Tell them you love me

[Acrosstheeuniverese]

Anyone else watched this, it's left me with so many questions.. What do others think?

Yes! I saw it last night, also have lots of questions!

Cant decide if Anna genuinely believed Derrick was saying the things he was saying.
A part of me was left thinking - what if she’s right and now he’s been left with no way of communicating?! But then, I also have a child with a very similar disability to Derrick and very early on in the documentary I thought the level of communication seemed unlikely.

Were they suggesting the girl who helped with his essays etc was influencing his work because of her room mate doing the same course? Feel like that part wasn’t fully explained. I think a lot of things were left unanswered actually.

I just watched this. I agree - wouldn't the study support/essay support lady have been called as a witness?!
But then, if it were true, why would Derrick not show his intelligence to the psychologist with the pictures etc
Both sides are very compelling but no one seems to have tried another person to facilitate the communication - someone unbiased.
I need to Google and find out more.

Watching it now, will report back with my thoughts afterwards.

Really strange, My over all opinion is that Anna started to believe her own lies.
There's a lot of evidence that facilitated communication isn't real, abit like an Ouija board. I thought the part where Anna's mum said the family were trying to make him look more disabled than he was in court was really arrogant.. also the marks on Derricks back from her dragging him across the floor for sex paints a picture of an abusive situation.

Did she drag him or were they pressure marks from the yoga mat? Either way it was wrong. If there was the mental capacity she claimed there was it would've become obvious with the psychologist who presumably used the speech board with him. What on earth was she thinking,how on earth did she think any of that was ok? I agree it was confusing about the assistant at college,that needed to be explored further, perhaps it was too robustly edited?

Facilitated communication has been repeatedly debunked.

Are the helpers aware they are forcing the speech or are they just deluded?

So many questions after watching this. When the mother and brother said they had tried to use the keyboard with Derrick but it didn’t work for them was the moment I thought Anna had to be lying. Why would it work for her but not for them?!?!

Exactly.. It's like she had some strange form of Munchausen by proxy, painting herself as this open minded saviour who sees a man and not the disability but in reality she's a predator.

I wonder if she almost fetishised disability? When she spoke about playing at being blind etc as a child I thought that was not out of the realms of normality, especially given her mothers job - but in light of what happened with Derrick I wonder if there was more to it all.

I watched it last night. I found it really disturbing. For obvious reasons and the way this woman presents herself. She is so plausible and you can almost come round to what she's saying as she appears so convincing. Towards the end of the programme you see snippets of the predator she really is in her smirks and air of arrogance. But sat down being interviewed= Oscar worthy. It blows my mind though that unlike most creeps, she didn't try to keep her darkness under wraps. She wanted the family to know, and wanted a full blown, out in the open relationship with Derek. Wtf. It's played on my mind since I watched it.

The woman gave me the creeps right from the beginning. Abuser, so full of herself and her “superior” knowledge. She made me feel sick. She thought she knew best about everything and i also think she looked down on and patronised Derrick’s family and she thought she was so much better educated and knowledgeable than them (or indeed anyone).

I'm so glad there's a thread on this

I've watched it over 2 nights and it's disturbed me so much.
She has a very strange air about her and it's very creepy / abusive

I'm not convinced with the FC, how can it be believable when you have to move for the person?
The double blind tests by the professional proved it's a croc of shit

Also if she was so convinced of her love & connection with Derrick why keep it a secret from her husband?

I found the whole thing utterly repellent. I think that she built up the 'relationship' slowly and to the point that she almost fooled herself into believing in the (totally debunked) facilitated communication. After all, many parents over the years have convinced themselves that this communication is real and I understand that desperate hope from a parent...

However, I think she was moulding Derrick into what she wanted him to be and was creating the 'relationship' to suit. She wanted to be the only one who understood him and the only one with this special access.

I believe that Derrick genuinely has the capacity of a very young child, as all other medical practitioners have agreed over repeated testing over all the years of his life. I don't understand the sexual attraction at all and I believe her to be an absolute predator.

Throughout the documentary I was trying to imagine what a viewer would think if Derrick had been a girl with all the same disabilities, capability and mannerisms and it was a man who was trying to convince the world that she loved him and had consented to sex that resulted in bruising.

I thought that was bloody odd too!

One of the ways they test FC is to get the facilitator to leave the room and then tell the non verbal person a word, facilitator comes back in the room and the tell the non verbal person to repeat the word using FC...and they can't.

I ended up down a rabbit hole last night reading up on it 😂

That’s so simple but 100% effective. The prosecution should have done exactly that!

Maybe they did with the psychiatrist's evidence but we didn't see it or maybe it wasn't allowed as it was a debunked theory anyway?

I wonder what medication they put him on to stop him masturbating? Probably a really strong sedative, how awful for him .

As a parent to an adult DD with CP but also as a person who's supported vulnerable disabled/elderly folk it's quite common for clients to develop a 'crush' on their carers... Of course we keep things professional and wouldn't dream of leading the client to think we were anything else.
It was VERY wrong if Anne to act on Dereks crush ( if indeed that was true)
The idea of disabled people having consensual sex with someone else still seems to be a topic that many folks still find it hard to accept and although such as my DD have very physical limitations their hopes and wants and desires are the same as the next persons ( as should be) but I think Dereks family found that hard to deal with that he'd have desires in any shape or form. It's so hard to know with non-verbal people just how much capacity they have for understanding esp if they can't sign/communicate. One thing that would have left an impression on folks from this documentary is that abusers really do come in all guises.

A sorry as I felt for Mum and brother I did think they were quite manipulative during the court case. If Derrick had testosterone enough to have sex then I honestly don't believe he only started masturbating once he'd had sex with her. I would imagine he was probably doing this since he was a teenager.

I imagine it would be some kind of libido suppressant in the form of an anti depressant/anxiety med (as he had also become more unsettled and upset)

@KittensandPerverts I thought the same, young children don't masterbate because someone has had sex with them, they do it because it feels nice

That was awful to watch. Good god! My own personal thoughts are that she deluded herself into thinking “she knew best”. A real saviour complex. I wonder what can have happened in her life to make her feel she could treat someone so vulnerable in such a way? She was an intelligent woman, where were the safeguards to protect both him and her? I was pretty gobsmacked throughout but when she told his family before her husband or her family! Why? Was it part of the delusion? I would be interested to hear her husbands side of things.

It was so sad. I do think there was an element of his family feeling that his sexual impulses were somehow “dirty” and his mother was unable to accept that part of him.

She was very smug and arrogant and I didn’t find her plausible.

However, I am still really confused about the person he wrote the essays with. She seemed very credible and obviously didn’t have a vested interest in showing he could communicate. She hadn’t read the book etc. either. This bit really confused me. Anybody?