Anna Stubblefield

Marjorie Anna Stubblefield (born December 3, 1969) is an American former professor of philosophy at Rutgers University–Newark, practitioner of facilitated communication, and convicted sexual assaulter.

Stubblefield was found guilty of two counts of raping a man with severe mental disabilities whom she falsely claimed to have enabled to communicate via typing using the discredited practice of facilitated communication. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The convictions were later overturned on a technicality, and she agreed to a plea deal on a lesser charge and was released from 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 The article has since been retracted.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 2024 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.

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 and legal proceedings
In 2015, Anna was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault against a man with severe mental disabilities. 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, but she was subsequently put on administrative leave without pay and removed as chair of the philosophy department.

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. 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. In August 2011, the family contacted the police.

Stubblefield pleaded not guilty to the charges and said that FC revealed D.J. was mentally capable, while prosecutors said that FC was scientifically discredited and that D.J. did not have the ability to consent to sexual relations. Experts evaluating D.J. testified he did not have the intellectual ability to consent to sexual activity. Facilitated communication testimony from D.J. was not allowed as the technique was ruled unreliable under New Jersey law. 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. After conviction, the judge revoked bail, saying that she was a flight risk, and she was sentenced to 12 years in prison. This included requiring her to register as a sex offender. 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. In 2018 she pleaded guilty to "third-degree aggravated criminal sexual contact" and was sentenced to time served. In October 2016, the family was awarded $4 million in a civil lawsuit against Stubblefield.

The 2023 documentary film Tell Them You Love Me by Nick August-Perna covers the story.

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. Since their divorce, Roger has called Anna a "pathological liar and narcissist".

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.