Rosemary Crossley

Rosemary Crossley AM (born 1945) is an Australian author and advocate for disability rights and facilitated communication, a technique in which a disabled person with difficulty communicating is encouraged to spell out messages with a keyboard or letter board, while their hand is held and helped to move by a facilitator.

Crossley is a controversial figure in the field of autism and disabilities. She has been praised and respected by some, and in her native Australia she is director of the Anne McDonald Centre near Melbourne for people with little or no functional speech. In 1984, the film Annie's Coming Out was made about her work with her first student, Anne McDonald. However, facilitated communication has also been considered a pseudoscience by psychologists and governments, labelling it as ineffective or actively harmful. In particular, it has often failed controlled tests where the facilitator, supposed to aid the autistic person to communicate, is not aware what the answer should be, leading experts to suggest that the facilitator is directing the movement of the disabled person to the answer they expect to see.

Rosemary Crossley is the co-author, with the late Anne McDonald, of Annie's Coming Out, the story of Anne's breakthrough to communication and her release from a large Australian care home for children and adults with severe disabilities. Anne's story went on to be made into an award-winning film titled Annie's Coming Out (also called A Test Of Love) in 1984 starring Angela Punch McGregor and directed by Gil Brealey, the screenplay for which was written by Rosemary's partner, Chris Borthwick, with both Rosemary and Anne as contributing writers. The film won Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Annie's Coming Out tells the story of how Rosemary Crossley developed the form of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) now known as facilitated communication or (as Crossley herself prefers) facilitated communication training. Facilitated communication training is today widely used by people with a variety of communication handicaps. Widespread controversy has continued to accompany its use in the autistic population. While a number of peer reviewed scientific studies have concluded that the language output attributed to the clients is directed or systematically determined by the therapists who provide facilitated assistance.

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