Marjorie Anna Stubblefield (/ˈɑːnə/; born December 3, 1969) is a former professor of philosophy at Rutgers University–Newark, practitioner of facilitated communication, and convicted sexual assaulter.[1] Stubblefield was found guilty of raping a man with severe cerebral palsy when she reportedly believed to have communicated and gained consent from him using the controversial practice of facilitated communication. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison. In October 2016, the family was awarded $4 million in a civil lawsuit against Stubblefield. The 2023 documentary film Tell Them You Love Me covers the abuse case.
Early life
Stubblefield grew up in Plymouth, Michigan, with her mother, Sandra McClennen, and her father. She was raised Jewish. During her high school years, Stubblefield wrote for the school newspaper, studied Braille, and learned American Sign Language.[2]
Academic career
Stubblefield received her PhD in 2000, and became "a prominent scholar in the field of Africana philosophy", and chairwoman of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers,[2] and the author of a book published by Cornell University Press titled Ethics Along the Color Line. In 2001, she became a philosophy professor at Rutgers University–Newark, where she also served as a faculty advisor to the university's Disability Services Office. Her university website described her as a "Facilitated Communication Trainer by the FC Institute at the School of Education, Syracuse University."[3]
Abuse and legal proceedings
In 2015, Stubblefield was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault against a man with severe cerebral palsy, which makes assessing his mental capacity with accuracy impossible. At the time the investigation began in 2011, Stubblefield was the chair of Rutgers-Newark's philosophy department, whose professional work centered on ethics, race, and disability rights,[4] but she was subsequently put on administrative leave without pay and removed as chair of the philosophy department.[5][6]
The victim was identified as D.J., a 33-year-old African-American man with severe mental disabilities who cannot speak, has cerebral palsy, and is unable to stand independently or accurately direct movements of his body. Based on his disability, his mother and brother were appointed his legal guardians.[4] Stubblefield stated that she had successfully communicated with him, determining he was of normal intelligence. She subsequently brought him to conferences where she "held him out as a success story". In 2011, she revealed to his mother and brother that she had had sexual relations with D.J. and said that they were in love, attributing consent to messages received while facilitating. Stubblefield stated that the two of them had a mutually consenting relationship established through facilitated communication. However, testing of D.J. by family members failed to establish the ability to communicate, and Stubblefield was thanked but denied further access to D.J. She continued to attempt to maintain contact with D.J. and began challenging control of D.J.'s legal guardians over him.[4] In August 2011, the family contacted the police.[5][7]
Stubblefield pleaded not guilty to the charges and said that facilitated communication revealed D.J. was mentally capable, while prosecutors said that facilitated communication was scientifically discredited and that D.J. did not have the ability to consent to sexual relations.[5][6] Experts evaluating D.J. testified he did not have the intellectual ability to consent to sexual activity.[8] Facilitated communication testimony from D.J. was not allowed as the technique was ruled unreliable under New Jersey law.[4] After a three-week trial, the jury found Stubblefield guilty of two counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault, the equivalent of rape in New Jersey.[4] After conviction, the judge revoked bail, saying that she was a flight risk.[4] She was sentenced to 12 years in prison.[9] This included requiring her to register as a sex offender.[9][10]
Before sentencing, Stubblefield wrote to Judge Siobhan Teare, stating, "I was deeply in love... I believed that he and I were intellectual equals, and that our romantic relationship was consensual and mutually loving. I intended no harm, and I had nothing to gain."[11]
In July 2017, an appeals court overturned her conviction and ordered a retrial on the basis that it was a violation of her rights to not allow her to use facilitated communication as a defense.[12][13] In 2018 she pleaded guilty to "third-degree aggravated criminal sexual contact" and was sentenced to time served.[13] In October 2016, the family was awarded $4 million in a civil lawsuit against Stubblefield.[14]
The victim's brother spoke during Stubblefield's sentencing hearing, stating, "[Stubblefield] is not Sandra Bullock and this is not 'The Blind Side'... She raped my brother... She tried to supplant his life with some version of life she thought was better."[16]
Daniel Engber covered Stubblefield's trials for The New York Times. In 2018, Engber wrote:
"From my position in the gallery, reporting on the trial, it always seemed to me that Anna was entrapped by the grandiosity of her good intentions. As an academic, she devoted much of her career to social-justice activism and the philosophy of race and disability, warning in her published work that men like D.J. (who is black) were like 'the canary's canary' in the coal mine — 'the most vulnerable of the vulnerable' — and subject to both white supremacist and ableist oppression. In teaching D.J. how to type, using a widely disavowed method known as 'facilitated communication,' she believed she was restoring his right of self-determination: empowering him to take college classes, present papers at conferences and eventually express his longing for the older, married, white woman who had been his savior."[17]
James Todd, a professor of psychology at the Eastern Michigan University and a vocal critic of facilitated communication argued that Syracuse University, where Stubblefield received her training, held some of the responsibility for the crime. In 2018, he said:
"For decades, the Syracuse administration has not only tolerated dangerous facilitated communication pseudoscience, it has even openly championed FC over clear and established science... It is not too late. Syracuse University can still renounce and repudiate FC. It can take real responsibility for all the harm left in its wake."[18]
Personal life
She was married to Roger Stubblefield, with whom she has two children.[2] Since their divorce, Roger has called Anna a "pathological liar and narcissist".[19]
^ abcdefDaniel Engber (October 20, 2015). "The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield". The New York Times Magazine. Archived from the original on October 20, 2015. Retrieved October 21, 2015. ...the judge ruled that facilitated communication failed New Jersey's test for scientific evidence.
