Parents are locked up and desperate

It happens everyday.  It can happen to you.

Third in a six-part series
Chapter 1: The allegations
Chapter 2: The investigation

Chapter 3: Incarceration

Between the jail food, the constant pacing and a gnawing anxiety, Julian Wendrow would lose 30 pounds in 80 days in the Oakland County Jail.


But he feared he was losing much more.

He was separated from his wife, his son and his daughter in winter 2008. The family had been scattered by a criminal case in which he stood accused of raping his teenage daughter, who cannot speak.

His daughter, who thrives on routine, was surrounded by strangers at a group home in Detroit.

His son was at a juvenile detention facility in Pontiac, housed with young criminals.

And his wife, Thal Wendrow, was at her mother's home in West Bloomfield, under house arrest.

He couldn't talk to any of them.

In his jail cell, he had plenty of time to think, to speculate, to wonder.

"This wreaks havoc with one's mind," he said.

In fall 2007, Julian Wendrow was active in the Arc Michigan, an organization to help developmentally and intellectually challenged people. He has a teaching degree from Michigan State University.

Thal Wendrow was a research attorney for the Oakland County Circuit Court and sat on the local chapter of the Autism Society of America.

They have two children -- a severely autistic and mute daughter who was 14, and a son, then 13, who has Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism characterized by difficulties with social interaction.

They lived a mostly quiet life in West Bloomfield, attending weekly services at their synagogue and spending their evenings and weekends taking their daughter to track events and their son to swim meets.

Neither parent had ever been suspected of a crime, much less arrested.

Now they were branded child molesters, facing dozens of years in prison as a result of allegations their daughter typed with the help of a school aide, using a debunked method called facilitated communication.

Thal Wendrow knew the criminal justice system well, at least from the court end. But neither she nor her husband was prepared for the reality of life in jail.

Embarrassing ordeal

Thal Wendrow, then 44, was stunned by her feelings of helplessness. The smallest things upset her.

She'd been arrested so quickly that she hadn't had time to put on a bra and found herself at a court appearance braless. "I couldn't believe it was happening," she said.

The charges were felonies: child abuse, for supposedly failing to protect her daughter, and witness intimidation because prosecutors insisted she was pressuring the girl to stop reporting the abuse. The charge against her husband, accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting their daughter, was even more serious: third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

"Humiliation doesn't even begin to express the feeling of standing in a courtroom handcuffed," Julian Wendrow said.

At the urging of prosecutors, he was denied bond. His wife was given a $2-million cash bond -- far beyond what the family could scrape up.

They were taken to the Oakland County Jail to join more than 1,200 other inmates.

Thal Wendrow had trouble stomaching jail food, prepared by a food-service contractor for Oakland County at a cost to the county of 91.5 cents per meal.

"It was pretty degrading," she said. "I can pretty much eat anything, but the bologna-cheese sandwiches were really rough."

Worse than the food was the constant worry. "My biggest fear was that, once it was all straightened out, and the truth came out, that the kids would still be gone, in foster care, that we couldn't get them back," she said.

Her only fond memory of jail was a church group that visited to drop off Bibles and sweets for the prisoners because it was the holidays. Thal Wendrow is Jewish, but she appreciated the gesture.

She was released on personal bond five days after being jailed but was ordered to wear an electronic tether that kept her at her mother's house and cost her $365 a month.

Life in jail

Julian Wendrow, then 52, arrived in jail on a Wednesday evening -- Dec. 5, 2007 -- and spent his first three nights in a holding tank where prisoners are kept before processing. There were no beds, so he slept on the floor with two blankets.

He arrived without socks; it would take days to get a pair to help keep his feet warm. And accustomed to his quiet home, he struggled with the constant jailhouse chaos.

"The lights are always on, and people are coming in and out," he said.

That Saturday night, Wendrow was moved to a 10-man cell. On Sunday, his defense attorney, Jerome Sabbota, came to visit. Sabbota requested that Wendrow be moved out of the general jail population because he was charged with assaulting a child, putting him at risk of being assaulted by fellow inmates. Two hours later, Wendrow was transferred to another 10-man cell, with others charged with sex crimes.

"The worst part was not knowing what was happening to my children," he said. "I was looking at 75 years in prison, I'm innocent, and these people are trying to destroy my family."

Unlike his wife, who tends to be reserved and reticent, Julian Wendrow carries an abrupt manner about him, accentuated by traces of an accent from his childhood in South Africa. A tall, burly man, he's often gruff.

Immediately, he had trouble with his new and mostly much-younger cellmates.

On the first day in his new cell, he had an altercation with a younger inmate who he said called him "an old, bald Jew."

Wendrow admonished him. "I said, 'I know everybody talks smack in here and people say things, but lay off my religion because that's just not on.' "

He reported the insult to a deputy, and the inmate retaliated by spitting on him, according to court records.

Wendrow was moved to a safer one-man cell, where he would spend the next 74 days.

He spent his days pacing back and forth, for four to eight hours every day. He did push-ups to break the monotony.

For one hour each day, he was allowed out. He spent 30 minutes of that time pacing the 57-foot walkway directly outside his cell.

He showered and washed out his underwear and socks.

Then it was time to return to the cell.

In addition to pacing -- he later calculated that he walked 4 to 10 miles a day -- he passed time reading.

A library cart brought books -- he read the works of author Daniel Silva and the Hebrew Siddur -- and friendly deputies allowed him to check out more than one at a time.


Still, he had trouble with the concept of incarceration. During one of his shower breaks, he was disgusted by mold growing on the bottom of a mat on the shower floor. He complained to a deputy and asked for chemicals to clean it, but said the deputy snapped, "You're in (expletive) jail, man."

Another deputy had the shower scrubbed.

Wendrow also complained about the food, which he said was often burned or had melted packaging. The jail provided him with kosher food, but he lost 30 pounds while he was incarcerated.

Scattered family

The allegations that surfaced on Nov. 27, 2007, scattered the tight-knit family.

With her husband in jail, Thal Wendrow spent her days under house arrest at her mother's home.

Their daughter was placed in foster care at the Denby Center, a residential treatment facility for emotionally disturbed children, run by the Salvation Army in northwest Detroit, 17 miles away.

Their 13-year-old son was placed at Pontiac Children's Services, a residential home for delinquent teenage boys. He later said in a deposition that he was exposed to pornography and marijuana use by some of the other residents there.

The Wendrows, married 21 years, were forbidden from having any contact. When they found themselves in the same courtroom after spending seven weeks apart -- he in his orange jail garb and she wearing her electronic tether -- they were careful not to look at each other.

Making eye contact, they feared, might violate the court order.

Any Michigan Dad Can Be Accused Of Raping His Own Daughter

Here is a Medicaid fraud scheme in child welfare utilized by child protection agencies to maintain funding streams for child placing agencies when there is a low supply of foster children in its system.  More affluent counties will use removal allegations of sexual abuse and medical neglect, as opposed to poverty, to increase the likelihood of extended stays in the foster care system and the need for specialized services, all to be billed at the highest rates of funding.

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

First in a six-part series

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.