The fight to remain in business becomes predatory for these child welfare agencies, with very little chance of ever being penalized.
The transgressors possess qualified immunity being contractual arms of the state but I hope this family is successful in legal recourse because it is dealing with a county and a municipality.
Once again, welcome to the world of child welfare in Michigan. It could happen to you and there is nothing you can do about it.
As you read this story, keep in mind that everything was funded through entitlement programs.
Family's life unravels as dad accused of raping daughter
Thal and Julian Wendrow believed they'd found a way to communicate with their mute, autistic daughter. But the method led to claims that Julian Wendrow had raped her for years as his wife stood by. A mistake easy to clear up, they thought, but it wasn't. The parents and their children would be separated for 106 days. / April 22 photo by REGINA H. BOONE/Detroit Free Press
Julian Wendrow paced in his cell.Three steps one way. Turn. Three steps the other way.
Four to eight hours a day, he walked back and forth in his windowless cell in the Oakland County Jail, a first-time prisoner accused of raping his autistic daughter.
Wendrow spent 74 of his 80 days in jail in the one-man cell. He saw almost none of the winter of 2008, the season that would change the West Bloomfield father's life.
He and his wife, Thal Wendrow, were seemingly ordinary middle-class parents deeply involved in their children's lives -- until the accusations prompted a prosecution that a federal judge later described as a "runaway train."
Thal spent five days in jail, accused of ignoring the abuse. Their children -- a severely disabled teen girl and a mildly autistic boy -- were put in separate juvenile homes and kept apart from their parents for 106 days.
Beginning today, Free Press staff writers L.L. Brasier and John Wisely go behind the scenes of the case. The parents who wanted to believe in miracles after a school aide was assigned to help their mute, autistic daughter communicate. The prosecutors who set out to protect a child. The nightmare that engulfed the Wendrow family.
The ordeal didn't end when it was clear that the girl wasn't communicating, after all. It didn't end when a sexual assault exam found no proof of abuse. And it didn't end when a prosecution witness insisted the abuse never happened.
Through hours of interviews and thousands of pages of never-disclosed testimony, the Free Press over the next six days examines how the case developed -- and how it collapsed.
Chapter 1: The Allegations
The ordeal that would devastate the lives of Julian and Thal Wendrow began in a most mundane way: The message light on their home phone was blinking.
Julian Wendrow, who owned a painting business, had been out running errands. His wife, Thal Wendrow, a research attorney for a local judge, was at work. Their children were at school.
It was a cold November afternoon in 2007.
The voice mail was from a state social worker, who had an urgent message for them.
Julian Wendrow called back.
Disturbing allegations had been made, the social worker told him: Your disabled daughter, who was at Walled Lake Central High School, claims you raped her over the weekend. That you've been raping her for years.
Wendrow was stunned. His 14-year-old daughter -- mute and autistic -- communicated only through a technique called facilitated communication (FC), a typing method in which an aide guided her hand.
Surely, he thought, there had been some terrible mistake. The typing went awry. It could all be easily corrected, he figured.
The family had airline tickets for South Africa, his native country, and was set to leave in 12 days. His daughter came home on the school bus that afternoon, along with her 13-year-old brother. Wendrow said nothing to them, but called his wife at work. She came home.
With the children out of the room, the parents talked quietly.
They came up with a plan -- one they hoped would end the ordeal the next day.
A change in plans
Thal Wendrow left that evening to run an errand. As she pulled out of her West Bloomfield neighborhood, she noticed an unfamiliar car parked with a man inside.
"I was about to stop and say, 'Can I help you?'" she later testified in a deposition. Instead, she continued on. He started his engine and followed her.
After a few miles, she was stopped at the light at Maple and Orchard Lake roads, talking on her cell phone, when he walked up to her window. He flashed a police badge and identified himself as West Bloomfield Police Sgt. Daniel O'Malley.
Allegations were made about your husband, he said.
"I know," she replied.
He told her that her children needed to be removed from the home, and she agreed to take them to her mother's home nearby.
She went home and told her husband. Still, they remained hopeful the issue would be resolved in time for their long-planned vacation, to start Dec. 9. They had already paid $5,600 for the tickets.
