Facilitated communication: Does the ‘miracle tool’ really help non-verbal people speak?

Within weeks McDonald was spelling out whole sentences and doing fractions, despite having no formal education and being institutionalised since age three.

Some of Crossley’s colleagues expressed surprise that McDonald, who’d never read, could suddenly write eloquent prose, and cite literary references, when her arm was held by the highly educated Crossley.

One who raised questions was the institution’s head paediatrician and psychiatrist Dr Dennis Maginn, who wouldn’t validate Crossley’s communication theory without independent testing.

McDonald later accused him, facilitated by Crossley’s supported typing, of attempting to smother her to death with a pillow. Homicide investigators dismissed the claims, but his career never recovered.

“My thoughtful, introspective and well-intentioned father went through living hell,” his son, lawyer Paul Maginn, says, adding that “any right-thinking person” could see the allegation had been made up by Crossley.

Crossley even had her own initial doubts about the technique, writing at the time: “What I did not know was whether I was subconsciously manipulating [Anne] or imagining her hand movements.’’

McDonald – who ended up leaving the institution and living with Crossley – went on to use the method with other facilitators. She also earned a humanities degree and co-authored the book Annie’s Coming Out, which was turned into an award-winning film.

But despite all these achievements, McDonald’s mother Beverley “never believed” that her daughter could communicate: “I asked her questions and got nowhere,” she told the ABC in 2012, after her daughter died.