I mean, you really are, you're a man in the box. my mom passed away when I was in jail. Of course, I couldn't go to her funeral, my dad lost his wife of 60 years, and then And he's got me in jail facing life charges but there was one thing that kept him fighting. k: I knew my daughter loved me I knew I was innocent and that's what kept me going so Kevin fired his attorney and hired a new one who had experienced fighting, facilitated communication in court. k: I talked to him and he said, Kevin, this is what's going to happen. we're going to explain the double blind test. We're going to request the double blind test. And what's, what always happens in these cases is the parent that believes in it goes home and tries to conduct the test and they realize. It doesn't work, it's not real, and then they refuse the test, and then they're going to drop your charges. And within two months, that's exactly what happened. mom refused to do the test. Uh, the prosecutor told her, if you're not going to do the test, I'm going to drop the charges. And, uh, you know, about a week before Thanksgiving, they dropped the charges. And I was home after 10 months Javier: Ongoing Struggles with Family Court k: it didn't end there because that was in 2021 and now we're starting 2025 and I still haven't saw my daughter because this judge in the lower court and family court still believes in FC

Javier: so you, you have, basically a restraining order against you that you prevents you from seeing your daughter.

Speaker: k: yeah,

Javier: And what's the next step for you?

Speaker: k: yeah. Efforts to Overturn the Restraining Order k: I mean, we tried Dr. Shane on his own, you know, time and, you know, volunteered to come down and testify for me in family court to try to communicate with this judge what we already had done in the criminal process Dr. Howard Shane is a leading autism expert at Children's Hospital in Boston. He believes in using occupational therapy to help people communicate on their own, through tools like AAC, instead of using facilitated communication, which has been proven unreliable k: and then the judge refused. And extended the restraining order last year for two more years. So he won't even listen to Dr. Shane. He won't even entertain the thought. Homeschooling and Legal Battles k: it's now at the point where mom has pulled my daughter out of public school and is homeschooling her with FC and found a psychologist that testified in court last year, that she believes that she doesn't say my daughter can communicate in court. at the hearing to remove the restraining order. She said, I believe in FC. I tested it,

Javier: think that that these judges need to be held accountable to in terms of, uh, falling into this junk science. To me, this is no different than bringing a psychic, you know, into the courtroom and accepting that as evidence, right?

Speaker: But no one should be convicted of charges based solely on facilitated communication. Because it's, it's just k: And that, that's, and that's 100 percent of what they had, you know, but it didn't really, really seem to matter in Hanover. TEASE/SHOW NOTES By now, if you're not convinced that facilitated communication is bogus, well, then I don't know what to tell you. It's become more of a belief than actual science. There was so much that I just couldn't include in this episode, so I will be releasing my full length conversation with Janice Boyden on Patreon and Pretend Plus on Apple Podcasts. It's seriously fascinating. So if you're interested, we dive in deep on all these topics at length. Go check it out. I'll have a link in the show notes. Next time on Pretend, we are going to switch things up. You're about to meet a group of women who joined forces to expose a man that they believe repeatedly deceived and manipulated them for financial gain. And they've made it their mission to intercept his next relationships. That's next time. It's called Operation Cockblock. That's next time on Pretend.