Landers has galvanized attention for abortion rights, cancer research and gun control. But she Is most often asked for help for problems in readers' personal lives and relationships. These days, those problems include issues around divorce, motherhood, careers and drug abuse. Most difficult--and most frequent--of all are the questions from women who are married or living with men who abuse them, are unfaithful, or are addicted to drugs and alcohol.
Her simple response is, by now, well known. "Would your life be better with him or without him?"
JUDY WEBER Executive Director, Tobinworld
There are more than 300 autistic, developmentally disabled or emotionally disturbed children at Tobinworld in California. But this Los Angeles--based school and its San Francisco branch started with one autistic boy, Tobin Weber, and his mother, Judy.
The year was 1977, and Judy Weber was a housewife with a painful dilemma: She could no longer handle her autistic youngest son, who like many autistic children was nonverbal and sometimes violent. Her only choice was the state mental institution.
She flew to the state capital, "begging and crying for a fun day" at the doors of state legislators, Weber recalls. Dispirited and tired, she went and had a margarita, then looked up to see then-governor Jerry Brown arriving for dinner Weber shifted gears. She approached the governor and made her case.
Ultimately, Weber was offered money to start a program. Since that original school of six autistic children was created, Weber has absorbed many children who found no place in the public or private school system. She's got a staff of over 150, Including speech therapists and special education teachers. She herself serves as executive director of the $7.5 million nonprofit organization.
With a student-teacher ratio as low as two-to-one, and progressive methods for controlling violence and teaching hard-to-reach children, Weber says she's had a great deal of success. Many of the children are self-abusive or aggressive, some have been involved with gangs and drugs. "But when they see ail the nice things that happen when they don't do this behavior, they start to learn very quickly."
The students, aged 5 to 22, are enticed to good behavior with the promise of rewards: pinball or Nintendo, the chance to win gifts, even the opportunity to be trained to work at a Baskin Robbins branch that Weber convinced to open on her five-building campus.
Today, even 32-year-old Tobin, who is still nonverbal, is able to live independently with an aide. "I think he feels good," Weber says. "And if that's all that came out of this, it will have been worth it."
GINA GREEN, PH.D. Director of Research, The New England Center for Children
Gina Green, Ph.D., has been drawn to children with autism since she was In college. These children, who are often very attractive but have behavioral and communication difficulties, have been the subject of constant speculation and false claims of miracle cures since the disorder was identified in 1943. "They're just endlessly fascinating," says Green about autistic children and her lifelong attempts to understand and teach them. "I was hooked from the very first moment I saw a child with autism."
But when the practice of "Facilitated Communication" (FC) took the autism community by storm in the early 1990s, Green foresaw disaster. FC, proponents claimed, would allow individuals with severe language difficulties to communicate with the help of a "facilitator," usually an adult who guided the disabled parson's finger over a keyboard to spell out messages.
Many autism professionals and the media embraced the method instantly. Scores of people who had never before demonstrated reading or spelling skills were said to be spelling out sentences like "I'm highly intelligent" and "I'm not retarded." There were also ominous and generally unproven accusations of physical and sexual abuse, says Green. "Fathers were jailed and children removed from their families, even when physical exams found no evidence of the alleged abuses. It was hysteria."
Research soon demonstrated that the facilitators, not the Individuals with disabilities, were doing the communicating. Following a 1993 visit to Australia, where FC originated, Green became a "repository of Information" on FC. "People around the world sent me data, and I Worked as fast as I could to get it out." In 1995, the Association for Behavior Analysis, of which she is currently president, recognized her efforts with an award for Excellence in Behavior Analysis in the Public Service.
Still, says Green, "Many parents desperately wanted to believe that children who had never communicated in the usual ways were, In fact, highly intelligent." She estimates that thousands, If not millions, of dollars have been spent on special courses to "train" facilitators to help people with disabilities communicate. And though the FC movement responded to research and criticism by going "underground," Green says she believes Interest in It Is reviving yet again. "Whenever people are desperate, they are easily seduced," she said.
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