Anna Stubblefield

Anna Stubblefield (Marjorie Anna Stubblefield) is an American former professor of philosophy at Rutgers University–Newark and practitioner of facilitated communication. She was found guilty of sexual assault against a man with severe mental disabilities whom she supposedly enabled to communicate via typing using the discredited 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. Her use of facilitated communication with the victim resulted in an academic article that was published in Disability Studies Quarterly. The article has since been retracted. The 2023 documentary film Tell Them You Love Me by Louis Theroux covers the story.

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.

Academic career

Stubblefield received her PhD in 2000, and became a "a prominent scholar in the field of Africana philosophy," the chairwoman of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers, 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."

Abuse

In 2015, Anna was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault against a man with severe mental disabilities. 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.

Reactions

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."

Personal life

She was married to Roger Stubblefield, with whom she has two children.

Works

Books

• Ethics Along the Color Line. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2005. ISBN 9780801442674.

Articles

• "Beyond the Pale": Tainted Whiteness, Cognitive Disability, and Eugenic Sterilization." In Hypatia 22, no. 2, (Spring 2007): 162-181.
• "Race, Disability, and the Social Contract." In The Southern Journal of Philosophy, no. 47, (2009): 104-111.
• "Living a Good Life... In Adult-Sized Diapers." In Disability and the Good Human Life, edited by Bickenbach, Felder, Schmitz, 219-242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

See also

• Annie's Coming Out – based on the case of Anne McDonald
• List of abuse allegations made through facilitated communication

References