the professor who sexually abused a disabled man

John Johnson was a doctoral student at Rutgers University in 2009. During a class given by Anna Stubblefield, the chair of the philosophy department who teaches in the American Studies doctoral program, he saw a film about AAC. The method was developed to help mentally disabled men and women with non-verbal skills converse and express themselves. The sufferers use keyboards or targets to express what they cannot, assisted by teachers who hold their arms or hands to compensate for their physical tremors. The idea is that with this revolutionary support, the mentally disabled can say what they really think, unhindered by their physical limitations.

John considered this as a possible course of action for his brother Derrick, who was born with severe cerebral palsy that left him unable to speak or walk without assistance, and he asked Anna about it. Since the nearest treatment facility was 250 miles away in Syracuse, New York, Anna – who had experience working with the disabled but was not an expert in the practice – agreed to do some initial testing with Derrick on her own. “She would move mountains, and I took her word,” Derrick’s mother Daisy says in Tell them you love me.

Instead, her family experienced a nightmare that ended up in court.

Tell them you love me (June 14, on Netflix) is the riveting true story of Anna and Derrick, whose relationship began with noble intentions and ended in shocking scandal. A story of consent, delusion and race that continues to inspire debate to this day, Nick August-Perna’s documentary benefits from the participation of everyone involved, including Anna, who not only continues to protest her innocence of the sexual abuse charges for which she was convicted, but also confirms that she and Derrick were in love. Those statements were at the core of her defense and are the focus here, too. And given the context in which they are delivered, they are destined to elicit—depending on your perspective on the matter—either heartfelt sympathy or bloodthirsty outrage.

In an archive video from Rutgers University, Anna, a white woman, proclaims that “race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability are inextricably linked, such that none of these concepts would exist as they do without the others.” Because of her belief in intersectionality, she was immediately attracted to Derrick, a black man with severe mental and physical disabilities. Raised by a mother, Sandi McClennen, who had worked with disabled people her entire professional life, Anna first heard about AAC at a conference in December 1990, where Rosemary Crossley recounted her successful efforts to help a girl with cerebral palsy select objects on a target board by supporting her under her upper arm. With this help, the child was able to spell and read books—which supposedly proved that her unruly body contained a lively and intelligent mind.

Anna took advantage of the facilitated communication with Derrick, and soon he made great progress, so much so that a college student was helping him write book reports (on novels the student claimed not to have read). This initially confirmed John’s suspicions that his brother was smarter than he seemed. Using a portable keyboard called Neo, Derrick began to correspond with his loved ones in a new way, and for Daisy, it was “like the lights on the porch came on.” Naturally, she and John were encouraged and excited by these developments, which were more than enough to dispel their little doubts about Anna, who from time to time came across as a woman trying to change Derrick’s personality – embodied by the nickname Dman, by which Derrick wanted to be addressed.

Tell them you love me The saga is fleshed out through graphic recreations of Derrick and Anna’s neo-prose, as well as archival photographs, voicemail recordings, and police video. Combined with commentary from Daisy, John, and Anna, this material provides a fairly comprehensive picture of these unique circumstances. Things came to a head in 2011, when Anna realized she was in love with Derrick and, according to her, he loved her back. This led to a sexual relationship that Anna and Derrick soon confessed to Daisy and John, who were so stunned and angry that John remembers having to leave the conversation to avoid completely exploding. After several subsequent back-and-forths, Daisy convinced Anna to reveal details of these trysts in a police-recorded phone conversation, and a trial ensued, with Anna charged with sexual assault. After the jury saw Derrick in person and understood the extent of his disability, a guilty verdict—based on the assumption that he could not have consented to such a relationship—was all but certain.

Director August-Perna’s film gives Anna, Daisy and John the chance to make their respective arguments, and while the former seems sincere, that is not the same as innocent; all in all, she seems to have tricked herself into a lie because it made her feel good about having absolved Derrick of his inadequacies. Regardless of her motivation, however, there is little way to view her actions as justifiable unless one accepts that Derrick was and is far more intelligent and capable than the ample evidence suggests.

After two years behind bars, Anna won an appeal because the trial judge had not allowed her to raise anything related to the AAC. Yet, as expert Howard Shane convincingly argues, this treatment remains questionable at best and misleading at worst. “I don’t think they are deliberately trying to give the wrong message,” he says. “They think it’s coming from the person being AAC.” In other words, it’s a method where the carer’s unconscious projections lead to misinterpretation and manipulation. That’s perhaps the nicest way of putting it. Tell them you love me believes that supported communication reveals more about the facilitator than about the patient.

John, on the other hand, is more succinct about the therapy: “Vertigo.”