HANOVER COUNTY, Va. — Kevin Plantan recalled an utter shock when he was arrested by the Hanover County Sheriff's Office for alleged sex crimes against his own daughter.
"I was incredulous," Plantan said. "I said, 'All I know is that I'm innocent.'"
But it's how the allegations were made that eventually led to the charges against him being dropped. Now, Plantan wants others to know about what he believes are the harms associated with the controversial communication practice at the center of this case.
Plantan's daughter has nonverbal autism and dyspraxia, and in 2020 during the pandemic, he said her private occupational therapist used a communication technique with her called facilitated communication (FC).
FC is described as a technique in which a person with a disability points to letters on a keyboard with physical support from another person, the facilitator. The physical support is typically applied to the individual's hands or wrists to help guide them to the letters and spell out words. It is also referred to as supported typing.
When Plantan's daughter began using it, he was all in. For the first time, he felt he was getting a glimpse into his child's thoughts.
"I was elated. I thought it was a miracle," Plantan said. "Suddenly, she went from exclusively autism classes to a seventh-grade mainstream, getting straight A's, winning a national award for her poetry."
But his belief that it was truly his daughter writing her own words crumbled when law enforcement confronted him in January 2021 with a letter, typed through FC on an iPad, in which she allegedly accused him of sexual abuse dating back several years. She was 13 years old at the time the allegations were made.
Court records show the letter was reported to authorities by the child's mother, with whom Plantan was divorced.
"And that was enough for them to arrest me and charge me with four mandatory life sentences of rape and sodomy of a child 13 or under," Plantan said.
He was initially denied bond, causing him to be jailed for 10 months on crimes he said he never committed.
"Half my battle was just surviving jail, but half my battle was, then, of course, my court case," Plantan said.
But when the case went to court and a judge ordered a test to assess the credibility of FC, Hanover Commonwealth's Attorney Mackenzie Babichenko said the child's mother "did not wish to go forward," and she dropped the charges.
After hearing testimony that the test had a 100% fail rate, Babichenko said she was skeptical of it and the mother felt the risk would be too great to put the child through it.
The test would have been administered by Dr. Howard Shane, a Harvard professor and former director of the Center for Communication Enhancement at Boston Children's Hospital. Shane is a critic of FC who has studied it extensively since the '90s.
"On the medical side, the psychological side, the American speech and hearing side, it's nonsensical. It doesn't make any sense," Shane said. "It's so outrageously ridiculous."
Shane said he's conducted over 400 experiments called double blind tests in which he shows different photos to a facilitator and a child, who are separated by a divider. But when asked what they saw, he said the response has always been the picture shown to the facilitator, not the child.
"Is it that in reality, the facilitator is actually the one who's typing out the message?" reporter Tyler Layne asked.
"Absolutely," Shane responded. "If I show them one picture— I show them a boat, and I show the child a spoon, and I say, 'What did you see?' Neither one saw what the other person saw, and out comes the boat. I mean, how else do you interpret that?"
Shane said facilitated communication is widely debunked across the scientific community, with dozens of credible organizations and even some government entities warning against its use.
The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's position statement calls FC a harmful "pseudoscience" and said "it should not be used."
"There is no scientific evidence of the validity of FC, and there is extensive scientific evidence—produced over several decades and across several countries—that messages are authored by the "facilitator" rather than the person with a disability," the statement says.
The teachers at Plantan's daughter's own Hanover Public School also warned against FC, writing in the student's Individualized Education Program (IEP), that FC is "not an evidence-based practice and will not be utilized or supported by HCPS staff."
The IEP, which was produced in March 2021, stated the school's speech-language pathologist tried supported typing with the child "on multiple occasions" over two years but the attempts were "unsuccessful" and the student could only type "strings of letters."
After observing the student's use of facilitated communication and inability to type independently, the IEP stated, "The team must call into question the authorship of the messages being produced." It added that continued use of FC "impairs the ability of trained and licensed speech-language pathologists to implement effective and appropriate communication options that offer a means of independent expression to the individual."
"The Hanover teachers for special ed are, they're the heroes in this, because they knew it wasn't real," Plantan said.
Plantan believes Hanover prosecutors and law enforcement lacked due diligence in vetting FC and argued they presented no corroborating evidence beyond the FC-typed words. In a separate civil case, a judge reiterated statements from the child's mother's deposition, saying, "no physical evidence or other corroborative evidence existed beyond the typed words."
The Hanover Sheriff's Office declined to respond to Plantan's criticism or discuss its investigation, citing the sensitivity of the case and the age of the alleged victim at the time of the allegations.
Babichenko said she had "no reason to believe" it was not the daughter writing her own words and that the case consisted of more evidence than just the typed complaint, to include FC-typed disclosures of the allegations to three different people. Additionally, she said there was involvement in vetting the claims from Child Protective Services and a guardian ad litem familiar with the child's abilities.
"There were several corroborating conversations that happened where this child was the only person who could have known that information and communicated it, and then it was verified by law enforcement," Babichenko said.
She felt they could still "ethically move forward" with the case, as long as it was the desire of the child's mother.
Babichenko added that earlier in the court proceedings, the daughter was found by the court to be competent to testify and that there was some debate over whether her typing met the definition of FC. The 2021 IEP did state that the child's communication method was "identical" to FC.
That said, she acknowledged what she believed to be limited recent research on the efficacy and nuances of the practice.
Plantan's record has since been expunged, and now he wants Virginia to adopt an official position on facilitated communication, much like health agencies in New York have done. There, a health department report noted the use of FC had led to "ethical and legal issues" including "accusations of abuse."
"It was unfortunately a terrible situation, but I wasn't alone. I wasn't the first parent to go through these allegations produced by FC. Please do your research," Plantan said. "I'll keep fighting. I'll keep fighting for her. My problems are, whatever I went through, it's nothing compared to the challenges of autism and overcoming some just junk science like this."
Plantan took civil action against several involved parties, which was ultimately unsuccessful and fully dismissed in 2024. While a federal judge did not opine on the legitimacy of FC, she did dismiss his claims that the sexual abuse allegations were improperly and maliciously reported and investigated.
CBS 6 reached out to the child's occupational therapist, and she declined to comment. We also reached out to the child's mother to seek her perspective, but we did not hear back.
CBS 6 is committed to sharing community voices on this important topic. Email your thoughts to the CBS 6 Newsroom.
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