That night -- Nov. 27, 2007 -- a detective and two sergeants arrived at their front door. Julian Wendrow was trying to get his son to swim practice, but instead, sent the boy and his sister upstairs.
Sgt. Tara Kane was in charge of the investigation, as head of the Police Department's youth bureau. It was her first day in that position, and she had never handled a child sexual assault case. She didn't have any training in autism and had never heard of facilitated communication.
Accompanying her was O'Malley, who was retiring in a few days, and Detective Joseph Brousseau.
The detectives told the Wendrows the children couldn't stay in the home that night. The Wendrows urged the police to use another facilitator to verify the claims -- a plan they hoped would resolve the issue quickly. But the detectives seemed uninterested, they said.
Later that evening, Thal Wendrow stood on the threshold of her mother's home and said good-bye to her children.
She didn't know at the time that it would be two months before she would see her son again. And that fall would slip into winter and nearly turn into spring before she would again lay eyes on her daughter.
How it all started
The girl's typed messages originated in a classroom at Walled Lake Central.
The girl, then a freshman, had been a student in Walled Lake schools for three years. She grew up in West Bloomfield and had been in special-education classes most of her life.
Her parents say they realized she was autistic when she was about 18 months old, as her limited toddler vocabulary began to diminish. After she turned 2, she rarely uttered a word.
At age 14, she couldn't speak or form letters independently. She could help dress herself but wouldn't be aware of whether her shirt was on backward or inside out. She sometimes tried to put her shoes on the wrong feet.
She also struggled to understand social conventions. Sometimes in gym class, she'd sit naked in the locker room until someone prompted her to dress. At the movies, she'd begin to rock in her chair and moan, though she'd stop when prompted by her parents.
Still, the Wendrows had resolutely refused to believe testing that consistently showed she functioned at the level of a 2-year-old and that in addition to being autistic, she was mentally retarded.
The Wendrows were introduced to FC in 2004 by Dr. Sandra McClennen, a retired psychology professor from Eastern Michigan University who had been working with their daughter for three years. She trained the girl to use FC, a highly controversial method through which autistic people are said to communicate using a keyboard, aided by another person.
The Wendrows believed that FC -- despite being widely debunked by educators and researchers -- helped unlock hidden literacy in their mute daughter.
Beginning in middle school, they pushed FC, threatening to sue the school district if it didn't hire a full-time aide to facilitate their daughter. They requested that she be placed in mainstream classes. On her own, the girl couldn't match the word "cat" to a picture of a cat, draw a circle or count to five.
But when she used FC, the results seemed astounding. With a facilitator guiding her arm, the child who had never been taught to read was suddenly writing poetry and English essays, taking history exams and doing algebra. The middle-schooler who couldn't put on her coat without help was typing about her plans to become a college professor.
Walled Lake schools officials were skeptical. The head of special services later described FC as "hokey." A school psychologist who tested the girl's IQ using a facilitator warned in a report that "the results should not be deemed valid or reliable" because the girl was not typing independently.
Cynthia Scarsella, an $18-per-hour teachers aide, was the girl's facilitator, the one guiding her hand. She had been assigned to the job at the beginning of the fall 2007 semester.
Scarsella, who holds a high school diploma, completed one hour of facilitator training the summer before. She said in a deposition that she had "no idea" whether what the girl was typing was true and had no interest in trying to verify it. And she said she didn't know anything about autism.
The allegations
The Tuesday morning after Thanksgiving break, Scarsella asked how the weekend went.
Scarsella guided the girl's right hand over the specialized keyboard. She held her wrist as the girl, striking one letter at a time, typed out a message:
"My dad gets me up banges me and then we have breakfast. ... He puts his hands on my private parts."
Scarsella asked whether the girl's mother knew. She facilitated as the girl answered yes and typed:
"She doesn't say anything."
Scarsella immediately told Natalie Miller, the girl's teacher, who notified her supervisors. Michigan law requires school officials to report any credible allegation of sexual abuse to authorities.
Within hours, police, prosecutors and social workers were on the move.
Within two days, the children were wards of the state.
Within a week, the Wendrows were in jail.
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