Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
(Spoiler Alert: This article contains ALL of the spoilers.)
I had no intention of watching “Tell Them You Love Me,” a documentary that came out on Netflix and recently caught fire with my community on social media. But I kept seeing people I know talking about somebody named “DMan” and how annoyed they were with somebody mispronouncing it, which should be virtually impossible, so I googled it and well, now here we are. I watched “Tell Them You Love Me,” and I’m so mad at so many things about this documentary that when it was over, I wanted to fight the air. One of the main subjects of the documentary, Dr. Anna Stubblefield relates the story to “Alice in Wonderland,” and she couldn’t be more right because so much of this story is WTF, much like the Lewis Carroll classic.
“Tell Them You Love Me” is about a lot of things all at once: caring for the mentally disabled, cerebral palsy, sex, neglect, literature, white folks white folking, facilitated communication (and whether it’s real or not), Jesus, consent, cheating, white saviorism, not listening to Black women and the list goes on. At its core, though, it requires the viewer to wrestle with one question: Do you believe this white woman academic and practitioner (Anna) truly believed that she helped Derrick Johnson (aka DMan) — a mentally disabled, non-verbal Black man with cerebral palsy — unlock his communication, intelligence, emotional and carnal desires or is she a sexual predator because DMan was incapable of consenting to the sexual relationship she alleged they had, thus making her a liar and rapist who took advantage of DMan for her own sick and twisted pleasures? She is definitely a habitual line-stepper, but is she a criminal?
Spoiler alert: The courts decided she was the latter and sent her to prison for a 12-year bid. She was released after two years on appeal, and it doesn’t seem like the state of New Jersey intends to retry the case.
But let’s kick the ballistics here. DMan (this nickname matters a lot to anybody watching) was born with cerebral palsy, is non-verbal and was diagnosed as severely mentally disabled early in his life. His mother and brother, John, have been taking care of him. While John was pursuing his Ph.D. at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J., he met Anna, who was doing work that John determined might help his brother. Then came the facilitated communication element. Facilitated communication is a support method that assists non-verbal individuals to communicate by supporting their hands as they spell words on a keyboard or letter board.
Anna met DMan, assisted him with communication, helped him to express his very deep, cogent thoughts and feelings, fell in love with him, risked it all for him (she was married, also to a Black man), and went to prison. Once DMan’s family had had enough (we’re getting there), they had him checked out, and experts determined that the whole thing was a lie and that Anna was a scam artist who was communicating with herself and using DMan for her sexual pleasures.
I got annoyed watching the documentary early on. Derrick (via a keypad) told Anna he wanted to be called DMan, like DEE-man (allegedly corroborated by DMan’s mother, Daisy; they didn’t show her corroborating this in the doc), but Anna couldn’t stop calling him Deman (like Duh-MAN), and it annoyed me so much. Every single time she said Deman, I got upset; CALL THAT MAN BY HIS NAME. DMan was a name another teacher used to call him when he was younger.
It’s one of the main reasons I think something was amiss. Allegedly, one time in class (Anna had DMan signed up for an African-American studies class at Rutgers), he told her to stop speaking for him. I’m supposed to believe he had the wherewithal to correct her for misspeaking for him about political issues but let her continue to mispronounce his name forever? But at the same time, if he is incapable of sharing his thoughts clearly, how did he tell her to call him DMan in the first place? You see? It’s very confusing.
Anna and DMan allegedly developed a romantic relationship because Anna fell in love with his mind, but I’m confused because … they must have spent an inordinate amount of time together. At one point, DMan informed the family (through Anna using the keypad) that he drinks red wine (though he previously only liked beer) and is vegan, which would have set off every alarm in my soul. The point that really upset his mother, and the point when I think the family became negligent is when Anna stopped DMan’s mother from playing gospel in the car because DMan now preferred classical. That was a bridge too far for his mother and probably the point where they got suspicious.
Except, they let DMan CONTINUE to work with Anna. And things supposedly progressed into romantic and sexual feelings. And that’s when the family stepped in, filed charges and Anna ended up in jail.
So look, this documentary is insane. Either every single thing shared in the documentary from the perspective of Anna is a total and completely fabricated lie — everything ever typed into the keypad DMan used was saved; they used “his” typings in the documentary along with emails sent between Anna and other people involved in his care — and she truly is a menace to society (as asserted by her ex-husband) and a sociopath who took advantage of a disabled man OR DMan’s family refused to accept that he was capable of all the things he allegedly achieved: love, intelligence, expression … humanity.
Eventually, the family had Anna separated from DMan and assessed by experts who determined that he was fully incapable of nearly EVERYTHING that she said happened and all that he had typed. It looked like Anna was the sociopath they thought she was, and a sexual abuser who unlocked his sexual desires, which then became an issue for his mother, who was still his caregiver through it all. His mother’s frustrations over that part seem, to me, to be the real trigger for what ultimately made DMan’s mother file criminal charges. To Daisy, Anna raped a mentally disabled man. The courts agreed.
It’s really sad all around. It seems very likely that Anna did take advantage of DMan and spent years manipulating him into some weird version of a success story, and it went too far. She spent YEARS working with him; the patience and long game truly support the sociopathic lens. I mean, Anna and DMan had clear disputes based on archived comments made by DMan on his keypad; was she arguing with herself and didn’t realize it? Anna was also trying to get DMan away from his mother and into his own living space; for 30 years of his life, his mother had been taking care of him around the clock. Somehow, he was able to move out on his own? Anna might need real help and DMan isn’t who everybody hoped he could be despite his disabilities — that has to be tough for his family.
The documentary is wild. So much of how you feel depends on whether you believe in the idea of facilitated communication, which many leading scientific communities have dismissed. And even if you do, in this case, when the experts say that DMan isn’t capable of what Anna alleged, then so much of this story is bananas. The family let him stay with Anna way longer than they should have, but Anna is truly dangerous.
There’s still so much more to this documentary that needs unpacking; even the court proceedings are troubling. You can’t watch it without concern and ultimately feeling sad for everybody involved, including the community of people who believe in and rely on facilitated communication to aid their family lives. It’s just all bad, all around.
Ultimately, I hope that DMan is OK.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).