Was it love, or was it abuse? This controversial question is at the core of a new documentary streaming on Netflix.
“Tell Them You Love Me” chronicles the story of Anna Stubblefield, a former tenured professor at Rutgers University who had a sexual affair with Derrick Johnson, a nonverbal man with cerebral palsy.
Insisting she and Johnson were in love, Stubblefield faced criticism from Johnson’s family. The conflict led to a criminal trial in 2015, a felony conviction and Stubblefield serving 22 months behind bars, The New York Times reported.
Years later, Stubblefield continues to insist that her relationship with Johnson was formed out of love. Read on to learn more about Stubblefield and the trial that challenged the nature of consent.
Who is Anna Stubblefield?
Stubblefield was a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. When she was engaging in a physical relationship with Johnson, she was married with two children, NBC Philadelphia reported in 2016.
According to a 2015 article in the Times, both of Stubblefield’s parents held Ph.D.s in special education and worked extensively with people with disabilities. Her mother, Sandra McClennen, worked with blind, cognitively impaired children and was one of the earliest practitioners of facilitated communication, or F.C., an assisted-typing technique that claims to give people with disabilities the power to communicate.
McClennen practiced F.C. for more than 20 years and was still acting as a facilitator with clients in 2015, during Stubblefield’s trial. Stubblefield practiced F.C. with clients of her own, including Johnson, who Stubblefield called “a fast learner.”
How did Stubblefield and Johnson meet?
In 2009, Stubblefield, then 41, met Johnson, aged 30 at the time, through his brother, who was enrolled in one of Stubblefield’s courses at Rutgers. According to the Times, Stubblefield showed a film in class about a nonverbal girl with disabilities who learned to type through F.C. Johnson’s brother then sought Stubblefield’s advice on whether it would be possible for Johnson to learn to communicate through F.C. also.
Over the next two years, Stubblefield worked closely with Johnson, practicing F.C. and using her hand to physically support his as he pointed to and typed letters on a keyboard. During that time, Stubblefield and Johnson got closer, with the two engaging in sexual activity at Stubblefield’s office on the Rutgers campus, The Telegraph reported in January 2024.
Why is facilitated communication widely disavowed?
Despite its popularity in the 1990s as a tool for communicating with those who cannot speak, F.C. is now widely avoided.
In a 2018 statement, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association called F.C. a “discredited technique,” adding that “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 American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities shared a similar sentiment. In 2019, the organization’s board of directors released a statement that said, “Based on the current scientific evidence, the Board does not support the use of Facilitated Communication.”
The statement added, “Rather than helping people express their thoughts, desires, and choices, FC and RPM have the potential to effectively take away people’s voices.”
How did Stubblefield and Johnson’s relationship become public knowledge?
In 2011, Stubblefield and Johnson revealed to Johnson’s family that they were in love. In a teaser for the documentary, Johnson’s brother, John Johnson, set the scene.
“We all sit down and there just seemed to be this awkwardness,” he said. “She grabs Derrick’s hand and on the keyboard comes up, ‘We are in love.’”
“She said, ‘Yes, we have made love,’” Johnson’s mother, Daisy Johnson, added. She also said that Stubblefield said that Derrick Johnson is “a man in every sense of the word.”
During his court testimony in January 2016, NBC 10 Philadelphia reported that Johnson’s brother denounced Stubblefield, saying, “She is not Sandra Bullock and this is not ‘The Blind Side.’” He added, “She raped my brother.”
In another report by NBC 10 Philadelphia, Stubblefield said she did not rape Johnson, insisting that he could have banged on the floor as a way to express refusal to have sex with her.
Where is Stubblefield now?
Stubblefield was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and in 2016 was sentenced to 12 years in prison, per the NBC affiliate. She had to serve approximately 10 years of the sentence before becoming eligible for parole. Stubblefield was also required to register as a sex offender and submit to lifetime parole supervision.
In 2017, NBC New York reported that a New Jersey state appellate court overturned Stubblefield’s conviction and granted her a new trial with a new judge.
Stubblefield's lawyer argued that an expert in F.C. should have been allowed to testify, as this could have convinced the jury that Johnson could consent to sex. The expert was prohibited from testifying on account of F.C. being considered a “junk pseudoscience.”
In 2017, the Daily Orange reported that Stubblefield pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal sexual contact, stating that she should have known that Johnson was determined unable to legally consent. Her guilty plea, however, did not concede that she believes Johnson lacks adult mental capabilities or that she had subconsciously intended to write out his messages, the Times reported in 2018.
The same year, Stubblefield accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to time served.
“I’m not guilty of a crime,” Stubblefield said in the trailer for the documentary, despite her guilty plea.
Today, Stubblefield is divorced from her husband and lives out of the public eye, per Belmont Filmhouse.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
